in' on the Snake River, in
southern Idaho. There was sage-brush, an' sand, an' stars, an' nothin'
else. An engineerin' fellow, who he was I dunno, rides up to the fire.
Where he comes from I dunno; I reckon his body came along the road of
the sage-brush and the sand, but his mind came by the stars. An' he
takes the handle of an ax, and draws out on the sand an irrigatin'
plan. There wasn't a house for thirty miles. An' he just asks if he
shall go ahead. An' I knows he's right, an' I says I knows he's right,
an' he goes straight off to Washington, an' now there's three thousand
people where the sage-brush was, and right on the very spot where my
campfire smoked just five years ago, a school has been opened with over
a hundred children there."

He stopped as suddenly as he began.

"There was some great work in the Gunnison canyon, was there not?"
queried Wilbur.

The old man made no reply, and the son answered the question.

"When they had to lower a man from the top into the canyon, seven
hundred feet below," he said, "Dad was the first to volunteer. I reckon,
son, there's no greater story worth the tellin' than the Uncompahgre
tunnel. And then, I ain't told nothin' about the big Washington and
Oregon valleys, where tens of thousands now have homes an' are rearin'
the finest kind of men an' women. But, as dad says, we're comin' home.
There's four centuries of our history and there's seven centuries of
Moki traditions, an' still there's nothing to tell me who the people are
who built the cliff-town where I was born. Dad, he thinks that when the
water comes, perhaps the stones will speak. I don't know, but if they
ever do, I want to be there to hear. It's the strangest, wildest place
in all the world, I think, and while it is harsh and unkindly, still
it's home. Dad's right there. These forests are all right," he added,
remembering that the boy was attached to the Forest Service, "but for
me, I want a world whose end you can't see an' where every glance leads
up."

"Do you suppose," said Wilbur, "that in the days of the cliff-dwellers,
and earlier, the 'inland empire' was densely populated?"

"Some time," the other replied slowly, "it must have been. Not far from
my cliff home is the famous Cheltro Palace, which contains over thirty
million blocks of stone."

"How big is it?" asked Wilbur.

"Well, it is four stories high, nearly five hundred feet long, an' just
half that width."

Wilbur whistled.

"My stars,"