“I’ll certainly ride down to see you,” he assured them again.

“And perhaps, being an engineer, you’ll show us why the water doesn’t run downhill in our bean patch, as it ought to do,” Imogene Martin remarked.

Bryant laughed and nodded agreement.

“You’ll find that it’s your eyes, and not the water, that have been playing tricks,” he said.  “Ground levels and ditch grades are deceiving things close to the mountains, because the latter tilt one’s natural line of vision.  That’s why water seems to run uphill when you look toward the range.  I’ll soon fix your ditch line when I set an instrument in your bean patch and sight through it once or twice.  The water will behave after that, I promise you.”

They continued to chat of this and of the failing of Sarita Creek, until the automobile that Bryant had earlier sighted shot into view on the northern bank of the creek, whence at decreased speed it descended into the bottom and ground its way across through sand and gravel.  Driving the hooded car was a man of about thirty years, of slim figure and with a pale olive skin that betrayed an admixture of American and Mexican blood.  Beside him in the front seat sat a girl whose clear pink complexion made plain that in her was no mingling of races; her hat held by a streaming blue veil and her form incased in a silk dust coat.  The tonneau was occupied by two men:  one an American with a van dyke beard sprinkled with gray, the other a short, stout, swarthy Mexican, whose sweeping white moustache was in marked contrast to his coffee-coloured face.

The car, with radiator steaming and hissing, was stopped at a spot close to where Lee Bryant and his companions stood.  The young man at the wheel, unlatching the door, stepped out.

“I’ll bet the stop-cock of the radiator is open,” he addressed the girl with the blue veil, “or the engine wouldn’t be so hot.”  After making an examination of the faucet, he returned to the door and procured a folding canvas bucket, saying, “That’s the trouble, and the radiator is empty.”

But the young lady scarcely heeded him.  She had loosened the blue veil knotted at her throat and pushed it back from her cheeks to free them to the air; she sat regarding with interested eyes the group of three standing a few paces off by the horses.  In her gaze, too, there was a faint curiosity, as if she wondered who the persons might be, and what they were doing here, and of what they had been conversing when interrupted.  An exceedingly lovely girl she was, as the engineer had instantly perceived; her features molded in soft lines and curves that enchanted, a tint like that of peach petals in her cheeks, with warm, sensitive lips and brown, shining eyes—­a radiant, intelligent face.  Against the background of the place, the creek bed of sand and stones and the banks fringed with dusty sagebrush, she glowed with the freshness of a desert rose.

The driver of the car took a step toward Bryant, extending the bucket.