After A Silence Of Thirty-Five Minutes, The Man Again Made
His Appearance, And, Coming Right Out This Time, Stared Me Through
And Through.
After this close scrutiny, which seemed to satisfy him,
but elicited no response to a further appeal from me, he went to an
outlying building, and, bringing a strong hide lasso, tied it around
my horse's neck.
Not until that was securely fastened did he invite
me to dismount. Presuming the lasso was lent me to tie out my horse,
I led him to the back of the house. When I returned, my strange,
unwilling host was again gone, so I lay down on a pile of hides in
the shade of the wall, and, utterly tired out, with visions of
banquets floating before my eyes, I dropped off to sleep.
Perhaps an hour afterwards, I awoke to find a woman, black as night,
bending over me. Not seeing a visitor once in three months, her
feminine curiosity had impelled her to come and examine me. Seemingly
more amiable than her husband, she spoke to me, but in a strange,
unmusical language, which I could not understand; and then she, too,
left me. As evening approached, another inmate of the house made his
appearance. He was, I could see, of a different race, and, to my joy,
I found that he spoke fluently in Spanish. Conducting me to the
aforementioned outhouse, a place built of canes and mud, he told me
that later on a piece of meat would be given me, and that I could
sleep on the sheepskins.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 285 of 313
Words from 75738 to 76001
of 83353
