“I wish I could.”  He shook his head, while the amusement played gently at the corners of his mouth.  “I know all about a team of huskies, and it doesn’t make much difference what I have under a saddle, but these kittens in harness are rather out of my line.”

“Then trust yourself to me; please do.  I used to drive just such a pair.”

“Oh, but your hands couldn’t stand this, and those gloves would be ribbons in half an hour.”

“They are heavier than they look; besides, there are the shops at Wenatchee!” As if this settled the matter she said:  “But we must change places.  Now.”  She slipped into his seat as he rose, and took the reins dexterously, with a tightening grip, in her hands.  “Whoa, whoa, Nip!” Her voice deepened a little.  “Steady, Tuck, steady!  That’s right; be a man.”  There was another silent interval while he watched her handling of the team, then, “I did not know there could be a pair in all the world so like Pedro and Don Jose,” she said, and the exhilaration softened in her face.  “They were my ponies given me the birthday I was seventeen.  A long time ago—­” she sighed and flashed him a side-glance, shaking her head—­“but I shall never forget.  We lived in San Francisco, and my father and I tried them that morning in Golden Gate park.  The roads were simply perfect, and the sea beach at low tide was like a hardwood floor.  After that we drove for the week-end to Monterey, then through the redwoods to Santa Cruz and everywhere.”  She paused reminiscently.  “Those California hotels are fine.  They pride themselves on their orchestras, and wherever we went, we found friends to enjoy the dancing evenings after table d’hote.  That was in the winter, but it was more delightful in the spring.  We drove far south then, through Menlo Park and Palo Alto, where the great meadows were vivid with alfalfa, and fields on fields were yellow with poppies or blue with lupine; on and on into the peach and almond country.  I can see those blossoming orchards now; the air was flooded with perfume.”

Her glance moved from the horses out over the sage-covered levels, and the contrast must have dropped like a curtain on her picture, for the light in her face died.  Tisdale’s look followed the road up from the plain and rested on the higher country; his eyes gathered their far-seeing gaze.  He had been suddenly reminded of Weatherbee.  It was in those California orchards he had spent his early life.  He had known that scent of the blossoming almond; those fields of poppies and lupine had been his playground when he was a child.  It was at the university at Palo Alto that he had taken his engineering course; and it was at one of those gay hotels, on a holiday and through some fellow student, he had met the woman who had spoiled his life.

The moment passed.  One of the horses broke, and instantly the driver was alert.  And while she alternately admonished and upbraided, with a firm manipulation of the reins, the humor began to play again in Tisdale’s face.  They were approaching the point where the road met the highway from Ellensburg, and in the irrigated sections that began to divide the unreclaimed land, harvesters were reaping and binding; from a farther field came the noise of a threshing machine; presently, as the bays turned into the thoroughfare, the way was blocked by a great flock of sheep.