“Live in the water tank?” he queried.
“I reckon I don’t, stranger,” came back in the severe tones of a child whose dignity has been ruffled.
“Then where can you live on this desert—is there a town concealed anywhere abouts?”
The answer from the figure on the pony was a pleasant girlish laugh, and then in the soft, southern tones:
“I reckon, stranger, you won’t find much of a to-own this side of Phoenix—and that’s a mighty long ways from he-ar!”
By this time Brainard and the pony had come sufficiently near together so that he could make out the small straight figure. The girl could not be over fourteen, he judged; she was thin and slight, with dark skin and small features concealed beneath the flap of an old felt hat. She wore a faded khaki skirt and leather leggings. In her small bony hand dangled a heavy man’s quirt with which she swished the ground, and at times she looked up shyly at the “stranger.”
“Where you from?” she inquired.
“New York,” Brainard replied.
“New York!” she repeated with an accent of wonder and surprise. “That must be a mighty big ta-own.”
“Rather more populous than this—what do you call it?”