I had not seen my sweetheart in nearly a month, but there I was, chained to a rock quarry and mule teams.  The very idea of Gallup and the profligate Scales riding to hounds and basking in the society of charming girls nettled me.  The remainder of the ranch outfit was under Deweese, building the new corrals, so that I never heard my own tongue spoken except at meals and about the house.  My orders included the cutting of a few hundred rock extra above the needs of the chapel, and when this got noised among the help, I had to explain that there was some talk of building a stone cottage, and intimated that it was for Juana and Fidel.  But that lucky rascal was one of the crew cutting rock, and from some source or other he had learned that I was liable to need a cottage at Las Palomas in the near future.  The fact that I was acting segundo over the quarrying outfit, was taken advantage of by Fidel to clear his skirts and charge the extra rock to my matrimonial expectations.  He was a fast workman, and on every stone he split from the mother ledge, he sang out, “Otro piedra por Don Tomas!” And within a few minutes’ time some one else would cry out, “Otro cillar por Fidel y Juana,” or “Otro piedra por padre Norquin.”

A week passed and there was no return of the hunters.  We had so systematized our work at the quarry that my presence was hardly needed, so every evening I urged Cotton to sound the mistress for permission to visit our sweethearts.  John was a good-natured fellow who could be easily led or pushed forward, and I had come to look upon Miss Jean as a ready supporter of any of her brother’s projects.  For that reason her permission was as good as the master’s; but she parried all Cotton’s hints, pleading the neglect of our work in the absence of her brother.  I was disgusted with the monotony of quarry work, and likewise was John over building corrals, as no cow hand ever enthuses over manual labor, when an incident occurred which afforded the opportunity desired.  The mistress needed some small article from the store at Shepherd’s, and a Mexican boy had been sent down on this errand and also to get the mail of the past two weeks.  On the boy’s return, he brought a message from the merchant, saying that Henry Annear had been accidentally killed by a horse that day, and that the burial would take place at ten o’clock the next morning.

The news threw the mistress of Las Palomas into a flutter.  Her brother was absent, and she felt a delicacy in consulting Deweese, and very naturally turned to me for advice.  Funerals in the Nueces valley were so very rare that I advised going, even if the unfortunate man had stood none too high in our estimation.  Annear lived on the divide between Shepherd’s and the Frio at a ranch called Las Norias.  As this ranch was not over ten miles from the mouth of the San Miguel, the astute mind can readily see the gleam of my ax in attending.  Funerals were such events that I knew to a certainty that all