hat his status
as a vaquero was in question. Would he let the beautiful Anita know
that he had been ignominiously "piled" by that pinto horse? Not he.
"Circumventions alters cases," he soliloquized, not altogether
untruthfully. Then aloud, "Me hoss put his foot in a gopher-hole.
Bruk his leg, and I had to shoot him, lady. Hated to part with him."
And the inventive Sundown illustrated with telling gesture the
imaginary accident.

Sympathy flowed freely from the gentle-hearted Senora and her daughter.
"Si!" It was not of unusual happening that horses met with such
accidents. It was getting late in the afternoon. Would the
unfortunate caballero accept of their hospitality in the way of
frijoles and some of the good coffee, perhaps? Sundown would, without
question. He pressed a dollar into the palm of the reluctant Senora.
He was not a tramp. Of that she might be assured. He had met with
misfortune, that was all. And would the patron return soon? The
patron would return with the setting of the sun. Meanwhile the vaquero
of the Concho was to rest and perhaps enjoy his cigarette? And the
"vaquero" loafed and smoked many cigarettes while the glowing eyes of
Anita shone upon him with large sympathy. As yet Sundown had not
especially noticed her, but returning from his third visit to the
cooling olla, he caught her glance and read, or imagined he read, deep
admiration, lacking words to utter. From that moment he became a
changed man. He shed his weariness as a tattered garment is thrown
aside. He straightened his shoulders and held his head high. At last
a woman had looked at him and had not smiled at his ungainly stature.
Nay! But rather seemed impressed, awe-stricken, amazed. And his heart
quickened to faster rhythm, driving the blood riotously through his
imaginative mind. He grew eloquent, in gesture, if not in speech. He
told of his wanderings, his arrival at the Concho, of Chance his great
wolf-dog, his horse "Pill," and his good friends Bud Snoop and Hi
Wangle. Sundown could have easily given Othello himself "cards and
spades" in this chance game of hearts and won--moving metaphor!--in a
canter. That the little Senorita with the large eyes did not
understand more than a third of that which she heard made no difference
to her. His ambiguity of utterance, backed by assurance and illumined
by the divine fire of inspiration, awakened curiosity in the placid
breast of this Desdemona of the mesas. I