The discomfited whistler is but newly arrived at Alamo; and his feeble step and weary, hollow cough predict that the poor fellow's journey will not take him back to the "Sweet Home" of the song, but rather to the uncharted country.
And now the invalid sportsman steps cheerily on the piazza.
"Here, you lazy folks," mocks he, holding high his well-filled game-bag, "behold the pigeon stew for your supper!" And good-naturedly hailing a Mexican chore-boy, lazily propped by a neighboring poplar trunk, he cries, "Catch!" and deftly tossing him the game (pigeons from the mesa) goes in to put away his gun. When later he returns to the piazza, bathed and refreshed, it is as if, in a room dim-lit by tallow candles, the gas had suddenly been turned on to a big chandelier.
Seating himself in the vacant arm-chair, he fills a briar-wood pipe. Some of the loungers do likewise; and now, while they smoke and chat, look at the new-comer, Leonard Starr. Though not robust, he has the substantial mien and bearing of one who finds it good to live, and makes those about him also find it good. It is not long before most of these dispirited loungers are laughing at his lively stories and sallies, and cheerily matching them with their own.
Well is it for this troublous world of ours that some of its children are "born to turn the sunny side of things to human eyes."
CHAPTER II
It is the middle of December; the Alamo boarders are now well arrived.
First and foremost, Mr. John Morehouse—the one lion of the ranch—makes his bow. He is conspicuous for his able research in Archæology, and among his fellow boarders is familiarly known as "the Antiquary."
Mr. Morehouse has come to New Mexico in the interest of science; he is not, however, a mere dry-as-dust collector of knowledge, and is very much inclined to unbend himself to the lighter moods and pursuits of his less scholarly fellow-men.