Sympathy flowed freely from the gentle-hearted Señora and her daughter. "Si!" It was not of unusual happening that horses met with such accidents. It was getting late in the afternoon. Would the unfortunate caballero accept of their hospitality in the way of frijoles and some of the good coffee, perhaps? Sundown would, without question. He pressed a dollar into the palm of the reluctant Señora. He was not a tramp. Of that she might be assured. He had met with misfortune, that was all. And would the patron return soon? The patron would return with the setting of the sun. Meanwhile the vaquero of the Concho was to rest and perhaps enjoy his cigarette? And the "vaquero" loafed and smoked many cigarettes while the glowing eyes of Anita shone upon him with large sympathy. As yet Sundown had not especially noticed her, but returning from his third visit to the cooling olla, he caught her glance and read, or imagined he read, deep admiration, lacking words to utter. From that moment he became a changed man. He shed his weariness as a tattered garment is thrown aside. He straightened his shoulders and held his head high. At last a woman had looked at him and had not smiled at his ungainly stature. Nay! But rather seemed impressed, awe-stricken, amazed. And his heart quickened to faster rhythm, driving the blood riotously through his imaginative mind. He grew eloquent, in gesture, if not in speech. He told of his wanderings, his arrival at the Concho, of Chance his great wolf-dog, his horse "Pill," and his good friends Bud Snoop and Hi Wangle. Sundown could have easily given Othello himself "cards and spades" in this chance game of hearts and won—moving metaphor!—in a canter. That the little Señorita with the large eyes did not understand more than a third of that which she heard made no difference to her. His ambiguity of utterance, backed by assurance and illumined by the divine fire of inspiration, awakened curiosity in the placid breast of this Desdemona of the mesas. It required no sophistication on her part to realize that this caballero was not as the vaqueros she had heretofore known. He made no boorish jests; his eyes were not as the eyes of many that had gazed at her in a way that had tinged her dusky cheeks with warm resentment. She felt that he was endeavoring to interest her, to please her rather than to woo. And more than that—he seemed intensely interested in his own brave eloquence. A child could have told that Sundown was single-hearted. And with the instinct of a child—albeit eighteen, and quite a woman in her way—Anita approved of this adventurer as she had never approved of men, or man, before. His great height, his long, sweeping arms, moving expansively as he illustrated this or that incident, his silver spurs, his loose-jointed "tout ensemble," so to speak, combined with an eloquent though puzzling manner of speech, fascinated her. Warmed to his work, and forgetful of his employer's caution in regard to certain plans having to do with the water-hole ranch, Sundown elaborated, drawing heavily on future possibilities, among which he towered in imagination monarch of rich mellow acres and placid herds. He intimated delicately that a rancher's life was lonely at best, and enriched the tender intimation with the assurance that he was more than fond of enchiladas, frijoles, carne-con-chile, tamales, adding as an afterthought that he was somewhat of an expert himself in "wrastlin' out" pies and doughnuts and various other gastronomical delicacies.
A delicate frown touched the gentle Anita's smooth forehead when her mother interrupted Sundown with a steaming cup of coffee and a plate of frijoles, yet Anita realized, as she saw his ardent expression when the aroma of the coffee reached him, that this was a most sensible and fitting climax to his glowing discourse. Her frown vanished together with the coffee and beans.
Fortified by the strong black coffee and the nourishing frijoles, Sundown rose from his seat on the doorstep and betook himself to the back of the house where he labored with an axe until he had accumulated quite a pile of firewood. Then he rolled up his sleeves, washed his hands, and asked permission to prepare the evening meal. Although a little astonished, the Señora consented, and watched Sundown, at first with a smile of indulgence, then with awakening curiosity, and finally with frank and complimentary amazement as he deftly kneaded and rolled pie-crust and manufactured a pie that eventually had, for those immediately concerned, historical significance.
The "little hombre," Chico Miguel, returning to his 'dobe that evening, was greeted with a tide of explanatory utterances that swept him off his feet. He was introduced to Sundown, apprised of the strange guest's manifold accomplishments, and partook of the substantial evidence of his skill until of the erstwhile generous pie there was nothing left save tender reminiscence and replete satisfaction.
Later in the evening, when the Arizona stars glowed and shimmered on the shadowy adobe, when the wide mesas grew mysteriously beautiful in the soft radiance of the slow moon, Chico Miguel brought his guitar from the bedroom, tuned it, and struck a swaying cadence from its strings. Then Anita's voice, blending with the rhythm, made melody, and Sundown sat entranced. Mood, environment, temperament, lent romance to the simple song. Every singing string on the old guitar was silver—the singer's girlish voice a sunlit wave of gold.
The bleak and almost barren lives of these isolated folk became illumined with a reminiscent glow as the tinkling notes of the guitar hushed to faint echoes of fairy bells hung on the silver boughs of starlit trees. "Adios, linda Rosa," ran the song. Then silence, the summer night, the myriad stars.
Sundown, turning his head, gazed spellbound at the dark-eyed singing girl. In the dim light of the lamp she saw that his lean cheeks were wet with tears.