grove now and two
hundred acres of alfalfa and a foreman who lets me gad! But no one who
ain't been a desert farmer can imagine how I worked."

Pen spoke softly. "Were you with him then, Mrs. Ames?"

The little woman looked at Pen with her far-seeing eyes. "Oh, yes, I
don't know that Oscar remembers, but we were married in York State. I
was a school teacher."

After the little laugh Pen asked, "Do you like the desert farming?"

"I never did get through being homesick," answered Mrs. Ames. "My first
two babies died there in that first little adobe. I was all alone with
them and the heat and the work."

"Jane, you let me talk," interrupted Oscar briskly. "We both worked. The
worst of everything was the uncertainty about water. Us farmers built
the dam that laid sixty miles below here. Just where government
diversion dam is now. But we never knew when the spring floods came
whether we'd have water that year or not. More and more people took up
land and tapped the river and the main canal. Gosh! It got fierce. Old
friends would accuse each other of stealing each other's water. Then we
had a series of dry years. No rain or snow in the mountains. And green
things died and shriveled, aborning: The desert was dotted with dead
cattle. Three years we watched our crops die and----"

Mrs. Ames suddenly interrupted. There was a dull red in her brown
cheeks. "I wanted to go home the third year of the drought. All I had to
show for fifteen years in the desert was two dead babies. I wanted to go
home."

"And I says to her," said Ames, "I said 'For God's sake, Jane, where is
home if it isn't here? I can't expect you to feel like I do about this
ranch for you've stuck to the house. I know every inch of this ranch.
Ain't I fought for every acre of it, cactus and sand storm and water
famine? Ain't I sweat blood over every acre? Ain't I given the best
years of my life to it? And you say, 'Let's give it up! It ain't home!'
I certainly was surprised at Jane."

"I have worked too," said Jane Ames, gently, to Penelope. "I'd had no
help and had cooked for half a dozen men and--and--then the babies!
Having four babies is not play, you know!"

"Oh, I know!" exclaimed Amos impatiently. "You worked. That was why I
was so surprised at you wanting to let everything go. But you hadn't
made things grow like I had. I suppose that's why you felt different.
That winter the snows was heavy in the mountains and we were tickled at
the thought of h