“I lost me horse—­back there.  I’m headed for the Concho—­ma’am.  Concho,” he reiterated in a louder tone.  “Sabe?”

The mother of Anita nodded.  “You sick?” she asked.

“What?  Me?  Not on your life, lady!  I’m the healthiest Ho—­puncher in this here State.  You sabe Concho?”

“Si!  Zhack Corlees—­’Juan,’ we say.  Si!  You of him?”

“Yes, lady.  I’m workin’ for him.  Lost me hoss.”

Anita and her mother exchanged glances.  Sundown felt that 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.