New Mexico boasts an inhabitant to every eight square miles, but the member for our district continued to ignore our invasion of his realm. Two fried egg sandwiches, consumed that noon, was--or were--our only sustenance that day. We were so hungry we sounded hollow to the touch. Our mouths felt like flannel, and our throats burned with thirst. Not forty feet away a stream of pure water ran from the windmill. But it ran from a slippery lead pipe which extended a dozen feet over a reservoir. The water was there, but we could not get at it without a plunge bath. Muddy and weary, we worked on without courage. At sundown, from one of the other squares appeared the Inhabitant on horseback, driving some cows to our cattle-hole. He was a youth of sixteen, running mostly to adenoids and Adam’s apple, which worked agitatedly at sight of us, but his eyelashes any beauty specialist would envy. As to his voice, the strain of making it reach across eight miles to the next Inhabitant had exhausted it, or perhaps embarrassment silenced him; we could not get a word out of him till he had watered his cattle and started away. Then emboldened by having his back safely to us, he shouted that at a house, a “coupla miles southeast,” we might find a team,--and vanished into nowhere. Toby had by this time managed to crawl out on the lead pipe, and after gyrations fascinating to watch, captured a pail of water. Drinking eagerly, we set out for the house the Inhabitant indicated, with the pail in our hands to guard against future thirst. Sunset was making transparent the low mountain range skirting our valley, when we left. The sand filled our shoes, and the persistent “devil’s claw,” zealous to propagate its kind, clung to our feet with a desperate grip. Our pail became heavy, but we dared not empty it. At last we reached the ranch. A half-starved dog sprang out eagerly to meet us. The house was deserted; there were no teams to pull us out, nor any food to give the poor, famishing beast. He watched us leave, with a hurt, baffled look in his brown eyes, as if patiently marveling at the inhumanity of man. From the ranch, we glimpsed another house, a mile further away, and again we started hopefully for it, while a horned moon circled up a pink sky. The desert from a barren, ugly waste was become unbelievably lovely in the transfiguring twilight. The crescent moon brought us no luck, for we saw it over our left shoulders. It was still Friday the Thirteenth. The second house, even to the hungry dog, duplicated the first. It stood dismantled and deserted. We saw nothing ahead but a ten mile tramp to Rodeo in the dark, the poison green hotel, and “Lord help us!” whatever that meant.