The Forbidden Trail

But Felicia, her head burrowed against Dick's willing shoulder was fast asleep.

"When do you expect to cut your first crop, Dick?" asked Ernest.

"If the alfalfa gets a toe hold before the first of May I'll get a crop this summer. The dust storms don't begin till May. They all blow down from the north or west and I'm sure that that draw between here and the field will protect me. I shall start cottonwoods and arrow-weed wind breaks as soon as I turn the water in. Hackett is getting some young trees for me."

"Isn't farming a terrible thing--terrible," said Mrs. von Minden suddenly. Then she closed her eyes and began to speak rapidly. "When we first came out here Otto wanted me to run a ranch for him while he did his other work. I was so innocent and so ignorant that I let him start me at it.

"In the Colorado river bottoms it was, below Fort Mohave. A group of fools like me thought to grow alfalfa in the bottom land, and dike the fields to keep the Colorado out at flood. Covered with arrow-weed, six and eight feet tall, the land was, when we got there. But the dikes were finished and some of the folks were beginning to clear the land.

"Otto cut enough arrow weed to put the tent up and then he found that he must put our bed high on a platform, the rattlesnakes were so thick. This done, he left me some money and told me to get an Indian to help me and off he went on one of his prospecting trips. I used to lie at night staring at the sky and crying with fear, fear of Otto and fear of the snakes that rattled and whirred all night.

"I found an Indian and he and I cleared about five acres of land and got the seed in. But the water used to run out of my mouth every minute with the snake fear. Then one night a rattler got one of our horses and my fear of what Otto would say if the other was bitten was greater than my fear of the snakes, and one night, while I watched beside the remaining horse, I killed a rattler. I waited for him to coil, then as I had seen the others do, I brought the butt end of an arrow-weed down on the coils and my fear of snakes was gone.

"Food was hard to get. There were only eight of us there. And as it got hot, some of them left. By the time we were expecting the river to rise in spring flood, there were only three fools in the colony. And I seldom saw the other two. There was a hundred acres of arrow-weed between them and me. My Indian left, after the crop came up. So I was all alone when the flood came. The first day my dikes began to leak. For eighteen hours I toted adobe to mend them with. When my strength gave out the water was two feet deep over my little field. My baby came that night, much too soon. I'd have died just as it did, if my Indian with a squaw hadn't happened back to beg for food. They took me over to the California side in their flat boat, and I never went back to the ranch again, though Otto tried to make me."