They were very happy for three years. By this time the stream had become so interested it had almost forgotten about running away. But every year it noted that a larger bit of the meadow was turned under and planted, and more and more the men made dams and ditches by which to turn the water into their gardens.
“In fact,” said the stream, “I am being made into an irrigating ditch before I have had my fling in the world. I really must make a start.”
That very winter, by the help of a great storm, the stream went roaring down the meadow, over the mesa, and so clean away, with only a track of muddy sand to show the way it had gone.
All that winter the two men brought water for drinking from a spring, and looked for the stream to come back. In the spring they hoped still, for that was the season they looked for the orchard to bear. But no fruit grew on the trees, and the seeds they planted shriveled in the earth. So by the end of summer, when they understood that the water would not come back at all, they went sadly away.
Now the Creek of Pinon Pines did not have a happy time. It went out in the world on the wings of the storm, and was very much tossed about and mixed up with other waters, lost and bewildered.
Everywhere it saw water at work, turning mills, watering fields, carrying trade, falling as hail, rain, and snow; and at the last, after many journeys it found itself creeping out from under the rocks of the same old mountain, in the Canyon of Pinon Pines.
“After all, home is best,” said the little stream to itself, and ran about in its choked channels looking for old friends.
The willows were there, but grown shabby and dying at the top; the birches were quite dead, and there was only rubbish where the white clematis had been. Even the rabbits had gone away.
The little stream ran whimpering in the meadow, fumbling at the ruined ditches to comfort the fruit trees which were not quite dead. It was very dull in those days living in the Canyon of Pinon Pines.
“But it is really my own fault,” said the stream. So it went on repairing the borders as best it could.