At a little before sunset we arrived at the great D. Horse Ranch, where we watered our animals and accepted the ranchman's invitation to supper.
[CHAPTER XXXV.]
Havoc in a cyclone
BY MAC A'RONY.
That is the idea; for Juliet's a dear, sweet, mere child of a girl, you know, and she don't bray like a jackass.—Huckleberry Finn.
We did not tarry at the D. Horse Ranch, but later on pitched camp near a sheep ranch run by a Mexican, who met us with a grunt that nobody understood.
"Gee! how I wish I could speak Spanish!" remarked Pod, facing the squatty ranchman. It was comical to watch Coonskin's puzzled face. "I once studied Spanish, but why didn't I master it! Just two words can I remember: "porque"—why, and "manana"—to-morrow. But how can they help me? To utter them would be to ask, why to-morrow? And there would be no sense in that."
"But it might convey the idea," I interrupted, "that either you know more than you looked to know, or appeared to know more than you do know; and that would be something."
My master did not answer, but when the Mexican came around again, he said to him, "Porque manana?" The Mexican laughed—who could blame him—and said something about Espanola, a young lady I never heard tell of, and invited us all to the corral, except the men, who followed him to the house. Nothing like Mexican hospitality when one understands the language as Pod did.
At first the Mexican did not comprehend that we all were thirsty. The Professor asked for a drink in many varieties of expression, concluding with a desperate "Porque Manana?" at the same time pointing to the well. The Mexican grinned, and replied in a peculiar vernacular, and handed him a huge tin cup. Pod next inquired the right trail to Brighton in many artistic demonstrations of verbal inflection and gesticular design, and wound up with a heroic "Porque Manana." The mystified sheep herder shook his head quizzically, and began to pour out a whole tubful of liquid linguistics which my pedantic master drained to the dregs without discovering their meaning; then he shook hands with the gracious host and gave the word to "hit the trail."