He pictured himself as
he must seem to her in his different pursuits. The
picturesqueness pleased him. The simple, direct vanity of the
man--the wholesome vanity of a straightforward nature--awakened
to preen its feathers before the idea of the mate.
The shadows fell. Over the Chiricahuas flared the evening star.
The plain, self-luminous with the weird lucence of the arid
lands, showed ghostly. Jed Parker, coming out from the lamp-lit
adobe, leaned his elbows on the rail in silent company with his
chief. He, too, looked abroad. His mind's eye saw what his
body's eye had always told him were the insistent notes--the
alkali, the cactus, the sage, the mesquite, the lava, the choking
dust, the blinding beat, the burning thirst. He sighed in the
dim half recollection of past days.
"I wonder if she'll like the country?" he hazarded.
But Senor Johnson turned on him his steady eyes, filled with the
great glory of the desert.
"Like the country!" he marvelled slowly. "Of course! Why
shouldn't she?"
CHAPTER FIVE
THE ARRIVAL
The Overland drew into Willets, coated from engine to observation
with white dust. A porter, in strange contrast of neatness,
flung open the vestibule, dropped his little carpeted step, and
turned to assist someone.
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