“I guess we got men enough round here to irrigate the ’falfy,” he said as he set her down on the old Mexican doorstep, a foot thick and a foot high. “Now I’m gonta put up the black, and time I get back here you have them boots off an’ washed out, and yer feet washed and all, and then we’ll find out about this new ambition o’ yours. I’m interested, I’ll admit. Get busy, now!”
CHAPTER IX
DUSK ON THE DESERT
LARDO the Cook and The Falcon’s fellow flunkies had left the cook tent for the day. Falcon the Flunky poured boiling water over the knives and forks and spoons in a gigantic dishpan and hurriedly dried them. Then he removed his apron and scoured the kitchen odors from his hands, combed his brown hair, and called it a day.
Outside he tied the flaps of the tent against erratic winds of the night, and, turning away, strolled off over the desert.
The red glow of the summer sun still hung over the mountains to the west, making a host of speared warriors of the pines that lived on the ridges and lighting the desert. Between hummocks of sand blown up about greasewood bushes Falcon the Flunky wound his way, with lizards that had lingered for the last rays of sunlight scampering to cover before his feet.
He wandered north, smoking a cigarette, his hands locked behind him, deeply brooding. To the west a black speck took form in contrast with the sable dusk colors of the desert. The Falcon saw it; his pulse quickened. At the same time he frowned and sighed as if all were not well with his soul.
On toward him moved the black speck, growing larger as it came. He thought of a fly fallen in Lardo’s big bowl of flapjack batter, swimming desperately toward solid footing. Lardo’s long white forefinger might scoop up the bedraggled insect and hurl it with a battery spat against the tent wall. But to think of Lardo the Cook as fate or destiny or any other of the forces that control nature brought a smile to the flunky’s lips. But the desert was big and flat and awe-inspiring, and the human speck moving over its vast expanse seemed as helpless and insignificant as the ill-fated fly.
Presently Falcon the Flunky waved his hat. Before long Manzanita Canby reined in the blowing pinto mare beside him and dismounted.
“Hello!” she greeted, her face lighted with color, her hazel eyes half hidden by long lashes.
Falcon the Flunky silently took the mare’s reins, and she trailed the pair as they walked on into the north.