and nails and make a ladder to get to them apples, by the time she got the ladder done I reckon them apples wouldn’t ‘a’ looked so good to her.  That’s what comes of havin’ a snake handy.  ‘Course, bein’ a woman, she jest nacherally couldn’t wait for ’em to get ripe and fall off the tree.  That would ‘a’ been too easy.  It sure is funny how folks goes to all kinds o’ trouble to get into it.  Mebby she did get kind o’ tired eatin’ the same breakfast-food every mornin’.  Lots o’ folks do, and hankers to try a new one.  But I never got tired of drinkin’ water yet.  Wisht I had a barrel with ice in it.  Gee Gosh!  Ice!  Mebby a cup of water would be enough for a fella, but when he’s dry he sure likes to see lots ahead even if he can’t drink it all.  Mebby it’s jest knowin’ it’s there that kind o’ eases up a fella’s thirst.  I dunno.”

Romance, as romance was wont to do at intervals, lay in wait for the weary Sundown.  Hunger and thirst and a burning sun may not be immediately conducive to poetry or romantic imaginings.  But the ’dobe in the distance shaded by a clump of trees, the gleam of the drying chiles, the glow of flowers, offered an acceptable antithesis to the barren roadway and the empty mesas.  Sundown quickened his pace.  Eden, though circumscribed by a barb-wire fence enclosing scant territory, invited him to rest and refresh himself.  And all unexpected the immemorial Eve stood in the doorway of the ’dobe, gazing down the road and doubtless wondering why this itinerant Adam, booted and spurred, chose to walk the dusty highway.

At the gate of the homestead Sundown paused and raised his broad sombrero.  Anita, dusky and buxom daughter of Chico Miguel, “the little hombre with the little herd,” as the cattle-men described him, nodded a bashful acknowledgment of the salute, and spoke sharply to the dog which had risen and was bristling toward the Strange wayfarer.

“Agua,” said Sundown, opening the gate, “Mucha agua, Senorita,” adding, with a humorous gesture of drinking, “I’m dry clean to me boots.”

The Mexican girl, slow-eyed and smiling, gazed at this most wonderful man, of such upstanding height that his hat brushed the limbs of the shade-trees at the gateway.  Anita was plump and not tall.  As Sundown stalked up the path assuming an air of gallantry that was not wasted on the desert air, the girl stepped to the olla hanging in the shade and offered him the gourd.  Sundown drank long and deep.  Anita watched him with wondering eyes.  Such a man she had never seen.  Vaqueros?  Ah, yes! many of them, but never such a man as this.  This one smiled, yet his face had much of the sadness in it.  He had perhaps walked many weary miles in the heat.  Would he—­with a gesture interpreting her speech—­be pleased to rest awhile?  Without hesitation, he would.  As he sat on the doorstep gazing contentedly at the flowers bordering the path, Anita’s mother appeared from some mysterious recess of the ’dobe and questioned Anita with quick low utterance.  The girl’s answer, interpretable to Sundown only by its intonation, was music to him.  The Mexican woman, more than buxom, large-eyed and placid, turned to Sundown, who rose and again doffed his sombrero.