He nodded thoughtfully, but remained silent. Suddenly Helen drew rein. Before her was a horned toad, peculiarly a part of the desert, blinking up at them wickedly. He drew rein and followed her eyes.
“A horned toad, isn’t it?”
Helen shook her head. “Are you interested in such things?” she inquired.
“In a way–yes,” he affirmed, doubtfully. “Though I can’t see good reason for their existence.” His eyes twinkled. “Can you?”
Helen was thoughtful a moment. “Well, no,” she admitted, finally. “Yet there must be a good reason. Reptiles must live for some good purpose. All things do–don’t you think?” Then, before he could make a rejoinder, she went on: “I sometimes feel that these creatures were originally placed here to encourage other and higher forms of life to come and locate in the desert–were placed here, in other words, to prove that life is possible in all this desolation.”
He glanced at her. “Certainly it has worked out that way, at any rate,” he ventured. “Good old Genesis!” He smiled.
“It seems to have,” she agreed, thoughtfully. “Because you and I are here. But it goes a long way back–to Genesis–yes. Following the initial placing, other and higher organisms, finding in their migratory travels this evidence of life, accepted the encouragement to remain, and did remain, feeding upon the life found here in the shape of toads and lizards–to carry the theory forward a step–even as the toads and lizards–to carry it back again–fed upon the insects which they in their turn found here. Then along came other forms of life, higher in the cosmic setting, and these, finding encouragement in the presence of the earlier arrivals, fed upon them and remained. And so on up, to the forerunners of our present-day animals–coyotes and prairie-dogs. And after these, primitive man–to find encouragement in the coyotes and prairie-dogs–and to feed upon them and remain. Then after primitive man, the second type–the brown man; and after the brown man, the red man; and after the red man, the white man–all with an eye to sustenance, and finding it, and remaining.”
Stephen’s eyes swept around the desert absently. He knew–this young man–that he was in the presence of a personality. For he could not help but draw comparisons between the young woman beside him and the young women of his acquaintance in the East. While he had found Eastern girls vivacious, and attractive with a kind of surface charm, never had he known one to take so quiet and unassuming an outlook upon so broad a theme. It was the desert, he told himself. Here beside him was a type unknown to him, and one so different from any he had as yet met with, he felt himself ill at ease in her presence–a thing new to him, too–and which in itself gave him cause to marvel. Yes, it was the desert. It must be the desert! In this slender girl beside him he saw a person of insight and originality, a girl assuredly not more than twenty years of age, attractive, and thoroughly feminine. How ever did they do it?
He harked back in his thoughts to her theory. And he dwelt not so much upon the theory itself as upon her manner of advancing it. Running back over these things, recalling the music of her voice, together with her spoken musings, he came to understand why, with that first encounter, he had found himself almost instantly curious concerning desert folk. Not that he had known why at the time, or had given that phase of it consideration. He did remember that he had been strongly impressed by the way she had managed her bolting horse. But aside from that, there had been something in her personality, an indefinable calm and sureness, a grip upon herself, that he had felt the very first moment. Undoubtedly all this had flicked him into a novel curiosity. He pulled himself together with an effort.
“I like your theory,” he answered, smiling. “And it must be true, because I am told horned toads are fast disappearing. Evidently they have served their purpose. But tell me,” he concluded, “what is becoming of them? Where are they going?”