It was along about four o'clock in the afternoon the cyclone struck us; and it was such a small-sized one, when we did get it, we didn't know whether to laugh or swear. But the cyclone himself didn't think there was anything small about him: being Hart's nephew--so scared to death all the few wits he ever had was knocked clean out of him--who come into Palomitas, white as white-wash, riding bareback one of the coach mules. He just sort of rolled off the mule, in front of the Forest Queen, and went in to the bar and got four drinks in him before he could speak a word--and then he said he'd been held up at the Barranca Grande by about two hundred road-agents who'd opened up on him and killed all the mules except the one he'd got away on; and his getting away at all, he said, was only because he'd put up such a fight he'd scared 'em--and after that because they couldn't hit him when once he was off, and had the mule going on a dead run. Then he took two more drinks, and told his story all over again; and as it was about the same story both times--and he so scared, and by the time he told it over again so set up with his drinks, it didn't seem likely he'd sense enough left to be lying--the boys allowed like enough it was true. What he had to tell--except he piled on more road-agents than was needed--was about reasonable. He said he'd done well enough as far as Pojuaque--where he'd had his dinner and changed mules, same as usual, at old man Bouquet's. And after he'd left Pojuaque he'd got along all right, he said, except he had to go slow through the sandhills, till he come to the Barranca Grande. It's a bad place, that barranca is. The road goes sharp down into it, and then sharp up out of it--and both banks so steep you want all the brakes you've got to get to the bottom of it, and more mules than you're likely to have to get to the top on the other side.