rub came humbly to claim his sundry own from behind and under
the seat. Even in "Eden" she thought how much like a clumsy bear his
gait was. And when the little man called him "Teddy" she knew he was not
a fisherman sort of creature, but a real bear in yellow-brown overalls,
and that the general fuzziness of his make-up was fur, and that his
stubby, scaly hands were claws. He dropped off somewhere when the
freight took a siding very near the river. It was the Sage Brush, but it
ran through the "Eden" grounds and Uncle Cornie was throwing his discus
beside it. The rose-arbor was just across the aisle. The little fat man
was sitting in its doorway, with a new moon of a smile on the smooth
side of his round head where his face was, a half-quizzical,
half-sympathetic smile with no guile in it. Jerry really liked him for
that kind of a smile. It belonged to him. The rose-arbor was very warm,
for the man was sweating more copiously than ever.... Uncle Cornie was
gone. The limping Teddy Bear was gone.... It was very, very hot and
sunny in "Eden." The big maples and cool lilacs were gone.... "Eden" was
gone. In its stead came the art exhibit in the cool gallery in the city.
And that yellow-gray desert landscape with the flaming afterglow and
purple mists. The flames seemed almost real, and the yellow gray almost
real, and the art-gallery was getting warmer as "Eden" had done. It was
positively hot.... And then the Sage Brush freight was laboring slowly
and painfully through a desert with clack and roar and cloud of cindery
dust.... Jerry sat up, wide awake, and looked up at the fat stranger who
was looking at her, the smile on the inside of his face, as it were,
showing only in the eyes.

Outside, the river was gone, taking with it all the cool-breathing
alfalfa, and elm and cottonwood shade, and leaving in their stead only
bare earth-ridges and low dunes. As far as Jerry could see, there was
nothing but a hot yellow plain, wrinkled here and there in great barren
folds, with wave and crest and hollow of wind-shifted sand crawling
endlessly back and forth along the face of the landscape. A few spiny
green shrubs struggled through at intervals, but their presence only
intensified the barrenness about them.

The train was entering a deep wrinkle not unlike that cut beyond the
third crossing of the Winnowoc. Jerry remembered the day she had watched
that other train from the bluff road, and her exultation in pounding her
big car up