estion of privacy and ease. The beholder's
eye, regarding its gorgeous sides, found interest to culminate in a
single name in gold and blue letters extending almost its entire
length--a single name, the audacious privilege of royalty and genius.
Doubly, then, was this arrogant nomenclature here justified; for the
name was that of "Alvarita, Queen of the Serpent Tribe." This, her
car, was back from a triumphant tour of the principal Mexican cities,
and now headed for San Antonio, where, according to promissory
advertisement, she would exhibit her "Marvellous Dominion and Fearless
Control over Deadly and Venomous Serpents, Handling them with Ease as
they Coil and Hiss to the Terror of Thousands of Tongue-tied
Tremblers!"

One hundred in the shade kept the vicinity somewhat depeopled. This
quarter of the town was a ragged edge; its denizens the bubbling froth
of five nations; its architecture tent, /jacal/, and 'dobe; its
distractions the hurdy-gurdy and the informal contribution to the
sudden stranger's store of experience. Beyond this dishonourable
fringe upon the old town's jowl rose a dense mass of trees,
surmounting and filling a little hollow. Through this bickered a small
stream that perished down the sheer and disconcerting side of the
great canon of the Rio Bravo del Norte.

In this sordid spot was condemned to remain for certain hours the
impotent transport of the Queen of the Serpent Tribe.

The front door of the car was open. Its forward end was curtained off
into a small reception-room. Here the admiring and propitiatory
reporters were wont to sit and transpose the music of Senorita
Alvarita's talk into the more florid key of the press. A picture of
Abraham Lincoln hung against a wall; one of a cluster of school-girls
grouped upon stone steps was in another place; a third was Easter
lilies in a blood-red frame. A neat carpet was under foot. A pitcher,
sweating cold drops, and a glass stood on a fragile stand. In a willow
rocker, reading a newspaper, sat Alvarita.

Spanish, you would say; Andalusian, or, better still, Basque; that
compound, like the diamond, of darkness and fire. Hair, the shade of
purple grapes viewed at midnight. Eyes, long, dusky, and disquieting
with their untroubled directness of gaze. Face, haughty and bold,
touched with a pretty insolence that gave it life. To hasten
conviction of her charm, but glance at the stacks of handbills in the
corner, green, and yellow, and white. Upon them