"Why?" she persisted. "Does it shrink much when it dries?"
Senor Johnson stared to see if she might be joking. "Does it shrink?" he repeated slowly. "There ain't nothing shrinks more, nor harder. It'll mighty nigh break that wood."
Estrella, incredulous, interested, she could not have told why, stooped again to feel the soft, yielding hide. She shook her head.
"You're joking me because I'm a tenderfoot," she accused brightly. "I know it dries hard, and I'll believe it shrinks a lot, but to break wood—that's piling it on a little thick."
"No, that's right, ma'am," broke in Brent Palmer. "It's awful strong. It pulls like a horse when the desert sun gets on it. You wrap anything up in a piece of that hide and see what happens. Some time you take and wrap a piece around a potato and put her out in the sun and see how it'll squeeze the water out of her."
"Is that so?" she appealed to Tommy. "I can't tell when they are making fun of me."
"Yes, ma'am, that's right," he assured her.
Estrella passed a strip of the flexible hide playfully about her wrists.
"And if I let that dry that way I'd be handcuffed hard and fast," she said.
"It would cut you down to the bone," supplemented Brent Palmer.