'barren'--a crazy 'modern' house all gimcrack and woodwork and frostin',
with never another place in so far as you could hear a coyote yelp.

"Well, we bucks right up an' asks o' the party at the door if the
Signorita Esperanza Ulivarri--that was who Ryder had told us to ask
for--might be concealed about the premises, an' we shows Cy Ryder's
note. The party that opened the door was a Greaser, the worst looking I
ever clapped eyes on--looked like the kind wot 'ud steal the coppers off
his dead grandmother's eyes. Anyhow, he says to come in, gruff-like, an'
to wait, _poco tiempo_.

"Well, we waited _moucho tiempo--muy moucho_, all a-settin' on the edge
of the sofy, with our hats on our knees, like philly-loo birds on a
rail, and a-countin' of the patterns in the wall-paper to pass the time
along. An' Hardenberg, who's got to do the talkin', gets the fidgets
byne-by; and because he's only restin' the toes o' his feet on the
floor, his knees begin jiggerin'; an' along o' watchin' him, _my_ knees
begin to go, an' then Strokher's and then Ally Bazan's. An' there we sat
all in a row and jiggered an' jiggered. Great snakes, it makes me sick
to the stummick to think o' the idjeets we were.

"Then after a long time we hears a rustle o' silk petticoats, an' we all
grabs holt o' one another an' looks scared-like, out from under our
eyebrows. An' then--then, Mister Man, they walks into that bunk-house
parlour the loveliest-lookin' young feemale woman that ever wore hair.

"She was lovelier than Mary Anderson; she was lovelier than Lotta. She
was tall, an' black-haired, and had a eye ... well, I dunno; when she
gave you the littlest flicker o' that same eye, you felt it was about
time to take an' lie right down an' say, 'I would esteem it, ma'am, a