Pete sipped the wine and watched the other as he filled and emptied his glass again.  “It is the good wine,” said Flores.  The candle-light cast a huge, distorted shadow of the Mexican’s head and shoulders on the farther wall.  The faint drone of the hot wind came to them from the plains above.  The candle-flame fluttered.  Flores reached down for the jug and set it on the table.  “All night we shall drink of the good wine, for no man may sleep.”,

“I’m with you,” said Pete.  “Only I ain’t so swift.”

“No man may sleep,” reiterated Flores, again emptying his tumbler.

“How about the women-folks?” queried Pete.

Flores waved his hand in a gesture indicative of supreme indifference to what the “women-folks” did.  He noticed that Pete was not drinking and insisted that he drink and refill his glass.  Pete downed the raw red wine and presently complained of feeling sleepy.  Flores grinned.  “I do not sleep,” he asserted—­“not until this is gone”—­and he struck the jug with his knuckles.  Pete felt that he was in for a long session, and inwardly cursed his luck.  Flores’s eyes brightened and he grew talkative.  He spoke of his youth in Old Mexico; of the cattle and the women of that land.  Pete feigned a heaviness that he did not feel.  Presently Flores’s talk grew disconnected; his eye became dull and his swarthy face was mottled with yellow.  The sweat, which had rolled down his cheeks and dripped from hia nose, now seemed to coagulate in tiny, oily globules.  He put down a half-empty tumbler and stared at Pete.  “No man sleeps,” he mumbled, as his lids drooped.  Slowly his chin sank to his chest and he slumped forward against the table.  Pete started to get up.  Flores raised his head.  “Drink—­senor!” he murmured, and slumped forward, knocking the tumbler over.  A dark red line streaked the table and dripped to the floor.

Something moved in the kitchen doorway.  Pete glanced up to see Boca staring at him.  He gestured toward her father.  She nodded indifferently and beckoned Pete to follow her.

“I knew that you would think me a lie if I did not come,” she told him, as they stood near the old corral—­Pete’s impatience to be gone evident, as he shouldered his saddle.  “But you will not ride tonight.  You would die.”

“It’s some hot—­but I aim to go through.”

“But no—­not to-night!  For three days will it be like this!  It is terrible!  And you have been ill.”

She pressed close to him and touched his arm.  “Have I not been your friend?”

“You sure have!  But honest, Boca, I got a hunch that it’s time to fan it.  ’T ain’t that I’m sore at your old man now—­or want to leave you—­but I got a hunch somethin’ is goin’ to happen.”

“You think only of that Malvey.  You do not think of me,” complained Boca.

“I’m sure thinkin’ of you every minute.  It ain’t Malvey that’s botherin’ me now.”