The town of Bartolo slumbered in the July sunshine. Nothing stirred on its one long street, lined with scarcely a break on either side by mud-plastered houses that made a continuous brown wall, marked at intervals by a door or pierced by a window; nothing stirred, neither in front of Menocal's large frame store at the upper end of it, with the little bank adjoining, nor before the small courthouse grounds across the way, where the huge old cottonwoods spread their shade, nor along the entire length of the beaten street down to Gomez's blacksmith shop and Martinez's saloon across from each other at the lower end; nothing, not even the pair of burros drowsing in the shade of the wall, or the dogs lying before doors, or the goats a-kneel by the saloon, or the fowls nested down in the dust. Only the Pinas River, issuing from the black canon a mile or so above, was in motion; and, indeed, it appeared to partake of the general somnolence, barely rippling along its gravelly bed, shallow and shrunken, and giving forth but an indolent glitter as it flowed past the town. The day was hot and it was the hour of the siesta, therefore everything slept--everything, man, beast and fowl, from Menocal, who was snoring in his hammock on the vine-clad veranda of his big stuccoed house just beyond the store at the head of the street, to the goats at the foot of it by the silent saloon. Bryant, descending from the mesa into the river bottom and riding into the street, had he not known otherwise, might have supposed the population vanished in a body. But he was aware that it only slept; and he had no consideration for a siesta that retarded his affairs. He dismounted before the courthouse and entered the building, whose corridor and chambers appeared as silent, as lifeless, as forsaken as the street itself. Coming into the Recorder's office, he halted for a look about, then pushed through the wicket of the counter and stepped into an inner room, where he stirred by a thumb in the ribs a thin, dusky-skinned youth reclining in a swivel chair with feet in repose on a window-sill, who slept with head fallen back, arms hanging, and mouth open. "Come, _amigo_, your dinner's settled by this time," the engineer stated. "Grab a pen and record this deed." The clerk sleepily shifted his feet into a more comfortable position. "We're behind in our work," said he. "Just leave your deed, and the fee, and we'll get around to it in a few days." "So you're too busy now, eh?" "Yes. We've had a good many papers to record this month." "Where's the Recorder?" "Not back from dinner yet," was the answer. The speaker once again prepared to rest. From the outer office the slow ticking of a clock sounded with lulling effect, while the grassy yard beyond the window, shaded by the boughs of the cottonwoods, diffused peace and drowsiness. The clerk closed his eyes. "Just leave the deed and fee on the desk here," he murmured. "And tip-toe out, too, I suppose."