t the least. One earned ten times over every bit one got of a
free government homestead. For men it was bad enough; but for woman,
for girls like these, who had probably come from the East in trustful
ignorance and with rosy visions, the homestead venture impressed him
not only as pitiful but as tragic.

"I'll certainly ride down to see you," he assured them again.

"And perhaps, being an engineer, you'll show us why the water doesn't
run downhill in our bean patch, as it ought to do," Imogene Martin
remarked.

Bryant laughed and nodded agreement.

"You'll find that it's your eyes, and not the water, that have been
playing tricks," he said. "Ground levels and ditch grades are
deceiving things close to the mountains, because the latter tilt one's
natural line of vision. That's why water seems to run uphill when you
look toward the range. I'll soon fix your ditch line when I set an
instrument in your bean patch and sight through it once or twice. The
water will behave after that, I promise you."

They continued to chat of this and of the failing of Sarita Creek,
until the automobile that Bryant had earlier sighted shot into view on
the northern bank of the creek, whence at decreased speed it descended
into the bottom and ground its way across through sand and gravel.
Driving the hooded car was a man of about thirty years, of slim figure
and with a pale olive skin that betrayed an admixture of American and
Mexican blood. Beside him in the front seat sat a girl whose clear
pink complexion made plain that in her was no mingling of races; her
hat held by a streaming blue veil and her form incased in a silk dust
coat. The tonneau was occupied by two men: one an American with a van
dyke beard sprinkled with gray, the other a short, stout, swarthy
Mexican, whose sweeping white moustache was in marked contrast to his
coffee-coloured face.

The car, with radiator steaming and hissing, was stopped at a spot
close to where Lee Bryant and his companions stood. The young man at
the wheel, unlatching the door, stepped out.

"I'll bet the stop-cock of the radiator is open," he addressed the
girl with the blue veil, "or the engine wouldn't be so hot." After
making an examination of the faucet, he returned to the door and
procured a folding canvas bucket, saying, "That's the trouble, and the
radiator is empty."

But the young lady scarcely heeded him. She had loosened the blue veil
knotted at her throat and pushed it back from h