George looked at the pile of leaves as if expecting it to shift or tremble with all the churning activity within. Then he laughed. 'That's an, uh, interesting way of looking at it.'
     'I don't find it interesting,' I said. 'I find it fucking tedious. But it happens to be true, that's all. Everything that's true isn't fucking interesting.'
     George walked off shaking his head.
     Boundaries. Typical George. Everything is boundaries, defences, walls. Dividing things up, breaking things down.
     I went inside, made a cup of tea and sat down at the kitchen table. I watched the cats outside in the thickening autumn light. Dixie's cat flap had become the door to Nirvana and the greatest cat minds in the neighbourhood were dedicated to solving the problem.
     But nothing worked. In the grass lay an empty fruit can, cast there by some former sojourner. Givens caught sight of it with a grunt of satisfaction. In his coat pocket tied behind his saddle was a handful or two of ground coffee. Black coffee and cigarettes! What ranchero could desire more?
     In two minutes he had a little fire going clearly. He started, with his can, for the water hole. When within fifteen yards of its edge he saw, between the bushes, a side-saddled pony with down-dropped reins cropping grass a little distance to his left. Just rising from her hands and knees on the brink of the water hole was Josefa O'Donnell. She had been drinking water, and she brushed the sand from the palms of her hands. Ten yards away, to her right, half concealed by a clump of sacuista, Givens saw the crouching form of the Mexican lion. His amber eyelids glared hungrily; six feet from them was the tip of the tail stretched straight, like a pointer's. His hind-quarters rocked with the motion of the cat tribe preliminary to leaping.
     Later Dixie appeared again, and one of the cats went over to greet him. This cat must have been elected by the group and he would be asking Dixie straight: Dixie, how do you do it? And Dixie would be telling them everything he knew. Because even though Dixie was owned by that bastard George, he was a good cat, with a strong sense of community.