They rode slowly, and now Howard, now Carr, told her of the points of interest along the trail. When they crossed the lower end of the valley and came to the top of the gentle slope extending along its eastern edge, Helen made a discovery. All these latter days she had thought of the desert as behind her, lying all to the westward. Now she understood how the ranch was aptly named Desert Valley; it was a freak, an oasis, a fertile valley with desert lands to east as well as west, and to north and south. When they had ridden down the far slope of the hills they were once more upon the edges of the solitudes of sand-sweep and sand-ridge and cactus and mesquite and utter drought. Every step their horses took carried them further into a land of arid menace; at the end of the first hour it was difficult to imagine green water-fields only a handful of miles away.
'It's just the water that makes the difference,' Howard told her. 'Isn't it, John?' Carr nodded. 'If a man could get water to put on this land that is burning our horses' fetlocks off right now, he'd have all the crops and stock range he wanted. Why, the bigger part of Desert Valley was like this before John took hold of it; he developed the water, and I've gone on with his work, and look what we've got now!'
'That makes your ranch all the more wonderful!' cried Helen.
Howard's eyes glowed; she noted that they always did when he spoke thus of Desert Valley or when she bespoke her hearty approval of his choice. Something prompted her to turn swiftly to Carr; his head was down; he was frowning at the horn of his saddle; Helen, not devoid of either intuition or tact, changed the conversation. But not before she noted that Howard, too, had looked toward his friend.
Big Run huddled among tall cottonwoods in a shallow hollow. It was blessed with several clear, pure springs, its only blessing. It was self-sufficient, impudent. About it on all sides was the sweep of grey desert; in the shade of its cottonwoods, along its thicket of willows, was a modicum of greenness and coolness; its ugly houses like toads squatting in the shade had an air of jeering at the wastes of sand and scrub. The place was old in years and iniquity. The amazing thing connected with it was that its water could remain pure; one would have thought that through the years even the deathless springs would have been contaminated. Long ago it had been a Hopi camp; in their tongue it was called the 'Half-Way between Here and There.' Later a handful of treacherous devils from below the border had swooped down into the cottonwood hollow. They had dissipated the Indian group, for the sake of robbery and murder. They had squatted by the water-holes, prototypes of the crooked buildings which now recalled them; they had builded the town by the simple device of driving Indian labourers to the task. White men subsequently had come, men of the restless foot, lone prospectors, cattlemen. They had lodged briefly at the hotel which necessity had called into being, had played cards in the adobe of 'Tonio Moraga, had quarrelled with the surly southerners, had now and then shot their way out into the clear starlit night or had known the cruel bite of steel, and in any case had left Big Run as they had found it--a town oddly American in nothing whatever save its name, which had come whence and how no man knew.