“The American? We buy white flour of him sometimes.”
“Sometimes! That must be worth his while! He will get rich!” Luis lounged back against his water-barrel, and was silent. As he watched Lolita, serenely working, his silver crescent ear-rings swung a little with the slight tilting of his head, and his fingers, forgotten and unguided by his thoughts, ruffled the strings of the guitar, drawing from it gay, purposeless tendrils of sound. Occasionally, when Lolita knew the song, she would hum it on the roof, inattentively, busy rolling her peppers:
“‘Soy purita mejicana;
Nada tengo español.’”
(I am a pure Mexican. I have nothing Spanish about me.) And this melodious inattention of Lolita’s Luis felt to be the extreme of slight.
“Have you seen him lately?” he asked, sourly.
“Not very. Not since the last time he came to the mines from Maricopa.”
“I heard a man at Gun Sight say he was dead,” snapped Luis.
But she made no sign. “That would be a pity,” she said, humming gayly.
“Very sad. Uncle Ramon would have to go himself to Maricopa for that white flour.”
Pleased with this remark, the youth took to song himself; and there they were like two mischievous birds. Only the bird on the ground was cross with a sense of failure. “El telele se murió,” he sang.