military village,--a fort by courtesy,--where, when not sleeping, black
soldiers and white strolled about in the warm sun. When the little
street was fairly awake, it presented a very lively appearance and had
the air of doing a great deal of business. The wan houses emitted their
occupants, and numerous pink-faced riders, in leathers and broad hats,
poured in from all sides, and, tying their heavily-accoutred ponies,
disappeared into the shops with a sort of bow-legged waddle, like
sailors ashore. Off his horse, the cow-boy is frankly awkward. Purchases
made, they departed with a rush, filling the glare with dust. Officers
from the post, with cork helmets and white trousers, came across the
river and stood in the broad shadows of adobe door-ways, gaping, and
switching their legs with bamboo canes. "It's magnificent," one seemed
to hear them mutter, "but it isn't war!" Groups of Mexicans stood about,
or, selecting a white wall, leaned against it, as they are apt to do at
home, for the better relief of their swarthy faces and brilliant scarfs;
and slowly moving down the street, stopping occasionally to speak to the
various clusters of men, there went the beneficent if somewhat untidy
figure of the Catholic father, in whose company we had breakfasted, a
fat, jolly, anecdotal inheritor of the mantle of some founder of the
Missions. The sun took absolute and merciless possession of the street.
You put your hand in your pocket for the smoked glass through which you
observed the last eclipse. Everything seemed bleached,--the white
buildings, the yellow road, the eyebrows of the cow-boys.

We did the drive of twenty miles to the ranch in a canvas-topped buggy,
drawn by a pair of devil-may-care little nags, who took us across dry
_arroyos_ and the rocky beds of running streams in a style that promised
to make sticks of the vehicle. It held good, however, and rattled out a
sort of derisive snicker at every fresh attempt to shiver it. The
country through which we passed afforded views of superb breadth and a