tered midst. The lightest air
that could blow among these limber, ready leaves set going at once their
varnished twinkling round the house. Their white and dark sides gleamed
and went out with chasing lights that quickened the torpid place into a
holiday of motion. Closed in by this cool green, you did not have to see
or think of Arizona, just outside.

"Where is Uncle Ramon to-day?" inquired Luis, dropping his music.

She sighed. "He has gone to drive our cattle to a new spring. There is
no pasture at the Tinaja Bonita. Our streams and ditches went dry last
week. They have never done so in all the years before. I don't know what
is going to happen to us." The anxiety in the girl's face seemed to come
outward more plainly for a moment, and then recede to its permanent
abiding-place.

"There cannot be much water to keep flour-sellers alive on the trail to
Maricopa," chirped the bird on the ground.

She made no answer to this. "What are you doing nowadays?" she asked.

"I have been working very hard on the wood contract for the American
soldiers," he replied, promptly.

"By Tucson?"

"No. Huachuca."

"Away over there again? I thought you had cut all they wanted last May."

"It is of that enterprise of which I speak, Lolita."

"But it's October now!" Lolita lifted her face, ruddy with stooping, and
broke into laughter.

"I do not see why you mock me. No one has asked me to work since."

"Have you asked any one for work?"

"It is not my way to beg."

"Luis, I don't believe you're quite a man yet, in spite of your
mustache. You complain there's no money for Mexicans in Arizona because
the Americans get it all. Why don't you go back to Sonora, then, and be
rich in five minutes? It would sound finely: 'Luis Romero, Merchant,
Hermosillo.' Or perhaps gold would fall more quickly into your lap at
Guaymas. You would live in a big house, perhaps with two stories, and I
would come and visit you at Easter--if your wife would allow it." Here
Lolita threw a pepper at him.

The guitar grated a few pretty notes; otherwise there was silence.

"And it was Uncle Ramon persuaded them to hire you in May. He told the
American contractor you owned a strong burro good for heavy loads. He
didn't say much about you," added the little lady.

"Much good it did me! The American contractor-pig retained my wages to
pay for the food he supplied us. They charge you extra for starvation,
those gringos. They are all pigs. Ah, Lolita, a