yellow; the
ground, parched, cracked, and dry, of a cheerless brown. By the roadside
the dust lay thick and grey, and, on either hand, stretching on toward
the horizon, losing itself in a mere smudge in the distance, ran the
illimitable parallels of the wire fence. And that was all; that and the
burnt-out blue of the sky and the steady shimmer of the heat.

The silence was infinite. After the harvest, small though that harvest
had been, the ranches seemed asleep. It was as though the earth, after
its period of reproduction, its pains of labour, had been delivered of
the fruit of its loins, and now slept the sleep of exhaustion.

It was the period between seasons, when nothing was being done, when the
natural forces seemed to hang suspended. There was no rain, there was no
wind, there was no growth, no life; the very stubble had no force even
to rot. The sun alone moved.

Toward two o'clock, Presley reached Hooven's place, two or three grimy
frame buildings, infested with a swarm of dogs. A hog or two wandered
aimlessly about. Under a shed by the barn, a broken-down seeder lay
rusting to its ruin. But overhead, a mammoth live-oak, the largest tree
in all the country-side, towered superb and magnificent. Grey bunches
of mistletoe and festoons of trailing moss hung from its bark. From its
lowest branch hung Hooven's meat-safe, a square box, faced with wire
screens.

What gave a special interest to Hooven's was the fact that here was the
intersection of the Lower Road and Derrick's main irrigating ditch, a
vast trench not yet completed, which he and Annixter, who worked the
Quien Sabe ranch, were jointly constructing. It ran directly across
the road and at right angles to it, and lay a deep groove in the field
between Hooven's and the town of Guadalajara, some three miles farther
on. Besides this, the ditch was a natural boundary between two divisions
of the Los Muertos ranch, the first and fourth.

Presley now had the choice of two routes. His objective point was the
spring at the headwaters of Broderson Creek, in the hills on the
eastern side of the Quien Sabe ranch. The trail afforded him a short cut
thitherward. As he passed the house, Mrs. Hooven came to the door, her
little daughter Hilda, dressed in a boy's overalls and clumsy boots, at
her skirts. Minna, her oldest daughter, a very pretty girl, whose
love affairs were continually the talk of all Los Muertos, was visible
through a window of the house, busy at th