Harriet was silent a moment, slowly putting this picture in place of the one imagination had painted. "But won't the cows and sheep get into the garden, spoil the hay or something?"
Over Rob's sunburned face came an embarrassed smile. "Sorry to say there isn't any garden—yet."
"Oh!... Then you haven't a real farm?"
"No, indeed. Not what Easterners would call a farm, but it's worth a lot. It's this way. You see those hills we're climbing up to? Well, my place is over on the other side of them, a quarter section of government land that looks about like this; covered with sagebrush and bunch grass, but I've got some good springs. That's what makes my land worth something. There are thousands of acres of government land like this open to homesteaders, but worthless because there's no water. So the man who owns water, by fencing it, keeps stock away and controls the range near him. All this government land is free pasture; but it's no good without water. There is water—small springs and streams—scattered through the hills, enough to keep a little place, forty acres or so. Those are what people from the East keep coming in and taking up. Men will homestead so long as they can find water, for there's plenty of good land."
"I see," Harriet said slowly, gazing ahead over the interminable miles of gray-green brush and bright, new, wild grass to the jagged, black lava summit of the foothills. "But why didn't you take some land down here?" she asked, with a gesture toward the green-and-gold oasis made by the irrigated land around them.
"Oh, this costs more. The land is cheap but the irrigation water is brought in and you have to pay a lot for that. Besides, this isn't a stock country and that's what I'm after. A fellow ought to make good with all that free range."
Harriet made no answer and for several minutes they rode in silence, the creak of the wagon suggesting many things.
"I meant to tell you all this when I wrote to you," Rob began abruptly. "But honestly, Harry, there was so much that was more important to say that I forgot about the tent and how many miles to the next ranch and so on. I'm so used to living that way that I didn't realize how you might take it. As soon as mother wrote about your eyes, and how discouraged you were at having to give up teaching, I sat down and wrote right off the bat for you to come. It seemed as if it would be the real thing to have you out here this first year on the place. It'll be more like camping than farming. I can't raise a crop until the land's cleared and we ought to get time for lots of fishing and shooting trips up into the Sawtooth forest. The climate is great—not a drop of rain for months at a time. You'll like it, I'm sure. Still, if you don't you can go back any time."
"Of course I'll like it," Harriet, or "Harry," as Rob had always called her, said hurriedly, for she had caught the note of disappointment in her brother's voice and felt a prick of self-reproach at being so critical when Rob had thought only of the benefit to her and the happiness it would be for both of them at being together again.