lk strode--not the polychromatic
victim of a lost summertime, but the sheepman, rehabilitated. He wore
his old grey woolen shirt, open at the throat, his brown duck trousers
stuffed into his run-over boots, and his white felt sombrero on the
back of his head. Twenty years or fifty he might look; Dry Valley
cared not. His light blue eyes met Panchita's dark ones with a cold
flash in them. He came as far as the gate. He pointed with his long
arm to her house.

"Go home," said Dry Valley. "Go home to your mother. I wonder
lightnin' don't strike a fool like me. Go home and play in the sand.
What business have you got cavortin' around with grown men? I reckon I
was locoed to be makin' a he poll-parrot out of myself for a kid like
you. Go home and don't let me see you no more. Why I done it, will
somebody tell me? Go home, and let me try and forget it."

Panchita obeyed and walked slowly toward her home, saying nothing. For
some distance she kept her head turned and her large eyes fixed
intrepidly upon Dry Valley's. At her gate she stood for a moment
looking back at him, then ran suddenly and swiftly into the house.

Old Antonia was building a fire in the kitchen stove. Dry Valley
stopped at the door and laughed harshly.

"I'm a pretty looking old rhinoceros to be gettin' stuck on a kid,
ain't I, 'Tonia?" said he.

"Not verree good thing," agreed Antonia, sagely, "for too much old man
to likee /muchacha/."

"You bet it ain't," said Dry Valley, grimly. "It's dum foolishness;
and, besides, it hurts."

He brought at one armful the regalia of his aberration--the blue
tennis suit, shoes, hat, gloves and all, and threw them in a pile at
Antonia's feet.

"Give them to your old man," said he, "to hunt antelope in."

Just as the first star presided palely over the twilight Dry Valley
got his biggest strawberry book and sat on the back steps to catch the
last of the reading light. He thought he saw the figure of someone in
his strawberry patch. He laid aside the book, got his whip and hurried
forth to see.

It was Panchita. She had slipped through the picket fence and was
half-way across the patch. She stopped when she saw him and looked at
him without wavering.

A sudden rage--a humiliating flush of unreasoning wrath--came over Dry
Valley. For this child he had made himself a motley to the view. He
had tried to bribe Time to turn backward for himself; he had--been
made a fool of. At last he had seen his folly. There was