with only an alloy of humour.

"Senor," ventured Parker slowly, "this event sure knocks me
hell-west and crooked. If the loco you have culled hasn't

paralysed your speaking parts, would you mind telling me what in
the name of heaven, hell, and high-water is up?"

"I am going to get married," announced the Senor calmly.
"What!" shouted Parker; "who to?"

"To a lady," replied the Senor, "an intelligent and refined lady-
-of pleasing appearance."

CHAPTER FOUR
DREAMS

Although the paper was a year old, Senor Johnson in due time
received an answer from Kansas. A correspondence ensued. Senor

Johnson enshrined above the big fireplace the photograph of a
woman. Before this he used to stand for hours at a time slowly

constructing in his mind what he had hitherto lacked--an ideal of
woman and of home. This ideal he used sometimes to express to

himself and to the ironical Jed.
"It must sure be nice to have a little woman waitin' for you when

you come in off'n the desert."
Or: "Now, a woman would have them windows just blooming with

flowers and white curtains and such truck."
Or: "I bet that Sang would get a wiggle on him with his little

old cleaning duds if he had a woman ahold of his jerk line."
Slowly he reconstructed his life, the life of the ranch, in terms

of this hypothesised feminine influence. Then matters came to an
understanding, Senor Johnson had sent his own portrait.

Estrella Sands wrote back that she adored big black beards, but
she was afraid of him, he had such a fascinating bad eye: no

woman could resist him. Senor Johnson at once took things for
granted, sent on to Kansas a preposterous sum of "expense" money

and a railroad ticket, and raided Goodrich's store at Willets, a
hundred miles away, for all manner of gaudy carpets, silverware,

fancy lamps, works of art, pianos, linen, and gimcracks for the
adornment of the ranch house. Furthermore, he offered wages more

than equal to a hundred miles of desert to a young Irish girl,
named Susie O'Toole, to come out as housekeeper, decorator, boss

of Sang and another Chinaman, and companion to Mrs. Johnson when
she should arrive.

Furthermore, he laid off from the range work Brent Palmer, the
most skilful man with horses, and set him to "gentling" a

beautiful little sorrel. A sidesaddle had arrived from El Paso.
It was "centre fire," which is to say it had but the single

horsehair cinch, broad, tasselled, very genteel in its suggestion
of pleasure use only. Brent could be seen at all times of day,

cantering here and there on the sorrel, a blanket tied around his
waist to simulate the long riding skirt. He carried also a sulky

and evil gleam in his eye, warning against undue levity.
Jed Parker watched these various proceedings sardonically.

Once, the baby light of innocence blue in his eye, he inquired if
he would be required to dress for dinner.

"If so," he went on, "I'll have my man brush up my low-necked
clothes."

But Senor Johnson refused to be baited.
"Go on, Jed," said he; "you know you ain't got clothes enough to

dust a fiddle."
The Senor was happy these days. He showed it by an unwonted

joviality of spirit, by a slight but evident unbending of his
Spanish dignity. No longer did the splendour of the desert fill

him with a vague yearning and uneasiness. He looked upon it
confidently, noting its various phases with care, rejoicing in

each new development of colour and light, of form and illusion,
storing them away in his memory so that their recurrence should

find him prepared to recognise and explain them. For soon he
would have someone by his side with whom to appreciate them. In

that sharing be could see the reason for them, the reason for
their strange bitter-sweet effects on the human soul.

One evening he leaned on the corral fence, looking toward the
Dragoons. The sun had set behind them. Gigantic they loomed

against the western light. From their summits, like an aureola,
radiated the splendour of the dust-moted air, this evening a deep

umber. A faint reflection of it fell across the desert,
glorifying the reaches of its nothingness.

"I'll take her out on an evening like this," quoth Senor Johnson
to himself,"and I'll make her keep her eyes on the ground till we

get right up by Running Bear Knob, and then I'll let her look up
all to once. And she'll surely enjoy this life. I bet she never

saw a steer roped in her life. She can ride with me every day
out over the range and I'll show her the busting and the branding

and that band of antelope over by the Tall Windmill. I'll teach
her to shoot, too. And we can make little pack trips off in the

hills when she gets too hot--up there by Deerskin Meadows 'mongst
the high peaks."

He mused, turning over in his mind a new picture of his own life,
aims, and pursuits as modified by the sympathetic and

understanding companionship of a woman. He pictured himself as
he must seem to her in his different pursuits. The

picturesqueness pleased him. The simple, direct vanity of the
man--the wholesomevanity of a straightforward nature--awakened

to preen its feathers before the idea of the mate.
The shadows fell. Over the Chiricahuas flared the evening star.

The plain, self-luminous with the weird lucence of the arid
lands, showed ghostly. Jed Parker, coming out from the lamp-lit

adobe, leaned his elbows on the rail in silent company with his
chief. He, too, looked abroad. His mind's eye saw what his

body's eye had always told him were the insistent notes--the
alkali, the cactus, the sage, the mesquite, the lava, the choking

dust, the blinding beat, the burning thirst. He sighed in the
dim half recollection of past days.

"I wonder if she'll like the country?" he hazarded.
But Senor Johnson turned on him his steady eyes, filled with the

great glory of the desert.
"Like the country!" he marvelled slowly. "Of course! Why

shouldn't she?"
CHAPTER FIVE

THE ARRIVAL
The Overland drew into Willets, coated from engine to observation

with white dust. A porter, in strange contrast of neatness,
flung open the vestibule, dropped his little carpeted step, and

turned to assist someone. A few idle passengers gazed out on the
uninteresting, flat frontier town.

Senor Johnson caught his breath in amazement. "God! Ain't she
just like her picture!" he exclaimed. He seemed to find this

astonishing.
For a moment he did not step forward to claim her, so she stood

looking about her uncertainly, her leather suit-case at her feet.
She was indeed like the photograph. The same full-curved,

compact little figure, the same round face, the same cupid's bow
mouth, the same appealing, large eyes, the same haze of doll's

hair. In a moment she caught sight of Senor Johnson and took two
steps toward him, then stopped. The Senor at once came forward.

"You're Mr. Johnson, ain't you?" she inquired, thrusting her
little pointed chin forward, and so elevating her baby-blue eyes

to his.
"Yes, ma'am," he acknowledged formally. Then, after a moment's

pause: "I hope you're well."