The Desert Valley

'And,' went on Chuck Evans, 'that mare's been on the ranch six months and never did I hear him call her another thing than Sanchia.'

'Sanchia?' she repeated after him. 'What a pretty name!' And then, more innocently than ever, 'I don't think I ever heard the name before. She was named after somebody, I suppose?'

'Sure,' laughed Chuck. 'After a certain lady known in these parts as Mrs. Murray. Her name is Sanchia.'

'Oh!' said Helen.

'And,' continued Chuck, 'that ain't all. This morning, just like he knew folks was going to ask her name, he tells me: "Say, Chuck; this here mare's name, if anyone asks you, is Sweetheart. Don't it just suit her?" he says. And when you come right down to it----'

'Hey, Chuck,' called Tod Barstow from his high seat. 'Get a move on. We better get started before it's hot.'

So Chuck Evans departed and Helen sat straight in the saddle, her eyes a little puzzled. When her father rode to her side she was adjusting a bluebird's feather in her hatband. The feather, pointing straight up, gave a stiff, almost haughty look to the young woman's headgear.

They crossed the big meadow, wound for an hour among the little hills, and then began a slow, gradual climb along a devious dusty road. Less and ever less fertile grew the dry earth under them, more still and hot and hostile the land into which they journeyed. In three hours, jogging along, they came to Last Ridge.

'There's only one spot up this way that's fit to live in for more'n an hour at the stretch,' Barstow told them. 'There's a spring and some shade there. We'll drive right under it, and from there up we'll have to finish the job monkey-style.'

He stopped his horses in a little flat, just under a steep wall of reddish cliff. Here he and Chuck Evans unhitched and here the horses were tethered. Helen looked about her curiously, and at first her heart sank. There was nothing to greet her but rock and sweltering patches of sand and gravelly soil, and sparse, harsh brush. She turned and looked back toward the sweep of Desert Valley; there she saw green fields, trees, grazing stock. It was like the Promised Land compared with this bleak desolate spot her father had chosen. She turned to him, words of expostulation forming. But his eyes were bright, his look triumphant. He had already dismounted and was poking about here and there, examining everything at hand from a sand-storm stratum at the cliff's foot to loose dirt in the drifts and the hardy, wiry grass growing where it could. Helen turned away with a sigh.