El Amo!—(Spanish) The boss!
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Cléo de Mérode (1873-1966) was a beautiful Parisian ballerina whose hair style caused a sensation when she danced in a production at age 13.
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puerta—(Spanish) gate
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This annotator can find no record of a Lone Wolf Crossing on the Frio, but there are clues that O. Henry had an actual place in mind for the setting of this story. We are told four paragraphs below that this point on the Frio is about 20 miles from the Nueces River. Later we are told that the Arroyo Hondo is near the Lone Wolf Crossing. Hondo Creek enters the Frio in Frio County 5 miles from Pearsall (about 75 miles southwest of San Antonio). At that location the Frio and the Nueces are about 20 miles apart.
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mescal—a drug-containing liquor made by distilling fermented agave cactus
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