“About twelve,” whispered Pete.  “Tell your ole man I’ll bush out here.  It’s a heap cooler.”

She nodded and left him.  Pete heard Flores speak to her gruffly.

“Somebody ought to put that ole side-of bacon in the well,” soliloquized Pete.  “I could stand for the ole lady, all right, and Boca sure is a lily . . . but I was forgettin’ I got to ride to Showdown to-night.”

CHAPTER XXIII

THE DEVIL-WIND

As Pete lay planning his departure—­he wondered if Boca would think to find him a canteen and food for his long ride—­the stars, hitherto clear-edged and brilliant, became blurred as though an almost invisible mist had drifted between them and the earth.  He rubbed his eyes.  Yes, there was no mistake about it.  He was wide awake, and the sky was changing.  That which had seemed a mist now appeared more like a fine dust, that swept across the heavens and dimmed the desert sky.  It occurred to him that he was at the bottom of a fairly deep canon and that that impalpable dust meant wind, A little later he heard it,—­at first a faint, far-away sound like the whisper of many voices; then a soft, steady hiss as when wind-driven sand runs over sand.  A hot wind sprang up suddenly and swept with a rush down the night-walled canon.  It was the devil-wind of the desert, the wind that curls the leaf and shrivels the vine, even in the hours when there is no sun.  When the devil-wind drives, men lie naked beneath the sky in sleepless misery.  Horses and cattle stand with heads lowered and flanks drawn in, suffering an invisible torture from which there is no escape.  The dawn brings no relief—­no freshening of the air.  The heat drives on—­three days—­say those who know the southern desert—­and no man rides the trails, but seeks what shade may be, and lies torpid and silent—­or if he speaks, it is to curse the land.

Pete knew that this devil-wind would make old Flores restless.  He stepped round to the doorway and asked for water.  From the darkness within the adobe came Flores’s voice and the sound of a match against wood.  The Mexican appeared with a candle.

“My head feels queer,” stated Pete, as an excuse for disturbing Flores.  “I can’t find the olla—­and I’m dead for a drink.”

“Then we shall drink this,” said Flores, fetching a jug of wine from beneath the bench.

“Not for mine!  I’m dizzy enough, without that.”

“It is the devil-wind.  One may get drunk and forget.  One may then sleep.  And if one sleeps, it is not so bad.”

Pete shook his head, but tasted the wine that Flores poured for him.  If the old man would only get drunk enough to go to sleep . . .  The Mexican’s oily, pock-marked face glistened in the flickering candle-light.  He drank and smacked his lips.  “If one is to die of the heat—­one might as well die drunk,” he laughed.  “Drink, senor!”