these desert, sure.
W'at they know about hard life? Pretty soon they get tired, I think, and
go back where comes from. That boy--what for help he be to that girl?
Jus' boy--not so old my brother Luis. Can't ride horse; goes up and down,
up an' down like he's back goes through he's hat. What that girl do? Jus'
slim, big-eye girl with soft hand and sickness of lungs. Babes, them boy
and girl. Whan Calvert he should be shot dead for let such inocentes be
fool like that."

"Where is Johnny Calvert?"

"Him? He's gone, sure! Not come back, I bet you! He's got money--them
babes got rancho--" Estan lifted his shoulders eloquently.

"What are they going to do, now they're here?" Starr abstractedly wiped
off the ash collar of his cigarette against the edge of the couch.

"_Quien sabe_?" countered Estan, and lifted his shoulders again. "I think
pretty quick they go."

Starr looked at his watch, yawned, and rose with much evident reluctance.
"Same here," he said. "I've got to make San Bonito in time for that
Eastbound. You have the sheep in the stockyards by Saturday, will you? If
I'm not there myself, I'll leave the money with Johnson at the express
office. Soon as the sheep's inspected, you can go there and get it.
_Addios. Mucho gracias, Senora_."

"She likes you fine--my mother," Estan observed, as the two sauntered to
the corral where Rabbit was stowing away as much _secate_ as he could
against future hunger. "Sometimes you come and stay longer. We not see so
many peoples here. Nobody likes to cross desert when she's hot like this.
Too bad you must go now."

Starr agreed with him and talked the usual small talk of the desert
Places while he placed the saddle on Rabbit's still sweaty back. He went
away down the rocky trail with the sun shining full on his right cheek,
and was presently swallowed up by the blank immensity of the land that
looked level as a floor from a distance, but which was a network of small
ridges and shallow draws and "dry washes" when one came to ride over it.

The trail was narrow and had many inconsequential twists and turns in it,
as though the first man to travel that way had gone blind or dizzy and
could not hold a straight line across the level. When an automobile, for
instance, traveled that road, it was with many skiddings in the sand on
the turns, which it must take circumspectly if the driver did not care
for the rocky, uneven floor of the desert itself.

Just lately some one had actua