She sighed. “He has gone to drive our cattle to a new spring. There is no pasture at the Tinaja Bonita. Our streams and ditches went dry last week. They have never done so in all the years before. I don’t know what is going to happen to us.” The anxiety in the girl’s face seemed to come outward more plainly for a moment, and then recede to its permanent abiding-place.
“There cannot be much water to keep flour-sellers alive on the trail to Maricopa,” chirped the bird on the ground.
She made no answer to this. “What are you doing nowadays?” she asked.
“I have been working very hard on the wood contract for the American soldiers,” he replied, promptly.
“By Tucson?”
“No. Huachuca.”
“Away over there again? I thought you had cut all they wanted last May.”
“It is of that enterprise of which I speak, Lolita.”
“But it’s October now!” Lolita lifted her face, ruddy with stooping, and broke into laughter.