ose is not a village.

He came upon a particularly shady spot and a bench placed invitingly.
Andy sat down, eased the new-healed leg out before him and rolled a
cigarette. "This is going to be some different from hunting a stray on
the range," he told himself, with an air of deliberate cheerfulness.
"If I could get out and scurrup around on a hoss, and round her up
that way--but this footing it all over town is what grinds me." He
drew a match along the under side of the bench and held the blaze
absently to the cigarette. "There was one thing--she told about an
orange tree right beside her mother's front gate, Maybe--" He looked
around him hopefully. Just across the street was a front gate, and
beside it an orange tree; he knew because there were ripe oranges
hanging upon it. He started to rise, his blood jumping queerly, sat
down again and swore. "Every darned gate in town, just about, has got
an orange tree stuck somewhere handy by. I remember 'em now, damn
'em!"

Three cigarettes he smoked while he sat there. When he started on
again his face was grimly set toward the nearest business street. At
the first real-estate sign he stopped, pulled together his courage,
and went in. A girl sat in a corner of the room before a typewriter.
Andy saw at a glance that her hair was too dark; murmured something
and backed out. At the next place, a man was crumpled into a big
chair, reading a paper. Behind a high desk a typewriter clicked, but
Andy could not see the operator without going behind the railing, and
he hesitated.

"Looking for a snap?" asked the man briskly, coming up from his
crumpled state like a spring.

"Well, I was looking--"

"Now, here. It may not be what you want, but I'm just going to show
you this proposition and see what you think of it. It ain't going to
last--somebody's goin' to snap it up before you know it. Now, here--"

It was half an hour before Andy got away from that office, and he had
not seen who was running the machine behind the desk, even then. He
had, however, spoken rather loudly and had informed the man that he
was from Montana, with no effect whatever upon the clicking. He had
listened patiently to the glowing description of several "good buys,"
and had escaped with difficulty within ten minutes after hearing the
unseen typist addressed as "Fern."

At the third place he merely looked in at the door and retreated
hastily when the agent, like a spider on the watch, started forward.