But the arroyo proved to be dry and hot, a gash in the dry bosom of the earth, its bottom strewn with smooth pebbles and sand and a very sparse, unattractive vegetation, stunted and harsh.  And it was almost as hot here as on San Juan’s street; into the shade crept the heat-waves of the dry, scorched air.

Led by the line of cottonwoods she found a little path and followed it, experiencing a vague relief to have the town at her back.  She knew that distances deceived the eye in this bleak land, and yet she thought that before dark she could reach the hills, where perhaps there were a few languid flowers and pools, and return just tired enough to eat and go to sleep.  She rather thought that she would postpone her call on the Engles until to-morrow.

“It’s manana-land, after all,” she told herself with a quick smile.

Half an hour later she found a spot where the trees stood in a denser growth, looking greener, more vigorous . . . less thirsty.  She could fancy the great roots, questing far downward through the layers of dry soil, thrusting themselves almost with a human, passionate eagerness into the water they had found.  Here she threw herself down, lying upon her back, gazing up through the branches and leaves.

Never until now had she known the meaning of utter stillness.  She saw a bird, a poor brown, unkempt little being; it had no song to offer the silence, and in a little flew away listlessly.  She had seen a rabbit, a big, gaunt, uncomely wretch, disappearing silently among the clumps of brush.

Her spirit, essentially bright and happy, had striven hard with a new form of weariness all day.  Not only was she coming into another land than that which she knew and understood, she was entering another phase of her life.  She had chosen voluntarily, without advice or suggestion; she had had her reasons and they had seemed sufficient; they were still sufficient.  She had chosen wisely; she held to that, her judgment untroubled.  But that stubbornly recurrent sense that with the old landmarks she had abandoned the old life, that both in physical fact and in spiritual and mental actuality she was at the threshold of an unguessed, essentially different life, was disquieting.  There is no getting away from an old basic truth that a man’s life is so strongly influenced as almost to be moulded by his environment; there was uneasiness in the thought that here one’s existence might grow to resemble his habitat, taking on the gray tone and monotony and bleak barrenness of this sun-smitten land.

Yielding a little already to the command laid upon breathing nature hereabouts, she was lying still, her hands lax, her thoughts taking unto themselves something of the character of the listless, songless brown bird’s flight.  She had come here to-day following in the footsteps of other men and a few women.  Her own selection of San Juan was explicable; the thing to wonder at was what had given the hardihood to the first men to stop here and make houses and then homes?  Later she would know; the one magic word of the desert lands:  water.  For San Juan, standing midway between the railroad and the more tempting lands beyond the mountains, had found birth because here was a mud-hole for cradle; down under the sand were fortuitous layers of impervious clay cupping to hold much sweet water.