Imogene Chandler was washing the breakfast dishes out under the canopy
of arrow-weed roof, where they ate summer and winter. The job was
quickly done, for the breakfast service was very abbreviated. She took
a broad-brimmed straw hat from a nail on the corner post, and swinging
it in her hand, for the sun was yet scarcely over the rim of the Red
Buttes far to the east, went out across the field to where her father
was already at work.
March is the middle of spring in the Imperial Valley and already the
grass grew thick beside the water ditches, and leaves were full grown
on the cottonwood trees. The sunlight, soft through the dewy early
morning, filled the whole valley with a yellow radiance. And out along
the water course a meadowlark sang.
The girl threw up her arm swinging the hat over her head. She wanted
to shout. She felt the sweeping surge of spring, the call of the wind,
the glow of the sunlight, the boundless freedom of the desert. She had
never felt so abounding in exuberant hope. It had been hard work to
hold on to this lease, a fight for bread at times. But wealth was here
in this soil and in this sun. And more than wealth. There was health
and liberty in it. No heckling social restrictions, no vapid idle
piffle at dull teas; no lugubrious pretence of burdensome duties. Here
one slept and ate and worked and watched the changing light, and
breathed the desert air and lived. It was a good world.
The girl stopped and crumbled some of the newly plowed earth under the
toe of a trim shoe. How queer that after all these hundreds and
thousands of years the stored chemicals of this land should be
released, and turned by those streams of water into streams of
wealth--fleecy cotton, luscious fruit and melons, food and clothes.
And what nice people lived out here. The Chinamen who worked in the
field, quaint and friendly and faithful. Even the Mexicans with their
less industrious and more tricky habits were warm hearted and
courteous. That serenading Madrigal was very interesting--and
handsome. He had fire in him; perhaps dangerous fire, but what a
contrast to the vapid white-collared clerks or professors in the prim
little eastern town she had known.
Of course Bob Rogeen did not like him. Imogene instinctively put up
her hand and brushed the wind-blown hair from her forehead, and smiled.
Bob was jealous.
But what a man Rogeen was! She had believed there were such men so
unobtrusively generous and chivalrous. But no one she had ever known
before was quite like Bob Rogeen. She remembered the black hair that
clustered thickly over his temples, and the whimsical twist of his
mouth, and the reticent but unafraid brown eyes.
She had thought many, many times of Rogeen, and always it seemed that
he filled in just what was wanting in this desert--warmth of human
fellowship. Always she thought of him just north over there--out of
sight but very near. True he came very rarely. She wrinkled her
forehead and rubbed the end of her nose with a forefinger. Why was
that? Why didn't he come oftener? Wasn't she interesting? Didn't he
approve of her?
A reassuring warmth came up to her face and neck. Yes, she believed he
did. His eyes looked it when he thought she was not noticing.
[Illustration: Holy Joe shanghaies Imogene's ranchmen and discovers
Percy--a willing ally.]
She reached down and picked up a stick and threw it with a quick,
impulsive gesture into the water and watched it float on down the
ditch. Yes, she was pretty sure Rogeen liked her--but how much? Oh,
well--she took a dozen girlish skips along the path, her hair flying
about her face, and her heart dancing with the early sun on the green
fields before her and the brown desert beyond--oh, well, time would
tell.
"Daddy," she had come up to where the little bald-headed man was
plowing--throwing up the ridges, "don't you like spring?"
The ex-professor stopped the team, looked at her through his glasses,
then glanced around the field at the grass and weeds and early plants
that were up.
"I believe," he said, mildly, "that we are approaching the vernal
equinox. But I had not observed before the gradual unfoldment of
vegetation which we have come to associate in our minds with spring."
"Oh, daddy, daddy," she laughed deliciously, and leaned over the handle
of the plow and pulled his ear. "You funny, funny man. Why, it's
spring, it's spring! Don't you feel it in your bones? Don't you love
the whole world and everybody?"
Professor Chandler seriously contemplated the skyline, where the
sunlight showed red on the distant buttes. "I should say, daughter,
that it does give one a feeling of kinship with nature. I fancy the
early Greeks felt it."
"I fancy they did," said Imogene, "especially if they were in love."
"In love?" The professor brought his spectacles around to his daughter
questioningly.
"With everything," she said, laughing. "Daddy, I'm awfully glad we are
back to the soil--instead of back to the Greeks."
"I am not discontent with our environment." And the little professor
plowed on. She smiled maternally at his back. And then two swift
tears sprang to her eyes. Tender tears.
"Dear old daddy. It has been good for him. He would have dried up and
blown away in that little old college."
Returning to the shack she was still bareheaded. She loved the feel of
the sun, and the few freckles it brought only added a piquancy to her
face.
"I wonder if he"--she meant Rogeen--"will make it go this year. I hope
he has a good crop. It makes one feel that maybe after all things are
as they ought to be when a man like he succeeds. Wonder what his plans
are?"
Then as she sat down in the shade and began a little very necessary
mending:
"I do wish he'd come over--and tell me some more about cotton
crops--and himself."