The heat exhaling from brick and plaster and metal met the heat that steadily descended blanketwise and smothering, from the pale, scorched sky.

Only the lizards--they lived in chinks of the crumbling adobe and in interstices of the sidewalk--remained without, motionless, as if stuffed, their eyes closed to mere slits, basking, stupefied with heat.

At long intervals the prolonged drone of an insect developed out of the silence, vibrated a moment in a soothing, somnolent, long note, then trailed slowly into the quiet again.

Somewhere in the interior of one of the 'dobe houses a guitar snored and hummed sleepily.

On the roof of the hotel a group of pigeons cooed incessantly with subdued, liquid murmurs, very plaintive; a cat, perfectly white, with a pink nose and thin, pink lips, dozed complacently on a fence rail, full in the sun.