"Two up here among all these peppers! Oh no, Luis. We should tread on them, and our ankles would burn all night. If you want to help me, go bring some fresh water. The barrel is almost empty." But Luis stood ardently gazing up at the roof. "Very well, then," said Lolita. "If you like this better, finish the peppers, and I'll go for the water." "Why do you look down the trail so often?" said the baffled love-maker, petulantly. "Because Uncle Ramon said the American would be coming to-day," the girl replied, softly. "Was it Uncle Ramon said that? He told you that?" "Why not?" She shaded her eyes, and looked where the canon's widening slit gave view of a slant of sand merging fan-spread into a changeless waste of plain. Many watercourses, crooked and straight, came out of the gaps, creasing the sudden Sierra, descending to the flat through bushes and leaning margin trees; but in these empty shapes not a rill tinkled to refresh the silence, nor did a drop slide over the glaring rocks, or even dampen the heated, cheating sand. Lolita strained her gaze at the dry distance, and stooped again to her harvest. "What does he come here for?" demanded Luis. "The American? We buy white flour of him sometimes." "Sometimes! That must be worth his while! He will get rich!" Luis lounged back against his water-barrel, and was silent. As he watched Lolita, serenely working, his silver crescent ear-rings swung a little with the slight tilting of his head, and his fingers, forgotten and unguided by his thoughts, ruffled the strings of the guitar, drawing from it gay, purposeless tendrils of sound. Occasionally, when Lolita knew the song, she would hum it on the roof, inattentively, busy rolling her peppers: "'Soy purita mejicana; Nada tengo espanol.'" (I am a pure Mexican. I have nothing Spanish about me.) And this melodious inattention of Lolita's Luis felt to be the extreme of slight. "Have you seen him lately?" he asked, sourly. "Not very. Not since the last time he came to the mines from Maricopa." "I heard a man at Gun Sight say he was dead," snapped Luis. But she made no sign. "That would be a pity," she said, humming gayly. "Very sad. Uncle Ramon would have to go himself to Maricopa for that white flour." Pleased with this remark, the youth took to song himself; and there they were like two mischievous birds. Only the bird on the ground was cross with a sense of failure. "El telele se murio," he sang. "'The hunchback is dead. Ay! Ay! Ay! And no one could be found to bury him except--'" "Luis, aren't you going to get my water for me?" "Poco tiempo: I'll bring it directly." "You have to go to the Tinaja Bonita for it." The Pretty Spring--or water-hole, or tank--was half a mile from the cabin. "Well, it's not nice out there in the sun. I like it better in here, where it is pleasant. "'And no one could be found to bury him except Five dragoons and a corporal And the sacristan's cat.'"