“I didn’t expect to make it between meals,” remarked Cumnor.
“No. Sure. What made you come this route?”
“A man told me.”
“A man? Oh. Well, it is kind o’ difficult, I admit, for an Arizonan not to lie to a stranger. But I think I’d have told you to go by Tres Alamos and Point of Mountain. It’s the road the man that told you would choose himself every time. Do you like Injuns, kid?”
Cumnor snapped eagerly.
“Of course y’u do. And you’ve never saw one in the whole minute-and-a-half you’ve been alive. I know all about it.”
“I’m not afraid,” said the boy.
“Not afraid? Of course y’u ain’t. What’s your idea in going to Carlos? Got town lots there?”
“No,” said the literal youth, to the huge internal diversion of Jones. “There’s a man there I used to know back home. He’s in the cavalry. What sort of a town is it for sport?” asked Cumnor, in a gay Lothario tone.
“Town?” Specimen Jones caught hold of the top rail of the corral. “Sport? Now I’ll tell y’u what sort of a town it is. There ain’t no streets. There ain’t no houses. There ain’t any land and water in the usual meaning of them words. There’s Mount Turnbull. It’s pretty near a usual mountain, but y’u don’t want to go there. The Creator didn’t make San Carlos. It’s a heap older than Him. When He got around to it after slickin’ up Paradise and them fruit-trees, He just left it to be as He found it, as a sample of the way they done business before He come along. He ’ain’t done any work around that spot at all, He ’ain’t. Mix up a barrel of sand and ashes and thorns, and jam scorpions and rattlesnakes along in, and dump the outfit on stones, and heat yer stones red-hot, and set the United States army loose over the place chasin’ Apaches, and you’ve got San Carlos.”