"I suppose a dewdrop should be meal enough, but I hope it's at least bacon and eggs and pancakes."
"With cereal and cream first," Anne laughed.
Roger squeezed her hand. "I'm awfully glad, Mrs. Barton, that you suggested marrying me."
"Always take my suggestions. You'll find they will always be right, even if I do say so," Anne teased.
"Not a doubt of it." Roger stopped and took Anne in his arms. Tenderness beyond passion was in his hold. "Princess—it's—so good to be alive and love you."
Day after day, deeper and deeper in their understanding, Anne and Roger wandered in the hills. Icy streams tumbled roaring through granite gorges, suddenly emerged to wide sunny meadows, and spread in flat stillness. The fat, black earth of the lower mountains thinned to sheer granite slopes, where sparse trees grew miraculously in tiny crevices, their roots hanging like ropes from the cliffs.
They sat by the lake, which, beginning a hundred yards from the ranch, stretched to the blue distance of the hills. The lake fascinated Anne. No fish swam in it, no birds alighted upon it, the wind seemed scarcely to ruffle its terrible stillness. No one drank of its water. No one swam in it. No craft sailed it. In its own brackish depths, it hid the reason of its existence. No one knew how many centuries it had lain there, acrid, wide, as indifferent to man's need as man to its uselessness. "The lake," the rancher and his wife spoke as if it were a person who had committed some unmentionable crime and been banished from human intercourse because of it. There were legends that, ages ago, the Indians had worshipped a god living far out in its bitter depth. But now, they were afraid of it. The Christian God had stolen their god and given them fear. But the lake was as indifferent to this Christ as it had been to their pagan deity. It needed neither god nor man.
They talked and were still. They were very near.
At the end of the second week, the first sheep-man came. Early in the morning, Anne and Roger were waked by the baaing of the lambs, a piercing wail of terror, as of children pursued by a malignant force. They went quickly to the window. Hundreds of gray, dusty sheep were coming up the road. Every now and then they stopped to nibble the thick, sweet grass. But the dogs, at a call from the shepherd, ran among them and with uncanny knowledge, drove them on. Bleating, they obeyed. The rancher hurried out and opened the gate. The dogs began to maneuver them through. Behind the band, the shepherd came, carrying a lamb in his arms.
"A hierarchy of authority," Roger said. "The shepherd directs the dogs, the dogs drive the sheep."