Von Minden

"Don't know how we'll do dishes when the newspapers give out, Qui-tha," he said.

"Keep burro. He clean 'em," suggested Qui-tha, with a mischievous grin.

"Wah! Go way! We're not Hualapais like you," retorted Roger.

Qui-tha laughed, and followed Roger to the well. The chill of the early March morning was beginning to lift.

Roger pulled off his coat, preparatory to dropping down into the well, then paused. The sun was just lifting over the peaks. The ranch house was in black shadow. No man with Roger's capacity for work could be lonely with that work at hand. No man with Roger's fine imagination could have failed to have felt his pulses quicken at the sudden conception of the desert's wonders that flashed before his mind as his outward eye took in the sunrise. He saw in flashing panorama the desert's magnificent distances, its unbelievable richness of coloring, its burning desert noons, its still windswept nights, and a vague waking of passions he never had known stirred within his self and work-centered soul.

The air was full of bird song. What Ernest called the dawn's enchantment was just ending. Blackbird and robin, oriole and mocking bird, piped full-throated from every cactus. To Ernest this was the one redeeming touch to the desert's austerity. To Roger it was the crowning of an almost unbearable charm. The sun wheeled in full glory over the peaks. The adobe flashed out from the shadow and Roger slid down into the well.