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    â€œFirst and last, Panchita. I have put up with your namby-pamby moralizing bullshit as long as I mean to. I’m going to say this once only. I have just come back from Sonora, broke and tired and needing none of your womanly carping and mincing around. I intend—”
    â€œOh, I don’t propose to mince!” Frances cut in, rage making her breathless. “That’s over. Do you know the meaning of that song you were singing, ‘ Amor y Lágrimas ’? It means ‘Love and Tears,’ and you’ve given me a year and a half of lágrimas and mighty little amor , and I’m having no more of it, Rip Parrish.”
    â€œReep! Reep! My name ain’t Reep.” Rip smirked. “Can’t you even speak English?”
    Her accent was a sore point. People in Nogales snickered at it, too. Her eyes flashed, but she ignored his sarcasm.
    â€œDon’t you realize there are idiots like you all over this border digging for the so-called ‘Treasure of the Padres’? Not to mention the lost mines, the lost Army gold, the lost thees, the lost that? Well, Reep , eet’s going to be the lost Spider Ranch een a few more months!”
    â€œYou might be surprised, woman.”
    Frances pressed the back of her hand to her brow. She was just about finished. Her hand dropped wearily and she exclaimed, “Oh, I do hope you’ll surprise me! What have you found? A broken seventeenth-century teacup in the popular Sears, Roebuck pattern?”
    Rip grinned and offered the wine bottle. “Like your spunk, Panchita. Have a snort—for the road....”
    With scorn she looked him over, head to foot, but with the clear vision of a stranger this time. When he was on display, like a blooded horse, he could be muy caballero , handsome and courtly. But the lips that looked as sensitive as a poet’s were more given to uttering the most insensitive things. She waved the bottle away.
    â€œWhy did you speak to me that day in the cemetery?”
    â€œThat’s easy. I needed a new woman for my new ranch, along with my new clothes. Part of the outfit.”
    â€œSo it had nothing to do with respect for Papa, as you told me? Putting flowers on his grave was just like, like, bringing me a bottle of perfume?”
    â€œTears your mind up, don’t it?” Rip grinned.
    â€œâ€˜He will hold thee, when his passion shall have spent its novel force,/Something better than his dog, a little dearer than his horse.’ Papa told me about that poem of Tennyson’s,” said Frances. “And now at last I understand it.”
    Rip gulped the mouthful of wine he had just taken and gave an angry roar. “Papa, Papa, Papa! I am so fed up hearing about that old horse-doctor of a papa , I could puke! I tell you, woman, it’s like living with a ghost in the house!”
    Frances’s mouth trembled in hurt. “He was the finest doctor this country ever saw,” she said. “The most compassionate and the most tireless.”
    Rip stabbed a finger in her face, making her tilt her head back. “Your famous papa! Famous for leaving a town full of dope fiends!” He laughed.
    Frances had to clear her throat before she could speak. “He did just exactly what all the other doctors in this nation did, and you know it and they know it. As for Nogales doctors—Tracy or Halleck or Sherwood or Fish—they all put opium in their soothing syrups and tonics, and some used morphine sulphate. Catarrh powders, Mrs. Winslow’s—it had morphine, for heaven’s sake, and recommended for children!”
    Rip moved toward her, his smile taunting and warning. Frances backed away. “Well, then, tell me, Miz Parrish—why do they only blame Papa?”
    Frances struck at his face, and he leaned back, saying, “My, my!”
    â€œThey blamed him because he practiced in the capital of Sonora in the winters and here in the summer. I