or Johnson referred his life to a state of
affairs he had himself invented and which he called the married state,
and to a woman whose attitude he had himself determined upon and whom
he designated as his wife. The actual state of affairs--whatever it
might be--he did not see; and the actual woman supplied merely the
material medium necessary to the reality of his idea. Whether
Estrella's eyes were interested or bored, bright or dull, alert or
abstracted, contented or afraid, Senor Johnson could not have told you.
He might have replied promptly enough--that they were happy and loving.
That is the way Senor Johnson conceived a wife's eyes.

The routine of life, then, soon settled. After breakfast the Senor
insisted that his wife accompany him on a short tour of inspection. "A
little pasear," he called it, "just to get set for the day." Then his
horse was brought, and he rode away on whatever business called him.
Like a true son of the alkali, he took no lunch with him, nor expected
his horse to feed until his return. This was an hour before sunset.
The evening passed as has been described. It was all very simple.

When the business hung close to the ranch house--as in the bronco
busting, the rebranding of bought cattle, and the like--he was able to
share his wife's day. Estrella conducted herself dreamily, with a slow
smile for him when his actual presence insisted on her attention. She
seemed much given to staring out over the desert. Senor Johnson,
appreciatively, thought he could understand this. Again, she gave much
leisure to rocking back and forth on the low, wide veranda, her hands
idle, her eyes vacant, her lips dumb. Susie O'Toole had early proved
incompatible and had gone.

"A nice, contented, home sort of a woman," said Senor Johnson.

One thing alone besides the deserts on which she never seemed tired of
looking, fascinated her. Whenever a beef was killed for the uses of
the ranch, she commanded strips of the green skin. Then, like a child,
she bound them and sewed them and nailed them to substances
particularly susceptible to their constricting power. She choked the
necks of green gourds, she indented the tender bark of cottonwood
shoots, she expended an apparently exhaustless ingenuity on the
fabrication of mechanical devices whose principle answered to the
pulling of the drying rawhide. And always along the adobe fence could
be seen a long row of potatoes bound in skin, some of them fresh