ten in the past had he left things unsaid, or said them wrong.
Perhaps Lucy would understand the better and prize it for its faults.
At last, just as it was, he sent it off, and so it came to her hand.

A PRAYER FOR RAIN

Upon this blasted rock, O Sun, behold
Our humble prayer for rain--and here below
A tribute from the thirsty stream, that rolled
Bank-full in flood, but now is sunk so low
Our old men, tottering, yet may stride acrost
And babes run pattering where the wild waves tossed.

The grass is dead upon the stem, O Sun!
The lizards pant with heat--they starve for flies--
And they for grass--and grass for rain! Yea, none
Of all that breathe may face these brazen skies
And live, O Sun, without the touch of rain.
Behold, thy children lift their hands--in vain!

Drink up the water from this _olla's_ brim
And take the precious corn here set beside--
Then summon thy dark clouds, and from the rim
Of thy black shield strike him who hath defied
Thy power! Appease thy wrath, Great Sun--but give
Ah, give the touch of rain to those that live!

As it had been a thousand years before, so it was that day at Hidden
Water. The earth was dead, it gave forth nothing; the sky was clean
and hard, without a cloud to soften its asperity. Another month and
the cattle would die; two months and the water would fail; then in the
last agonies of starvation and thirst the dissolution would come--the
Four Peaks would be a desert. Old Don Pablo was right, the world was
drying up. Chihuahua and Sonora were parched; all Arizona lay stricken
with the drought; in California the cattle were dying on the ranges,
and in Texas and New Mexico the same. God, what a thing--to see the
great earth that had supported its children for ages slowly dying for
water, its deserts first, and then its rivers, and then the
pine-topped mountains that gave the rivers birth! Yet what was there
for a man to do but take care of his own and wait? The rest was in the
hands of God.

On the first morning that Hardy took his axe and went down to the
river he found a single bunch of gaunted cattle standing in the shade
of the big mesquites that grew against Lookout Point--a runty cow
with her two-year-old and yearling, and a wobbly calf with a cactus
joint stuck across his nose. His mothe