" she said, "I've been studying over it, but I can't quite make it
out. Pop don't pay much attention, usually. But," she spoke slowly, "I
thought maybe you'd tell me this morning."

"Well, there's nothing to tell," he affirmed obstinately.

She looked out over the desert for a moment. "Bob Flick hit the trail
last night," she spoke casually.

"To go where?"

"I don't know. I wish I did. But I kind of feel, I can't help but feel,
that it had something to do with you, and I wanted to tell you, to let
you know, so that you can clear out if you've a mind to."

"I've no cause to clear out," said Hanson. "Gee!" his bold eyes looked
gaily into hers, "you all seem determined to make me out bad, don't you?
But if that's your way of trying to get rid of me, it don't go. When you
tell me that you won't sign up with me, and are going back to Sweeney,
for just half of what I offer you, then I'll know that you want to get
rid of me, and I'll clear out."

"But I ain't told you that yet," the corners of Pearl's mouth were
dimpling.

"No, and, by George, until you do I stay right here."

"Look!" she cried with a change in her voice. They had entered a canon,
where palms grew and involuntarily they drew up their horses to gaze at
the sight before them. The stately, exotic palms lifted their shining
green fronds to the blue, intense, illimitable sky, flooded with the
gold of sunshine, and beyond them was the background of the mountains,
their dark wooded slopes climbing upward until they reached the white,
dazzling peaks of snow.

The sharp and apparently impossible contrasts, the magic illusions of
color made it a land of remote enchantment, even to the most
unimaginative. And to Hanson the world outside became as unreal as a
dream that is past. Here was beauty, and the wide, free spaces of
nature, where every law of man seemed puny, ineffectual and void. In
this unbounded, uncharted freedom the shackles of conventionality fell
from him. Here was life and here was love. He was a primitive man, and
here, before him in visible form, stood the world's desire. Barriers
there were none. A man and woman, both as vital as the morning, and love
between them. The craving heart of the eternal man rose up in Hanson,
imperatively urging him to claim his own.

He drew his hand across his brow almost dazedly. "Whew!" he muttered,
"I kind of remember when I was a kid that my mother used to tell me
about the Garden of Eden. I thought it was