If only he had looked at it that way, he would have saved worry and
trouble for everyone, and also ten thousand lives. But the instructions
they had given him were ambiguous, for all that they had tried to make
them clear.

So very early the next morning he rose and cooked beans, and said,
"Might as well take them all."

He called Mula from the thorn patch where she was grazing, gave her salt
and loaded her again. Then they went to take the rest of the census, but
in fear. There was a clear duty to get the job done, but there was also
a dread of it that his superiors did not understand. There was reason
also why Mula was loaded so she could hardly walk with packs of census
forms.

Manuel prayed out loud as they climbed the purgatorial scarp above Lost
Souls Creek, "_ruega por nosotros pecadores ahora_--" the very gulches
stood angry and stark in the early morning--"_y en la hora de neustra
muerte._"

Three days later an incredible dwarf staggered into the outskirts of
High Plains, Texas, followed by a dying wolf-sized animal that did not
look like a wolf.

A lady called the police to save the pair from rock-throwing kids who
might have killed them, and the two as yet unclassified things were
taken to the station house.

The dwarf was three foot high, a skeleton stretched over with
brown-burnt leather. The other was an un-canine looking dog-sized beast,
so full of burrs and thorns that it might have been a porcupine. It was
a nightmare replica of a shrunken mule.

The midget was mad. The animal had more presence of mind: she lay down
quietly and died, which was the best she could do, considering the state
that she was in.

"Who is census chief now?" asked the mad midget. "Is Mr. Marshal's boy
the census chief?"

"Mr. Marshal is, yes. Who are you? How do you know Marshal? And what is
that which you are pulling out of your pants, if they are pants?"

"Census list. Names of everybody in the Santa Magdalena. I had to steal
it."

"It looks like microfilm, the writing is so small. And the roll goes on
and on. There must be a million names here."

"Little bit more, little bit more. I get two bits a name."

They got Marshal there. He was very busy, but he came. He had been given
a deadline by the mayor and the citizen's group. He had to produce a
population of ten thousand people for High Plains, Texas; and this was
difficult, for there weren't that many people in the town. He had been
working hard on it, tho