"Good," she answered. "We get off at Seven Palms. The old rancher who rents me a horse will find one for you, I'm sure."
"I'm not precisely dressed for the role," admitted Eden. "But I trust it will be all the same to the horse."
The horse didn't appear to mind. His rather dejected manner suggested that he had expected something like this. They left the tiny settlement known as Seven Palms and cantered off across the desert.
"For to admire and for to see, for to behold this world so wide," said Eden. "Never realized how very wide it was until I came down here."
"Beginning to like the desert?" the girl inquired.
"Well, there's something about it," he admitted. "It grows on you, that's a fact. I don't know that I could put the feeling into words."
"I'm sure I can't," she answered. "Oh, I envy you, coming here for the first time. If only I could look at this country again with a fresh, disinterested eye. But it's just location to me. I see all about me the cowboys, the cavalcades, the caballeros of Hollywood. Tragedies and feats of daring, rescues and escapes. I tell you, these dunes and canyons have seen more movies than Will Hays."
"Hunting locations today?" Eden asked.
"Always hunting," she sighed. "They've just sent me a new script—as new as those mountains over there. All about the rough cowpuncher and the millionaire's dainty daughter from the East—you know."
"I certainly do. Girl's fed up on those society orgies, isn't she?"
"Who wouldn't be? However, the orgies are given in full, with the swimming pool working overtime, as always. But that part doesn't concern me. It's after she comes out here, sort of hungering to meet a real man, that I must start worrying. Need I add, she meets him? Her horse runs away over the desert, and tosses her off amid the sagebrush. In the nick of time, the cowpuncher finds her. Despite their different stations, love blossoms here in the waste land. Sometimes I'm almost glad that mine is beginning to be an obsolete profession."
"Is it? How come?"
"Oh, the movies move. A few years back the location finder was a rather important person. Today most of this country has been explored and charted, and every studio is equipped with big albums full of pictures. So every time a new efficiency expert comes along—which is about once a week—and starts lopping off heads, it's the people in my line who are the first to go. In a little while we'll be as extinct as the dodo."
"You may be extinct," Eden answered. "But there the similarity between you and the dodo will stop abruptly."
The girl halted her horse. "Just a minute. I want to take a few pictures here. It looks to me like a bit of desert we haven't used yet. Just the sort of thing to thrill the shopgirls and the bookkeepers back there where the East hangs out." When she had swung again into the saddle, she added: "It isn't strange they love it, those tired people in the cities. Each one thinks—oh, if only I could go there."
"Yes, and if they got here once, they'd die of loneliness the first night," Bob Eden said. "Just pass out in agony moaning for the subway and the comics in the evening paper."
"I know they would," the girl replied. "But fortunately they'll never come."
They rode on, and the girl began to point out the various unfriendly-looking plants of the desert, naming them one by one. Arrowweed, bitter-brush, mesquite, desert plantain, catclaw, thistle-sage.
"That's a cholla," she announced. "Another variety of cactus. There are seventeen thousand in all."
"All right," Eden replied. "I'll take your word for it. You needn't name them." His head was beginning to ache with all this learning.
Presently sumac and Canterbury bell proclaimed their nearness to the canyon, and they cantered out of the desert heat into the cathedral-like coolness of the hills. In and out over almost hidden trails the horses went. Wild plum glowed on the slopes, and far below under native palms a narrow stream tinkled invitingly.
Life seemed very simple and pleasant there in Lonely Canyon, and Bob Eden felt suddenly close indeed to this lively girl with the eager eyes. All a lie that there were crowded cities. The world was new, unsullied and unspoiled, and they were alone in it.
They descended by way of a rather treacherous path and in the shelter of the palms that fringed the tiny stream, dismounted for a lunch which Paula Wendell claimed to have concealed in her knapsack.
"Wonderfully restful here," Bob Eden said.
"But you said the other day you weren't tired," the girl reminded him.
"Well, I'm not. But somehow I like this anyhow. However, I guess it isn't all a matter of geography. It's not so much the place you're in—it's who you're with. After which highly original remark, I hasten to add that I really can't eat a thing."
"You were right," she laughed. "The truth isn't in you. I know what you're thinking—I didn't bring enough for two. But these Oasis sandwiches are meant for ranchers, and one is my limit. There are four of them—I must have had a premonition. We'll divide the milk equally."
"But look here, it's your lunch. I should have thought to get something at Seven Palms."
"There's a roast beef sandwich. Try that, and maybe you won't feel so talkative."
"Well, I—am—gumph—"
"What did I tell you? Oh, the Oasis aims to fill. Milk?"
"Ashamed of myself," mumbled Eden. But he was easily persuaded.
"You haven't eaten a thing," he said finally.
"Oh, yes I have. More than I usually do. I'm one of those dainty eaters."
"Good news for Wilbur," replied Eden. "The upkeep won't be high. Though if he has any sense, he'll know that whatever the upkeep on a girl like you, it will be worth it."
"I sent him your love," said the girl.
"Is that so? Well, I'm sorry you did, in a way. I'm no hypocrite, and try as I may, I can't discover any lurking fondness for Wilbur. Oddly enough, the boy begins to annoy me."
"But you said—"
"I know. But isn't it just possible that I've overrated this freedom stuff? I'm young, and the young are often mistaken. Stop me if you've heard this one, but the more I see of you—"
"Stop. I've heard it."
"I'll bet you have. Many times."
"And my suggestion is that we get back to business. If we don't that horse of yours is going to eat too much Bermuda grass."
Through the long afternoon, amid the hot yellow dunes, the wind-blown foothills of that sandy waste, they rode back to Seven Palms by a roundabout route. The sun was sinking, the rose and gold wonder of the skies reflected on snow and glistening sand, when finally they headed for the village.
"If only I could find a novel setting for the final love scene," sighed the girl.
"Whose final love scene?"
"The cowpuncher's and the poor little rich girl's. So many times they've just wandered off into the sunset, hand in hand. Really need a little more kick in it than that."
Eden heard a clank as of a horse's hoofs on steel. His mount stumbled, and he reined it in sharply.
"What in Sam Hill's that?" he asked.
"Oh—that! It's one of the half-buried rails of the old branch road—a memento of a dream that never came true. Years ago they started to build a town over there under those cottonwoods, and the railroad laid down fifteen miles of track from the main line. A busy metropolis of the desert—that's what they meant it to be—and there's just one little old ruined house standing today. But that was the time of Great Expectations. They brought out crowds of people, and sold six hundred lots one hectic afternoon."
"And the railroad?"
"Ran