ed brightly. "I am going that way to see a wild
tract in a certain pocket of the valley. I wonder"--she started and turned
a little to give him her direct look--"if by any possibility it could be
brought under your Peshastin ditch?"

He shook his head. "Hardly. I wouldn't count on it. Most of those pockets
back in the benches are too high. Some of them are cut off by ridges from
one to six thousand feet. Maybe your agent will talk of pumping water from
the canal, but don't you bite. It means an expensive electric plant and
several miles of private flume. And perhaps he will show you how easy it's
going to be to tap the new High Line that's building down the Wenatchee
and on to the plateau across the Columbia thirty miles. But it's a big
proposition to finance; in places they'll have to bore through granite
cliffs; and if the day ever comes when it's finished far enough to benefit
your tract, I doubt the water would reach your upper levels. And say, what
is the use of letting him talk you into buying a roof garden when, for one
or two hundred dollars an acre, you can still get in on the ground floor?"

She did not answer. Her eyes were turned again to the desert, and a sudden
weariness clouded her face. In that moment she seemed older, and the
strong light brought out two lines delicately traced at the corners of her
beautiful mouth that had not been apparent before.

"But, say," the young man went on eagerly, "let me tell you a little more
about the Vale. It's sheltered in there. The mountains wall it in, and you
don't get the fierce winds off the Columbia desert. The snow never drifts;
it lies flat as a carpet all winter. And we don't have late frosts; never
have to stay up all night watching smudge pots to keep the trees warm. And
those steep slopes catch the early spring sun and cast it off like big
reflectors; things start to grow before winter is gone. And I don't know
what makes it so, but the soil on those low Wenatchee benches is a little
different from any other. It looks like the Almighty made his hot beds
there, all smooth and level, and just forgot to turn the water on. And
take a project like the Peshastin, run by a strong company with plenty of
capital; the man along the canal only has to pay his water rate, so much
an irrigated acre; nothing towards the plant, nothing for flume
construction and repairs. And, say, I don't want to bore you, I don't want
to influence you too far, but I hate to see a woman--a