The Iron Furrow | Page 3

she were really successful in quenching her thirst. The heat, the dust, and the ride appeared to have been almost too much for her strength, exhausting her slender store of vitality. The other girl, who had coiled herself down by the trickling stream and bent forward resting her hands in the water, drank directly from the rivulet.
"There, that's the way to do it, Imo," she declared, when she had straightened up, hat-brim, nose, chin, all dripping. "Like the ponies! I hope I haven't lost my handkerchief." And she began to search about her waist.
"I'd fall flat in the water if I tried it, as sure as the world," the taller girl responded.
They rose to their feet and joined Bryant.
"You're the young ladies who are homesteading just south of here, aren't you?" he inquired, politely.
"Yes, two miles south on Sarita Creek," the smaller answered. Then after an appraising regard of him she continued, "We took our claims only last April. And they're not very good claims, either, we're beginning to fear; the creek goes dry about this time. That's why no one had filed on the locations before. Have you a ranch somewhere near?"
"No. That is, not yet. I'm a civil engineer, but I'm thinking strongly of settling down here. If I do, we shall be neighbours. My name is Lee Bryant; this is my horse Dick; and I've a dog called Mike, which stopped aways back on the road to investigate a prairie dog hole. Now you know who we are," he concluded, with a smile.
The girl thereupon told him her name was Ruth Gardner and that of her companion Imogene Martin.
"We'll be very glad to have you call at our little ranch when you're riding by," Ruth Gardner said, graciously. "Aside from Imogene's uncle and aunt, who live in Kennard and who've come to see us several times, we've not had a single visitor in the three months and a half we've been there, except once an old Mexican who was herding sheep near by and came to ask for matches. Of course, not many people know we're there, I imagine. From the road one can't see our cabins--we had to have two, you know, one for each claim, and they sit side by side--because they're in the mouth of the ca?on among the trees. It's really cool and pleasant there during the heat of the day. Any time you come, you'll be welcome."
"Yes, Mr. Bryant," Imogene Martin affirmed. "A man now and then in the scenery will help out wonderfully."
"I'll stop the first time I'm passing," he stated.
Lee Bryant understood the significance of the invitation: they were starved for company and would be grateful for the society of a person they believed respectable. He had seen a good deal of homesteading conditions in the West; he knew the hardships involved in "holding down" claims, of which the dreary monotony and loneliness of the life were not the least. One earned ten times over every bit one got of a free government homestead. For men it was bad enough; but for woman, for girls like these, who had probably come from the East in trustful ignorance and with rosy visions, the homestead venture impressed him not only as pitiful but as tragic.
"I'll certainly ride down to see you," he assured them again.
"And perhaps, being an engineer, you'll show us why the water doesn't run downhill in our bean patch, as it ought to do," Imogene Martin remarked.
Bryant laughed and nodded agreement.
"You'll find that it's your eyes, and not the water, that have been playing tricks," he said. "Ground levels and ditch grades are deceiving things close to the mountains, because the latter tilt one's natural line of vision. That's why water seems to run uphill when you look toward the range. I'll soon fix your ditch line when I set an instrument in your bean patch and sight through it once or twice. The water will behave after that, I promise you."
They continued to chat of this and of the failing of Sarita Creek, until the automobile that Bryant had earlier sighted shot into view on the northern bank of the creek, whence at decreased speed it descended into the bottom and ground its way across through sand and gravel. Driving the hooded car was a man of about thirty years, of slim figure and with a pale olive skin that betrayed an admixture of American and Mexican blood. Beside him in the front seat sat a girl whose clear pink complexion made plain that in her was no mingling of races; her hat held by a streaming blue veil and her form incased in a silk dust coat. The tonneau was occupied by two men: one an American with a van dyke beard sprinkled with gray, the other