installment-house catalogue, from which the colored
prints had been torn, an empty bottle--and in the kitchen were the
rusted stove and a few battered and useless cooking-utensils. An odor
of stale grease pervaded the place. In the narrow bedroom--Boca's
room---was a colored fashion-plate pinned on the wall.

Pete shrugged his shoulders and stepped out. Night was coming swiftly.
He unsaddled Blue Smoke and hobbled him. The pony strayed off up the
stream-bed. Pete made a fire by the corral, ate some beans which he
warmed in the can, drank a cup of coffee, and, raking together some
coarse dried grass, turned in and slept until the sound of his pony's
feet on the rocks of the stream-bed awakened him. He smelt dawn in the
air, although it was still dark in the canon, and having in mind the
arid stretch between the canon and Showdown, he made breakfast. He
caught up his horse and rode up the trail toward the desert. On the
mesa-edge he re-cinched his saddle and turned toward the north.

Flores, who with his wife was living at The Spider's place, recognized
him at once and invited him in.

"What hit this here town, anyhow?" queried Pete. "I didn't see a soul
as I come through."

Flores shrugged his shoulders. "The vaqueros from over there"--and he
pointed toward the north--"they came--and now there is but this
left"--and he indicated the saloon. "The others they have gone."

"Cleaned out the town, eh? Reckon that was the T-Bar-T and the boys
from the Blue and the Concho. How'd they come to miss you?"

"I am old--and my wife is old--and after they had drank the
wine--leaving but little for us--they laughed and said that we might
stay and be dam': that we were too old to steal cattle."

"Uh-huh. Cleaned her out reg'lar! How's the senora?"

Flores touched his forehead. "She is thinking of Boca--and no one else
does she know."

"Gone loco, eh? Well, she ain't so bad off at that--seein' as _you're_
livin' yet. No, I ain't comin' in. But you can sell me some
tortillas, if you got any."

"It will be night soon. If the senor--"

"Go ask the Senora if she has got any tortillas to sell. I wouldn't
bush in there on a bet. Don't you worry about my health."

"We are poor, senor! We have this place, and the things--but of the
money I know nothing. My wife she has hidden it."

"She ain't so crazy as you think, if that's so. Do you run this
place--or are you jest starvin' to death here?"

"There is