in these latitudes, shrank back and paled out of sight.
"And like a lobster boiled, the morn
From black to red began to turn."
"Whist! it is cold!" we gasped, as we broke the ice in the pails of water that stood on a bench under the wall, and proceeded to wash as we might.
While breakfast was being prepared, I walked out on to the cienega to look for ducks. But one shot cleared the swamp, and returning to the house with a mallard, I fell in with Squito and Joe driving the band of cow-ponies into the corral. With a broad-brimmed, leather-banded cow-boy hat on, an old pair of cow-boy, high-heeled[27] Wellington boots, a red canvas overcoat of old man Murray's, buckled in round her waist by her cartridge-belt (to which was now attached a genuine six-shooter), and her vivid little face nestled in its deep collar, the child was a quaint picture.
"Oh, pshaw!" she exclaimed, with a merry little laugh of malice, for she utterly refused to believe in a "Britisher," "you've 'done' got up, then! Joe, the man's up a'ready!" (She always called me "the man.")
"Why not?" rejoined Joe, with a smile of greeting. "You ain't the on'y one that can get up mornings."
"Why, no! do you suppose that you have a monopoly of early hours?"
"Yes, yes, yes! That's what I do, exactly. The Colonel said th' other day, when I was wanting to be 'a capitalist,' that he'd give me all the gold that I could see in the valley at sunrise. You ain't got no sort o' right to come prospecting around now. I've 'denounced' it all—it's all mine, all mine." And she threw an arm out, and grasped at the sunny skies, laughingly. "'Sides" (mischievously), "ain't you one of these dudes as the Colonel brings down sometimes from El Paso and Silver, that wants kettles o' hot water to twelve o'clock? Oh, pshaw! we ain't got to joshing you yet! You wait till the boys and me puts up a job on you."