et, or even a college man, they would
have gone to tucking snakes into my blankets and dropping _chili
bravos_ into my beans until they got a rise out of me, sure. I learned
that much before I ever came up here. But I've got a little place I
call my garden--up in the canyon, above Hidden Water--and sometimes I
sneak off up there, and write. Would you like to see a poem I wrote up
there? All right, you can have the rest some other time." He stepped
into the storeroom, extracted a little bundle from his war bag, and
then they passed on up the valley together.

The canyon of the Alamo is like most Arizona stream beds, a strait-jacket
of rocky walls, opening out at intervals into pocket-like valleys,
such as the broad and fertile flat which lay below Hidden Water. On
either side of the stream the banks rise in benches, each a little
higher and broader and more heavily covered: the first pure sand, laid
on by the last freshet; the next grown over with grass and weeds; the
next bushed up with baby willows and arrow weed; and then, the high
bench, studded with mesquite and _palo verdes_; and at the base of
the solid rim perhaps a higher level, strewn with the rocks which time
and the elements have hurled down from the cliff, and crested with
ancient trees. Upon such a high bench stood the Dos S ranch house,
with trails leading off up and down the flat or plunging down the bank,
the striated cliff behind it and the water-torn valley below.

Up the canyon a deep-worn path led along the base of the bluff; and as
the two best friends followed along its windings Hardy pointed out the
mysteries of the land: strange trees and shrubs, bristling with
thorns; cactus in its myriad forms; the birds which flashed past them
or sang in the wild gladness of springtime; lizards, slipping about in
the sands or pouring from cracks in the rocks--all the curious things
which his eyes had seen and his mind taken note of in the long days of
solitary riding, and which his poet's soul now interpreted into a
higher meaning for the woman who could understand. So intent were they
upon the wonders of that great display that Lucy hardly noticed where
they were, until the trail swung abruptly in toward the cliff and they
seemed to be entering a cleft in the solid rock.

"Where do we go now?" she asked, and Hardy laughed at her confusion.

"This is the gate to Hidden Water," he said, lowering his voice to its
old-time poetic cadence. "And strait is the wa