The town seemed to him quiet as though half-deserted. This was partly by contrast with the place of din which he had just left, and partly because this was the dull season, when the first hot spell of summer drove many away from the town and kept those who remained in their houses most of the day. The sandy streets caught the sun and cherished it in a merciless glare. They were baked so hot that barefoot urchins hopped gingerly from one patch of shade to the next. In the numerous vacant lots rank jungles of weeds languished in the dry heat, and long blue-tailed lizards, veritable heat-sprites, emerged to frolic and doze on deserted sidewalks. The leaves of the cottonwoods hung limp, and the white downy tufts that carried their seeds everywhere drifted and swam in the shimmering air. The river had shrunk to a string of shallow pools in a sandy plain, the irrigation ditches were empty, and in Old Town the Mexicans were asking God for rain by carrying an image of the Virgin Mary about on a litter and firing muskets into the air. Quickly wearied, Ramon sat down on a shaded bench in the park and tried to think out his situation and to decide what he should do. The easy way was to sell out, pay his debts, provide for his mother and sister and with what was left go his own way—buy a little ranch perhaps in the mountains or in the valley where he could live in peace and do as he pleased. Wearied as he was by struggle and disappointment, this prospect allured him, and yet he could not quite accept it. He felt vaguely the fact that in selling his lands, he would be selling out to fate, he would be surrendering to MacDougall, to the gringos, he would be renouncing all his high hopes and dreams. His mountain lands, with their steadily increasing value, the power they gave him, would make of his life a thing of possibilities—an adventure. Settled on a little ranch somewhere, his whole story would be told in one of its years. This he did not reason clearly, but the emotional struggle within him was therefore all the stronger. It was his old struggle in another guise—the struggle between the primitive being in him and the civilized, between earth and the world of men. Each of them in turn filled his mind with images and emotions, and he was impotent to judge between them.