With that Belding appeared in the doorway, and finding the operation concluded, called them in to supper.  Dick had the use of only one arm, and he certainly was keenly aware of the shy, silent girl across the table; but in spite of these considerable handicaps he eclipsed both hungry cowboys in the assault upon Mrs. Belding’s bounteous supper.  Belding talked, the cowboys talked more or less.  Mrs. Belding put in a word now and then, and Dick managed to find brief intervals when it was possible for him to say yes or no.  He observed gratefully that no one round the table seemed to be aware of his enormous appetite.

After supper, having a favorable opportunity when for a moment no one was at hand, Dick went out through the yard, past the gardens and fields, and climbed the first knoll.  From that vantage point he looked out over the little hamlet, somewhat to his right, and was surprised at its extent, its considerable number of adobe houses.  The overhanging mountains, ragged and darkening, a great heave of splintered rock, rather chilled and affronted him.

Westward the setting sun gilded a spiked, frost-colored, limitless expanse of desert.  It awed Gale.  Everywhere rose blunt, broken ranges or isolated groups of mountains.  Yet the desert stretched away down between and beyond them.  When the sun set and Gale could not see so far, he felt a relief.

That grand and austere attraction of distance gone, he saw the desert nearer at hand—­the valley at his feet.  What a strange gray, somber place!  There was a lighter strip of gray winding down between darker hues.  This he realized presently was the river bed, and he saw how the pools of water narrowed and diminished in size till they lost themselves in gray sand.  This was the rainy season, near its end, and here a little river struggled hopelessly, forlornly to live in the desert.  He received a potent impression of the nature of that blasted age-worn waste which he had divined was to give him strength and work and love.

V

A DESERT ROSE

Belding assigned Dick to a little room which had no windows but two doors, one opening into the patio, the other into the yard on the west side of the house.  It contained only the barest necessities for comfort.  Dick mentioned the baggage he had left in the hotel at Casita, and it was Belding’s opinion that to try to recover his property would be rather risky; on the moment Richard Gale was probably not popular with the Mexicans at Casita.  So Dick bade good-by to fine suits of clothes and linen with a feeling that, as he had said farewell to an idle and useless past, it was just as well not to have any old luxuries as reminders.  As he possessed, however, not a thing save the clothes on his back, and not even a handkerchief, he expressed regret that he had come to Forlorn River a beggar.

“Beggar hell!” exploded Belding, with his eyes snapping in the lamplight.  “Money’s the last thing we think of out here.  All the same, Gale, if you stick you’ll be rich.”