and lies torpid and silent--or if
he speaks, it is to curse the land.

Pete knew that this devil-wind would make old Flores restless. He
stepped round to the doorway and asked for water. From the darkness
within the adobe came Flores's voice and the sound of a match against
wood. The Mexican appeared with a candle.

"My head feels queer," stated Pete, as an excuse for disturbing Flores.
"I can't find the olla--and I'm dead for a drink."

"Then we shall drink this," said Flores, fetching a jug of wine from
beneath the bench.

"Not for mine! I'm dizzy enough, without that."

"It is the devil-wind. One may get drunk and forget. One may then
sleep. And if one sleeps, it is not so bad."

Pete shook his head, but tasted the wine that Flores poured for him.
If the old man would only get drunk enough to go to sleep . . . The
Mexican's oily, pock-marked face glistened in the flickering
candle-light. He drank and smacked his lips. "If one is to die of the
heat--one might as well die drunk," he laughed. "Drink, senor!"

Pete sipped the wine and watched the other as he filled and emptied his
glass again. "It is the good wine," said Flores. The candle-light
cast a huge, distorted shadow of the Mexican's head and shoulders on
the farther wall. The faint drone of the hot wind came to them from
the plains above. The candle-flame fluttered. Flores reached down for
the jug and set it on the table. "All night we shall drink of the good
wine, for no man may sleep.",

"I'm with you," said Pete. "Only I ain't so swift."

"No man may sleep," reiterated Flores, again emptying his tumbler.

"How about the women-folks?" queried Pete.

Flores waved his hand in a gesture indicative of supreme indifference
to what the "women-folks" did. He noticed that Pete was not drinking
and insisted that he drink and refill his glass. Pete downed the raw
red wine and presently complained of feeling sleepy. Flores grinned.
"I do not sleep," he asserted--"not until this is gone"--and he struck
the jug with his knuckles. Pete felt that he was in for a long
session, and inwardly cursed his luck. Flores's eyes brightened and he
grew talkative. He spoke of his youth in Old Mexico; of the cattle and
the women of that land. Pete feigned a heaviness that he did not feel.
Presently Flores's talk grew disconnected; his eye became dull and his
swarthy face was mottled with yellow. The sweat, which had rolled down
his cheeks and drippe