As the campers ate their ham and eggs coyotes yodeled off in the dimly outlined foothills. The camp was by a foothill spring, where a watering trough had been set up; and over it tall cottonwoods spread their leafy comfort. To the east, and slightly below them, the night wind rehearsed the never finished dramas of the wastelands in the daggers of the yucca palms. Above them towered the mountains, the old men of the earth, symbols of wisdom and understanding, forbidding and grim to those who love them not, friendly and tolerant to those who do. And over all lay that uncompromising hush that throttles the souls of men who cannot think, but which, to those who are masters of their minds, is like the touch of a mother’s hand at bedtime.
They were silent, these two who sat beside the tiny greasewood fire. They felt their insignificance and lack of power, and still were unafraid. The fire was not between them now, for the Adam had risen to offer the weary mules more water, and when he returned he sat beside the Eve. And then, somehow, his arm stole round her and he buried his lips in her bronze-gold hair.
“Shanty Madge,” he whispered, “I love you.”
“I know it,” said Madge. “But—but I didn’t ride down here for this. You—you shouldn’t have taken advantage, Joshua. No other man with your natural refinement would have taken this situation to broach such a subject. I might have known. It’s because you’re so—well, I guess innocent is the word—no, unsophisticated.”
“But this is the first time I’ve been alone with you,” he pleaded naïvely. “It was the night, and the mountains, and the desert. They—they made me say it. They told me that you and I were the only people in the world. What could I do?... Madge, you love me, don’t you?”
A long silence set in after his words. Unseen bullbats, sailing about in the air above them, swooped down on luckless insects and their wings went bur-r-r-r. A frog, coldly comfortable in the drip under the water trough, croaked his approbation of all things earthly. A mule, his stomach stuffed with hay, lay down with a thump, and heaved a sigh of satisfaction.
“Sometimes I think I do,” said Shanty Madge. “And then again I think I don’t. All women are like that, I guess. I—I— Really, Joshua, you shouldn’t have—have told me that—to-night.”
“I know it,” he replied. “But I couldn’t help it, Madge. Do you think you’ll love me when you know me better? I’ve loved you since you were eleven years old. Do you think you will, Madge?”
“I—perhaps. I think so. I mean I don’t know. You must—you must take your arm away, Joshua. I’m going to take my blankets over there on the hillside and go to bed.”
Obediently he released her and stood erect.