So great was Hanson’s satisfaction at this news that he had difficulty in concealing it, but Mrs. Gallito was not an observant person, fortunately, and, hastily changing the subject, he again expressed his thanks and departed.

He left the next morning for Los Angeles to the regret of his benefactress, Jimmy and the station agent.

CHAPTER VIII

The train which bore Pearl and her father to Colina had already completed its smooth progress through smiling foot hills and had begun a steep and winding ascent among wild gorges and great overhanging rocks before she noticed the change.

For the greater part of the journey she had sat motionless, huddled in a corner of the seat, a thick veil covering her face; but now she began to observe the physical changes in the landscape with a somber satisfaction, and, for the first time, accepted the mountains listlessly, almost gratefully, instead of rebelliously.  In truth any change was grateful to her; she did not want to think of the desert or be reminded of it, and this transition, so marked, so sharply defined as to make the brief railway journey from the plains below seem the passage to another world, was especially welcome.

The human desire for change is rooted in the conviction, a vain and deceptive one, that an entirely different environment must include or create a new world of thought and emotion.  So for once the Pearl’s desire was for the hills.  She who had ever exulted in the wide, free spaces of the desert, who had found the echo of her own heart in its eternal mutation, its luring illusions, its mystery and its beauty, now turned to the austere, shadowed, silent mountains as if begging them to enfold her and hold her and hide her.

It was dark when they reached Colina, but a station wagon awaited them and in this they drove through the village, a straggling settlement, the narrow plateau permitting only two streets, both of them continuations of the mountain roads, and surrounded by high mountains.  Scattering lights showed here and there from lamps shining through cabin windows, but the silence, differing in kind if not in degree from the desert silence, was only broken at this hour of the night by the desolate, mocking bark of the coyotes.

Clear of the village, the horses turned and began to mount the hill which led to Gallito’s isolated cabin.  Their progress was necessarily slow, for the road was rough and full of deep ruts.  The velvety blackness of a mountain night was all about them and even the late spring air seemed icy cold.  Pearl had begun to shiver in spite of her wraps when the light from a cabin window gleamed across the road and the driver pulled up his horses.

“Somebody’s waiting for you,” said the driver.

“Yes, Saint Harry,” answered Gallito.  “He’s getting supper for us.”

The door, however, was not opened for them and it was not until the driver had turned his horses down the hill that they heard a bolt withdrawn.  Then Gallito pushed in and Pearl followed, stepping wearily across the threshold.