noon
By suggestion , Annixter saw S. Behrman , too , fat , with a vast stomach , the check and neck meeting to form a great , tremulous jowl , the roll of fat over his collar , sprinkled with sparse , stiff hairs ; saw his brown , round-topped hat of varnished straw , the linen vest stamped with innumerable interlocked horseshoes , the heavy watch chain , clinking against the pearl vest buttons ; invariably placid , unruffled , never losing his temper , serene , unassailable , enthroned . Then , at the end of all , it was the ranch again , seen in a last brief glance before he had gone to bed ; the fecundated earth , calm at last , nursing the emplanted germ of life , ruddy with the sunset , the horizons purple , the small clamour of the day lapsing into quiet , the great , still twilight , building itself , dome-like , toward the zenith . The barn fowls were roosting in the trees near the stable , the horses crunching their fodder in the stalls , the day 's work ceasing by slow degrees ; and the priest , the Spanish churchman , Father Sarria , relic of a departed regime , kindly , benign , believing in all goodness , a lover of his fellows and of dumb animals , yet , for all that , hurrying away in confusion and discomfiture , carrying in one hand the vessels of the Holy Communion and in the other a basket of game cocks . It was high noon , and the rays of the sun , that hung poised directly overhead in an intolerable white glory , fell straight as plummets upon the roofs and streets of Guadalajara . The adobe walls and sparse brick sidewalks of the drowsing town radiated the heat in an oily , quivering shimmer . The leaves of the eucalyptus trees around the Plaza drooped motionless , limp and relaxed under the scorching , searching blaze . The shadows of these trees had shrunk to their smallest circumference , contracting close about the trunks .