serious than I reckoned. But I've got the plan.
Do you know what I'm going to do?--I'm going to plant eucalyptus all
over it. They'll hold it. I'll plant them thick as grass, so that
even a hungry rabbit can't squeeze between them; and when they get
their roots agoing, nothing in creation will ever move that dirt again."

"Why, is it as bad as that?"

He shook his head.

"Nothing exciting. But I'd sure like to see any blamed old slide get
the best of me, that's all. I'm going to seal that slide down so that
it'll stay there for a million years. And when the last trump sounds,
and Sonoma Mountain and all the other mountains pass into nothingness,
that old slide will be still a-standing there, held up by the roots."

He passed his arm around her and pulled her down on his knees.

"Say, little woman, you sure miss a lot by living here on the
ranch--music, and theatres, and such things. Don't you ever have a
hankering to drop it all and go back?"

So great was his anxiety that he dared not look at her, and when she
laughed and shook her head he was aware of a great relief. Also, he
noted the undiminished youth that rang through that same old-time
boyish laugh of hers.

"Say," he said, with sudden fierceness, "don't you go fooling around
that slide until after I get the trees in and rooted. It's mighty
dangerous, and I sure can't afford to lose you now."

He drew her lips to his and kissed her hungrily and passionately.

"What a lover!" she said; and pride in him and in her own womanhood was
in her voice.

"Look at that, Dede." He removed one encircling arm and swept it in a
wide gesture over the valley and the mountains beyond. "The Valley of
the Moon--a good name, a good name. Do you know, when I look out over
it all, and think of you and of all it means, it kind of makes me ache
in the throat, and I have things in my heart I can't find the words to
say, and I have a feeling that I can almost understand Browning and
those other high-flying poet-fellows. Look at Hood Mountain there,
just where the sun's striking. It was down in that crease that we
found the spring."

"And that was the night you didn't milk the cows till ten o'clock," she
laughed. "And if you keep me here much longer, supper won't be any
earlier than it was that night."

Both arose from the bench, and Daylight caught up the milk-pail from
the nail by the door. He paused a moment longer to look out over the
valley.

"It's sure g