r and got up. His tiredness
was gone. The desert night had him. He went into the shack and took
from an old scarred trunk his fiddle, and started down the road that
passed his ranch to the south. He had not yet called on the Chandlers.

The little house was dark. Rogeen wondered if the Chandlers were
asleep. But his heart took a quicker turn; he fancied he saw something
white in the yard--the girl was also feeling the spell of the desert
night.

Then suddenly, but softly, a guitar thrummed, and a voice with the
half-wailing cadence of the Spanish took up the melody.

Bob stood still, the blood crowding his veins until his face was hot
and his whole body prickled. This was Madrigal, the Mexican Jew.

The song ended. Faintly came the clapping of hands, and the ripple of
a girl's laughter. Bob turned angrily and walked swiftly back up the
road, walked clear past his own ranch without noticing, and finally
turned aside by a clump of cottonwood trees along the levee of the main
irrigation canal. The water, a little river here, ran swiftly,
muddily, black under the desert stars. Bob lifted his fiddle and flung
it into the middle of the stream.

The heat of his anger was gone. He felt instantly cold, and infinitely
lonesome. There upon the muddy water floated away the thousand songs
of the hills--the melody, the ecstasy, the colour and light of his
early youth.

With sudden repentance he turned and dashed down the bank after the
hurrying current. The fall is rapid here, and the fiddle was already
far down the stream. He ran stumblingly, desperately, along the uneven
bank, dodging willows and arrowweed, stopping now and again to peer up
and down the stream.

It was nowhere in sight. A sort of frenzy seized him. He had a queer
fancy that in that moment of anger he had thrown away his soul--all of
him that was not bread and dollars. He must get it back--he must!
Another dash, and again he stopped on the bank. Something darker than
the current bobbed upon the muddy water. Without a moment's hesitancy
he plunged into the stream and waded waist deep into the middle of the
current.

Yes, it was his violin. Back on the bank, dripping wet, he hugged it
to him like a little girl with a doll that was lost and is found.

CHAPTER VIII

The next morning at breakfast Noah Ezekiel remarked:

"I wonder where that skunk got the money."

"What skunk and what money?" Bob was pouring sirup on a pancake,