“It is a hard world,” sighed Charlie See. “Life is first one thing and then it is a broom factory.”
They made a gay cavalcade of laughter and shining life, those four young people. They had been to show Charlie over the gristmill and the broom factory, new jewels in Garfield’s crown, and now they turned from deed to dream, rode merry for a glimpsing of to-morrow, where Hobby Lull planned a conquest more lasting than Cæsar’s. Their way led now beyond the mother ditch to lands yet unredeemed, which in the years to come would lie under a high ditch yet to be. So they said and thought. But what in truth they rode forth for to see was east of the sun and west of the moon—not to be told here. Where youth rides with youth under a singing sky the chronicle should be broad-spaced between the lines; a double story, word and silence. To what far-off divine event we move, there shall be no rapture keener than hoping time in unspoiled youth.
The embankments of the mother ditch were head-high to them as they rode. They paused on the high bridge between the desert and the sown. Behind lay the broad and level clearings, orchard, kempt steading and alfalfa; a step beyond was the raw wilderness, the yucca and the sand, dark mesquite in hummocks and mottes and clumps, a brown winding belt between the mother ditch and the first low bench land. The air came brisk and sweet; it rippled the fields to undulant shimmer of flashing purple and green and gold.
“Your ’cequia madre is sure brimful this evenin’,” remarked the guest.
“Always is—when we don’t need it. In dry weather she gets pretty low enough,” said Hobby. “Colorado people get the first whack at the water, and New Mexico takes what is left. Never high water here except at flood time. Fix that different some day. We got to fight flood and drought now, one down, another come on. Some day we’ll save the flood water. Sure! No floods, no drought. Easy as lying! Vamonos!”
The road followed the curving ditch; their voices were tuned to lipping water and the drone of bees. Lull pointed out the lines where his high ditch was to run at the base of the bench land, with flume at gully and cañon steeps. As eye and mapping hand turned toward Redgate a man came down Redgate road to meet them; a man on a Maltese horse. He rode briskly, poised, sure-swaying as ever bird on bough. Charlie See warmed to the lithe youth of him.
“There, fellow citizens,” he said, “there is what I’d call a good rider!”
As the good rider came abreast he swept off his hat. His eyes were merry; he nodded greeting and shook back a mop of blackest hair. The sun had looked upon him. He checked the blue horse in his stride—not to stop, but to slow him; he spoke to Lull in passing.
“Garfield post office?” He jerked a thumb toward the bridge; for indeed, seen across the ramparts of the ditch, there was small distinction between visible Garfield and the scattered farmsteads. “This way?”
“Yes.”