enjoyable--the little man showing up as sensible as
anybody when he got to the church and struck things he knowed about;
and it turned out he could talk French, and that pleased the padre--he
was that French one I've spoke about, who was as white as they make
'em--and so things went along well.

* * * * *

The wind had set in to blow down the valley cool and pleasant as they
was getting along home; and coming down on it, when they got about
half a mile from Palomitas, they begun to hear shooting--and it kept
on, and more of it, the closer they come to town. Knowing what Santa
Fe had set the boys up to, Wood said he pretty near laughed out when
he heard it; but he held in, he said--and told the little man, when he
asked what it meant, that it didn't mean nothing in particular: being
only some sort of a shooting-scrape, like enough--the same as often
happened along about that time in the afternoon.

He said the little man looked queerish, and wanted to know if the men
in the town was shooting at a target; and when Wood said he guessed
they was targetting at each other, and likely there'd be some
occurrences, he said he looked queerisher--and said such savagery was
too horrible to be true. But he wasn't worried a bit about himself,
Wood said--he was as nervy a little man, Wood said, as he'd ever got
up to--and all he wanted was to have Wood whip the mules up, so he'd
get there quick and see what was going on. Wood whipped up, right
enough, and the mules took 'em a-kiting--going at a full run the last
half-mile or so, and not coming down to a walk till they'd crossed the
bridge over the Rio Grande and was most to the top of the hill. At the
top of the hill they stopped--and that was a good place to stop at,
for the circus was a-going on right there.

Things really did look serious; and Wood said--for all he'd been told
what was coming--he more'n half thought the boys had got to rumpussing
in dead earnest. Three or four was setting on the ground with their
sleeves and pants rolled up tying up their arms and legs with their
pocket-handkerchiefs; there was a feller--Nosey Green, it turned out
to be--laying on one side in a sort of mixed-up heap like as if he'd
dropped sudden; right in the middle of the road Blister Mike was
sprawled out, with Santa Fe--his black clothes all over dust and his
hat off--holding his head with one hand and feeling at his heart with
the other; and just