He wondered why he never had cut
loose and gone to the Fatherland. Some subconscious sense of obligation
to his own country, he supposed. And yet, he thought bitterly what a
fool he had been! Surely there could be no passion, not even the love
for women, as deep-rooted, as overwhelming and as racially right as a
man's desire to express his dreams. And that expression was denied him
in his own country unless he put up a fight that depleted his creative
force, surely by half.

He sighed heavily and yet his thoughts returned to the little new power
plant with a vague heart warming as though already it spelled home to
him.

Toward sundown, a curiously picturesque group passed them on the trail.
Half a dozen squaws, with bare black heads and capes of red bandannas
sewed together, were plodding toward town laden with ollas. Roger pulled
up his team and called to them. Dick had told him to buy one of the
great Indian water jars at his first opportunity.

"Will you sell me one?" he asked.

The oldest squaw nodded and held up a fine two gallon jar. It was just
the color of the desert sand and was ornamented with swastikas and
triangles in lines of vivid black.

"How much?" asked Roger.

"Eight bits," she said.

Roger dropped a dollar into her slender brown palm. The squaw flashed
white teeth at him and a younger woman pressed forward holding up an
olla no bigger than a teacup, a duplicate in design of the one he had
just bought.

"I'll take that for Felicia," he murmured. "How much?"

"Two bits."

He tossed her the quarter. "You make 'em camp up there?" asked the old
squaw.

"Yes," replied Roger. "Come and call on us, ladies."

"We bring 'em baskets, maybe," replied the squaw.

Roger nodded and started the horses on, looking back from time to time
for pure pleasure in the beauty of those scarlet fluttering capes.

They reached the camp about ten o'clock and were vociferously welcomed
by Ernest, who, before taking the horses up to the corral, insisted on
showing them his day's work.

"Nothing doing on the carpenter's bench," he said, flashing the
"lightning bug" toward the site of the engine house. "Look here. Dick
came over right after breakfast and we were hard at this all day."

All the lumber in the camp had been requisitioned to make adobe molds.
"We mixed the adobe with that clutter of broken hay that the glass came
in," explained Ernest. "Dick says the Mexicans use stable scrapings,
but I couldn't st