A sudden swelling of his heart, a sudden rush of blood through his
brain, a sudden thrill of his lean strong body that seemed to extend to
the very heart of the desert, brought Roger to pause in his walking. He
gazed for a long moment at the little blue figure astride the horse, and
at the tall figure in khaki beside Dick.
The March afternoon was hot but with a clear tang that was as
exhilarating as winter frost. The range back of the ranch house was
brown where the sky line shone clear. But the gashed and eroded sides of
the mountains were filled with drifts of purple clouds that melted now
in soft blue billows into the sky, now in ragged streams of crimson into
canyons black in the distance. The little sounds of the camp were as
nothing. The pygmy figures in the alfalfa field were infinitesimal. A
new sense of the immensity of the universe poured into Roger's soul with
devastating force and for the first time in his life Roger realized his
own lack of importance.
A moment of this and then the instinct that has lifted man above the
brutes spoke in him again. He would not belong to life only through
children. He would make himself immortal through his work, work by which
men should live and think and have their being for ages to come.
With a long sigh, Roger tossed his black hair back from his face and
returned to his brick making.
CHAPTER VII
THE RUNAWAY
The three men toiled arduously for two days on the brick making. At the
end of that time the desert all about the camp was paved with adobe
brick, baking in the sun until Dick should come to start them on their
house building. On the evening of the second day, Roger tramped up to
the ranch house and proposed to Dick that they exchange work for half a
day; Roger to finish Dick's grading, while Dick instructed Gustav and
Ernest in the gentle art of adobe laying.
But Dick would not strike the bargain. "I've only an hour's work before
I'm ready to start the seeding," he said, "and I won't trust any one to
attend to that but myself. I'll just ride over to the Sun Plant in the
morning and it won't take half an hour to teach you fellows all I know
about putting up the house."
"I'm going too," said Felicia. She was sitting, cuddling her doll before
the fire, for the nights were still cool.
"Almost your bedtime, Felicia," warned Charley.
The child gave Roger an agonized look.
"I brought you a present, Felicia," he said, and pulled the tiny olla
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