OCTOBER 26.
And after supper, when the sun was down, and they was just a kinda half-light on the mesquite, and the old man was on the east porch, smokin', and the boys was all lined up along the front of the bunk-house, clean outen sight of the far side of the yard, why I just sorta wandered over to the calf-corral, then 'round by the barn and the Chink's shack, and landed up out to the west, where they's a row of cottonwoods by the new irrigatin' ditch. Beyond, acrost a hunderd mile of brown plain, here was the moon a-risin', bigger'n a dishpan, and a cold white. I stood agin a tree and watched it crawl through the clouds. The frogs was a-watchin', too, I reckon, fer they begun to holler like the dickens, some bass and some squeaky. And then, frum the other side of the ranch-house, struck up a mouth-organ.
ELEANOR GATES,
in Cupid: the Cow-Punch.
OCTOBER 27.
EL VAQUERO.
Tinged with the blood of Aztec lands,
Sphinx-like, the tawny herdsman stands,
A coiled riata in his hands.
Devoid of hope, devoid of fear,