the sudden Sierra, descending to the flat through bushes
and leaning margin trees; but in these empty shapes not a rill tinkled
to refresh the silence, nor did a drop slide over the glaring rocks, or
even dampen the heated, cheating sand. Lolita strained her gaze at the
dry distance, and stooped again to her harvest.

"What does he come here for?" demanded Luis.

"The American? We buy white flour of him sometimes."

"Sometimes! That must be worth his while! He will get rich!" Luis
lounged back against his water-barrel, and was silent. As he watched
Lolita, serenely working, his silver crescent ear-rings swung a little
with the slight tilting of his head, and his fingers, forgotten and
unguided by his thoughts, ruffled the strings of the guitar, drawing
from it gay, purposeless tendrils of sound. Occasionally, when Lolita
knew the song, she would hum it on the roof, inattentively, busy rolling
her peppers:

"'Soy purita mejicana;
Nada tengo espanol.'"

(I am a pure Mexican. I have nothing Spanish about me.) And this
melodious inattention of Lolita's Luis felt to be the extreme of slight.

"Have you seen him lately?" he asked, sourly.

"Not very. Not since the last time he came to the mines from Maricopa."

"I heard a man at Gun Sight say he was dead," snapped Luis.

But she made no sign. "That would be a pity," she said, humming gayly.

"Very sad. Uncle Ramon would have to go himself to Maricopa for that
white flour."

Pleased with this remark, the youth took to song himself; and there they
were like two mischievous birds. Only the bird on the ground was cross
with a sense of failure. "El telele se murio," he sang.

"'The hunchback is dead.
Ay! Ay! Ay!
And no one could be found to bury him except--'"

"Luis, aren't you going to get my water for me?"

"Poco tiempo: I'll bring it directly."

"You have to go to the Tinaja Bonita for it."

The Pretty Spring--or water-hole, or tank--was half a mile from the
cabin.

"Well, it's not nice out there in the sun. I like it better in here,
where it is pleasant.

"'And no one could be found to bury him except
Five dragoons and a corporal
And the sacristan's cat.'"

Singing resentfully, young Luis stayed in here, where it was pleasant.
Bright green branches of fruit-trees and small cottonwoods and a fenced
irrigated square of green growing garden hid the tiny adobe home like a
nut, smooth and hard and dry in their clus