They came to where Bryant stood, unconcealed pleasure showing on Mrs.

Stevenson's face.

"You may like to see these kodak pictures of the farm and its house,"

the young man said, producing an envelope from a pocket. "Take a chair here by the window, Mrs. Stevenson, where you'll have the light. See, this one shows the house, with the trees and lilac bushes in front, and gives you a glimpse of the flower garden. Pretty, don't you think?"

She readjusted her spectacles. After a time she gazed from the pictures through the window at the stretch of sagebrush.

"And I'll have neighbours, too," she said, in an unsteady voice. "The loneliness here was killing me."

Stevenson considered the backs of his hands in awkward silence.

"Neighbours, lots of them," Bryant affirmed.

"I kind of pity you having to stay," she said, looking up at him with a smile.

The engineer laughed.

"Why, this country suits me right down to the ground," he replied.

"I've been in the West ten years, wouldn't live anywhere else. And I don't expect to be lonely; Menocal will probably attend to that.

Besides, there are two good-looking young ladies just south of here, on Sarita Creek."

"That's so," she said, laughing also.

"First thing we hear, you'll be married," Stevenson remarked, with a quick grin.

"Oh, I'm safe--there are two of them," Bryant returned, clapping the rancher on the shoulder.

CHAPTER III

The town of Bartolo slumbered in the July sunshine. Nothing stirred on its one long street, lined with scarcely a break on either side by mud-plastered houses that made a continuous brown wall, marked at intervals by a door or pierced by a window; nothing stirred, neither in front of Menocal's large frame store at the upper end of it, with the little bank adjoining, nor before the small courthouse grounds across the way, where the huge old cottonwoods spread their shade, nor along the entire length of the beaten street down to Gomez's blacksmith shop and Martinez's saloon across from each other at the lower end; nothing, not even the pair of burros drowsing in the shade of the wall, or the dogs lying before doors, or the goats a-kneel by the saloon, or the fowls nested down in the dust. Only the Pinas River, issuing from the black canon a mile or so above, was in motion; and, indeed, it appeared to partake of the general somnolence, barely rippling along its gravelly bed, shallow and shrunken, and giving forth but an indolent glitter as it flowed past the town. The day was hot and it was the hour of the siesta, therefore everything slept--everything, man, beast and fowl, from Menocal, who was snoring in his hammock on the vine-clad veranda of his big stuccoed house just beyond the store at the head of the street, to the goats at the foot of it by the silent saloon.

Bryant, descending from the mesa into the river bottom and riding into the street, had he not known otherwise, might have supposed the population vanished in a body. But he was aware that it only slept; and he had no consideration for a siesta that r.e.t.a.r.ded his affairs. He dismounted before the courthouse and entered the building, whose corridor and chambers appeared as silent, as lifeless, as forsaken as the street itself. Coming into the Recorder's office, he halted for a look about, then pushed through the wicket of the counter and stepped into an inner room, where he stirred by a thumb in the ribs a thin, dusky-skinned youth reclining in a swivel chair with feet in repose on a window-sill, who slept with head fallen back, arms hanging, and mouth open.

"Come, _amigo_, your dinner's settled by this time," the engineer stated. "Grab a pen and record this deed."

The clerk sleepily shifted his feet into a more comfortable position.

"We're behind in our work," said he. "Just leave your deed, and the fee, and we'll get around to it in a few days."

"So you're too busy now, eh?"

"Yes. We've had a good many papers to record this month."

"Where's the Recorder?"

"Not back from dinner yet," was the answer.

The speaker once again prepared to rest. From the outer office the slow ticking of a clock sounded with lulling effect, while the gra.s.sy yard beyond the window, shaded by the boughs of the cottonwoods, diffused peace and drowsiness. The clerk closed his eyes.

"Just leave the deed and fee on the desk here," he murmured.

"And tip-toe out, too, I suppose."

"If you feel like it," the young Mexican remarked, with a faint insolence in his voice, the insolence of a subordinate who believes himself protected by his place.

Bryant's hand shot swiftly out to the speaker's shoulder. With a snap that brought him up standing the clerk was jerked from his seat, and before his startled wits gathered what was happening he was propelled into the outer office.

"Record this deed, you forty-dollar-a-month penpusher, before I grow peevish and rearrange your face," Bryant ordered, with his fingers tightening their grasp on the youth's collar. "You're receiving your pay from the county, and are presumed to give value received. Anyway, value received is what I'm going to have now."

"Let go my neck!"

"Let go nothing. When I see you settle down to this big book, then I let go. No '_manana_' with me, boy; right here and now you're going to give me an exhibition of rapid penmanship. Savey? Take up your pen; that's the stuff. Now dip deep in the ink and draw a full breath and go to it."

Bryant released his hold on the cowed clerk, but remained by his side, where his presence exerted an amazingly energizing effect upon the scribe. The pen scratched industriously to and fro across the page, over which the youth humped himself as if enamoured of the tome, only at intervals risking a glance at the lean-faced, vigilant American.

When he had finished the transcription, stamped the deed and closed the book, Bryant handed him the amount of the fee.

"Thank you," the clerk said, with an excess of politeness.

He was still nervous. He furtively observed his visitor stowing the deed in a pocket, as if expecting Bryant to initiate some new violence, and resolved on flight if he should.

"There, my friend, that's all you can do for me just now," the engineer remarked. "But I shall return soon, so keep awake and ready.

When you see me entering, advance _p.r.o.nto_. If anything annoys me, it's being kept waiting by a Mexican boy-clerk. Do you get that clearly?"

"_Si, senor_," the other replied, unconsciously lapsing into his native tongue.

"_Muy bueno_--and bear it in mind. Now I advise you to get to work on the doc.u.ments you've allowed to acc.u.mulate; it's half-past two and you've had enough of a siesta for one noon." With which Bryant took his departure.

Outside he led his horse across the street to the frame store. Beside the latter stood Menocal's house, with its smooth green lawn and its beds of poppies, its trees, its fence ma.s.sed with sweet peas, and its vine-covered veranda, where the engineer had a glimpse of a corpulent figure in a hammock. The only sound from the place was the musical gurgle of water in a little irrigation ditch bordering the lawn.

Inside the long store Bryant aroused the only man in sight, a Mexican who slept on the counter with his head pillowed on a pile of overalls.

"Go tell Menocal there's a man here to see him on business," Lee said.

The awakened sleeper slid off his perch, rubbed his eyes, yawned, stretched himself, and then shook his head with great gravity.

"Mr. Menocal takes his siesta till three o'clock; you can see him at that time," he said, in English.

"I'll see him now."

"Impossible! He is very angry when awakened for a small matter."

Bryant went a step nearer to the speaker.

"Where do you get the authority to decide that my business is a small matter?" he demanded, with a menace of manner that caused the other to retreat in haste. "Go bring him and make me no more trouble."