Juan Pico

giant cameos carved by the hand of Time, and- thrust upward into the pure sapphire heaven, deepen its tone of azure. Over the dusty road that stretches between San Gabriel and Los Angeles, twilight is soon to fall. Thrown up by the wayside, the Mecca for all travelers and ranchmen from San Diego to San Francisco, is a low adobe saloon. Here, for fifty years gambling has openly been carried on, and within its malls many crimes have been committed. The present owner, Andre d7Alliscon, is a Mexican of the most degraded type. Built like a giant, his limbs are powerful and strong, and his head is large and covered with a thick mat of tangled hair. His eyes are black and glassy and across his left cheek is a jagged Z shaped scar always pulsating as if with anger. Walking away from a group of hangers-on about the place, Andre has thrown himself on a mat near the door and is gossiping with a couple of ranchmen leaning against the bar. Juan Pico sitting on the west side of the house could now and then catch parts of the half-Spanish, half-English conversation, al- though he understood the latter with some difficulty. Like his father, Juan was more Spanish than Mexican, and as the San Gabriel people said, more Mexican than fool. Disturbed by the voices of the men collected in and about the saloon, Juan plunges his hands deeper into his poclrets and pulls his sombrero well down over his closed eyes, at the same time, moving his head unea,sily against the rough adobe wall. Shadows of the bright red poincetti leaves fall in curiously formed shapes on his well-worn corduroy clothes. Only the lower part of his face is visible-he has a firm and heavy jaw, a large and sinewy mouth, the thick sensual lips of which seem still drenched with wine. His large, muscular hands, brown and hairy, fall languidly on either side-of his massive legs. The ends of his fingers and thumbs are discol- ored by the constant use of cigarettes, and when he holds his hands up against the light, the knotted joints of the fingers show chinks between them. In monotonous rise and fall the rough voices continue to grate on Juans ear and he slightly shifts his position, stretches himself and rolls the half-smoked cigarette between his lips. Pushing his hat to the back of his head he displays his full face, the first sight of which proclaims him to be a Mexican with an ancestral trace of Indian. His eyes, large, limpid and black, are capable of any variation L of expression, and his forehead would have been the pride of a Inan of culture and refine- ment. His nose, betraying his active adven- turous temperament, is large and in harmony with the general contour of his face. Nervously fingering his small, black mus- tache, he again closes his eyes, drops his hands beside him and remains motionless. But he is not asleep, nor is he in the drunken stupor so often indulged in by Mexicans and Indians on pleasant afternoons...