WEEKS afterward in old Mexico. He hadn’t moved straight down toward Nacimiento and San Pasquali, where Monte Vallejo was last heard of, but had followed the Border west, leaving the main highway, sinking himself into the country. He was taking it easy, learning the language from the voices in the daytime and his Spanish book at night. Days of learning--getting to know the feel of the people, learning Mamie, and that was not all--learning himself. No more leather-store; he wasn’t dreaming. An old fear that something was wrong about him, even anatomically wrong, in relation to a saddle, had pretty well died out. Sometimes he even fancied that Mamie answered his rein, as if it were old man Leadley’s velvety touch. ‘Era la que me miraba Diciendo adios’ That song was like an ever-continued story. A woman’s voice with guitar, this time, and the old wistfulness came over Elbert--the same that he had felt in the Plaza of Los Angeles. Here he was in a little native plaza--far from travel-lines, not even sure of the name of the town, yet he had to stop and think that all he had wanted so restlessly a while back, had come to pass. At least, he was working out the old dream day by day, Sonora at her sleepiest and dustiest now, days interminably long and changelessly hot. Though the fierce daylight had faded out the shine from her bright bay coat, Mamie was hardening to the road, and the man was coming to know some of her movements and whims, if not all. Gradually Elbert perceived also that she was aware of many of his. He never tethered her at night, yet she never strayed. He hadn’t been able to learn the lip-and-finger call, the way Bob Leadley had shown him, but there was a whistle in the handle of the sheath-knife he carried, and a blast from that brought the mare in from the sweetest herbage. He liked the nights in the open, Mamie grinding at her forage the last thing--drowsiest sound in the world to him. And her early call; out of the deepest sleep he would hear that. But by the time his eyes were open, the mare was merely to be seen feeding at a distance, her head turned away. If he dozed again, a more peremptory summons would sound, but Mamie was apparently calling to the hazy hills, her farthest concern to do with him.