A woman would have known that these things distressed Estrella. She
picked her way through the debris; she dropped her head from the
burning; she felt her delicate garments moistening with perspiration,
her hair dampening; the dust sifted up through the air. Over in the
large corral a bronco buster, assisted by two of the cowboys, was
engaged in roping and throwing some wild mustangs. The sight was
wonderful, but here the dust billowed in clouds.

"I'm getting a little hot and tired," she confessed at last. "I think
I'll go to the house."

But near the shed she stopped again, interested in spite of herself by
a bit of repairing Tommy had under way. The tire of a wagon wheel had
been destroyed. Tommy was mending it. On the ground lay a fresh
cowhide. From this Tommy was cutting a wide strip. As she watched he
measured the strip around the circumference of the wheel.

"He isn't going to make a tire of that!" she exclaimed, incredulously.

"Sure," replied Senor Johnson.

"Will it wear?"

"It'll wear for a month or so, till we can get another from town."

Estrella advanced and felt curiously of the rawhide. Tommy was
fastening it to the wheel at the ends only.

"But how can it stay on that way?" she objected. "It'll come right off
as soon as you use it."

"It'll harden on tight enough."

"Why?" she persisted. "Does it shrink much when it dries?"

Senor Johnson stared to see if she might be joking. "Does it shrink?"
he repeated slowly. "There ain't nothing shrinks more, nor harder.
It'll mighty nigh break that wood."

Estrella, incredulous, interested, she could not have told why, stooped
again to feel the soft, yielding hide. She shook her head.

"You're joking me because I'm a tenderfoot," she accused brightly. "I
know it dries hard, and I'll believe it shrinks a lot, but to break
wood--that's piling it on a little thick."

"No, that's right, ma'am," broke in Brent Palmer. "It's awful strong.
It pulls like a horse when the desert sun gets on it. You wrap
anything up in a piece of that hide and see what happens. Some time
you take and wrap a piece around a potato and put her out in the sun
and see how it'll squeeze the water out of her."

"Is that so?" she appealed to Tommy. "I can't tell when they are making
fun of me."

"Yes, ma'am, that's right," he assured her.

Estrella passed a strip of the flexible hide playfully about her wrists.

"And if I let that dry that way I'd be handcuffed