The house was given over to the ladies for the night. The men had a blanket apiece, and all the wide out-doors in which to couch themselves. Some climbed to the flat adobe roof of the house, or to the brush thatch of the stables, while others declared the ground in the grove good enough for them. It was decided by unanimous outcry that the dancing platform should be turned over to Dellmey Baxter and Johnny Martinez, the opposing candidates for Congress. First they all went trooping, each with his blanket stringing over his shoulder, to the kitchen door, where Conrad and the two Castletons dispensed nightcaps of varied concoction. The women heard them talking, story-telling, laughing, and now and then singing a snatch from some rollicking song. When the last light disappeared from within the house, a group of men began singing "Good-Night, Ladies." A round of vigorous applause from the darkened windows rewarded them, and they went on with "Annie Laurie," "Comin' through the Rye," and "How Can I Bear to Leave Thee." Johnny Martinez sang a Spanish love song in a falsetto voice, and received much applause from within. The men sang their way along the windows, up one side of the long, rambling house, across the front, and down the other side. They climbed to the roof, and serenaded the men who were trying to sleep there, varying the line or two of song accorded to each with much chaffing and guying. When the last straggling half-dozen of singers finally went off to seek their own resting-places in the grove, they marched in single file round and round the dancing floor, where Baxter and Martinez had already stretched themselves, and sang in a solemn croak: "John Brown had one little, two little Indian boys; one went to Congress, the other stayed at home." When peace settled at last over the Socorro Springs ranch house it was near the dawn of another day. CHAPTER XIX THE WORD UNSPOKEN The sun was high in the brilliant blue heavens and blazing hot upon the gray-green plain when the company came together in the grove the next morning to listen to speeches. One or another well-known resident of the Territory was called forth, with applause and cheers, to mount an improvised rostrum, where he complimented the ladies, chaffed the men, told funny stories, submitted to guying from the audience and repaid it in kind, until he was able to turn a joke upon some one else so deftly that he could retreat under cover of the hand-clapping and laughter and the calls for the other man to step up and defend himself.