t not for her little English book that the peripatetic
_padre_ had given her and the little crippled _chivo_ [71], that she
fed from a bottle, she would be very, very lonely indeed.

[FOOTNOTE 70: plait . . . stake-rope--O. Henry probably learned
this skill or at least saw it practiced during the
two years he spent on South Texas ranches.]

[FOOTNOTE 71: chivo--(Spanish) goat]

Which leads to a suspicion that the Kid's fences needed repairing, and
that the adjutant-general's sarcasm had fallen upon unproductive soil.

In his camp by the water hole Lieutenant Sandridge announced and
reiterated his intention of either causing the Cisco Kid to nibble the
black loam of the Frio country prairies or of haling him before a
judge and jury. That sounded business-like. Twice a week he rode over
to the Lone Wolf Crossing of the Frio, and directed Tonia's slim,
slightly lemon-tinted fingers among the intricacies of the slowly
growing lariata. A six-strand plait is hard to learn and easy to
teach.

The ranger knew that he might find the Kid there at any visit. He kept
his armament ready, and had a frequent eye for the pear thicket at the
rear of the _jacal_. Thus he might bring down the kite and the
humming-bird with one stone.

While the sunny-haired ornithologist was pursuing his studies the
Cisco Kid was also attending to his professional duties. He moodily
shot up a saloon in a small cow village on Quintana Creek [72], killed
the town marshal (plugging him neatly in the centre of his tin badge),
and then rode away, morose and unsatisfied. No true artist is uplifted
by shooting an aged man carrying an old-style .38 bulldog.

[FOOTNOTE 72: Quintana Creek is a tributary of the Nueces River
in LaSalle County, where O. Henry spent two years
on ranches.]

On his way the Kid suddenly experienced the yearning that all men feel
when wrong-doing loses its keen edge of delight. He yearned for the
woman he loved to reassure him that she was his in spite of it. He
wanted her to call his bloodthirstiness bravery and his cruelty
devotion. He wanted Tonia to bring him water from the red jar under
the brush shelter, and tell him how the _chivo_ was thriving on the
bottle.

The Kid turned the speckled roan's head up the ten-mile pear flat that
stretches along the Arroyo Hondo until it ends at the Lone Wolf
Crossing of the Frio. The roan whickered