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“Those tourists in their nickel-plated Pullmans call this a desert. Desert, hell! Look at them flowers!”

The foreman cast an eye on a glorious silken mantle of purple, a hundred yards broad.

“Sure,” he agreed; “shows what we could do if we only had a little water.”

And again: “Jed,” began the Senor, “did you ever notice them mountains?”

“Sure,” agreed Jed.

“Ain’t that a pretty colour?”

“You bet,” agreed the foreman; “now you’re talking! I always, said they was mineralised enough to make a good prospect.”

This was unsatisfactory. Senor Johnson grew more restless. His critical eye began to take account of small details. At the ranch house one evening he, on a sudden, bellowed loudly for Sang, the Chinese servant.

“Look at these!” he roared, when Sang appeared.

Sang’s eyes opened in bewilderment.

“There, and there!” shouted the cattleman. “Look at them old newspapers and them gun rags! The place is like a cow-yard. Why in the name of heaven don’t you clean up here!”

“Allee light,” babbled Sang; “I clean him.”

The papers and gun rags had lain there unnoticed for nearly a year. Senor Johnson kicked them savagely.

“It’s time we took a brace here,” he growled, “we’re livin’ like a lot of Oilers.” [5]

[5] Oilers: Greasers–Mexicans

CHAPTER THREE

THE PAPER A YEAR OLD

Sang hurried out for a broom. Senor Johnson sat where he was, his heavy, square brows knit. Suddenly he stooped, seized one of the newspapers, drew near the lamp, and began to read.

It was a Kansas City paper and, by a strange coincidence, was dated exactly a year before. The sheet Senor Johnson happened to pick up was one usually passed over by the average newspaper reader. It contained only columns of little two- and three-line advertisements classified as Help Wanted, Situations Wanted, Lost and Found, and Personal. The latter items Senor Johnson commenced to read while awaiting Sang and the broom.

The notices were five in number. The first three were of the mysterious newspaper-correspondence type, in which Birdie beseeches Jack to meet her at the fountain; the fourth advertised a clairvoyant. Over the fifth Senor Johnson paused long. It reads

“WANTED.-By an intelligent and refined lady of pleasing appearance, correspondence with a gentleman of means. Object matrimony.”

Just then Sang returned with the broom and began noisily to sweep together the debris. The rustling of papers aroused Senor Johnson from his reverie. At once he exploded.

“Get out of here, you debased Mongolian,” he shouted; “can’t you see I’m reading?”

Sang fled, sorely puzzled, for the Senor was calm and unexcited and aloof in his everyday habit.

Soon Jed Parker, tall, wiry, hawk-nosed, deliberate, came into the room and flung his broad hat and spurs into the corner. Then he proceeded to light his pipe and threw the burned match on the floor.

“Been over to look at the Grant Pass range,” he announced cheerfully. “She’s no good. Drier than cork legs. Th’ country wouldn’t support three horned toads.”

“Jed,” quoth the Senor solemnly, “I wisht you’d hang up your hat like I have. It don’t look good there on the floor.”

“Why, sure,” agreed Jed, with an astonished stare.

Sang brought in supper and slung it on the red and white squares of oilcloth. Then he moved the lamp and retired.

Senor Johnson gazed with distaste into his cup.

“This coffee would float a wedge,” he commented sourly.

“She’s no puling infant,” agreed the cheerful Jed.

“And this!” went on the Senor, picking up what purported to be plum duff: “Bog down a few currants in dough and call her pudding!”

He ate in silence, then pushed back his chair and went to the window, gazing through its grimy panes at the mountains, ethereal in their evening saffron.

“Blamed Chink,” he growled; “why don’t he wash these windows?”

Jed laid down his busy knife and idle fork to gaze on his chief with amazement. Buck Johnson, the austere, the aloof, the grimly taciturn, the dangerous, to be thus complaining like a querulous woman!