Linda stood before them, a lithe slender figure, vivid with youth and vitality.
“I am able to stand,” she said, “so of course I haven’t broken any bones. I think I am fairly well battered, but you will please to observe that there isn’t a scratch on Cotyledon, and I brought her down—at least I think it’s she—from the edge of that boulder away up there. Isn’t she a beauty? Only notice the delicate frosty ‘bloom’ on her leaves!”
“I should prefer,” said the younger of the men, “to know whether you have any broken bones.”
“I’m sure I am all right,” answered Linda. “I have falling down mountains reduced to an exact science. I’ll bet you couldn’t slide that far and bring down Coty without a scratch.”
“Well, which is the more precious,” said the young man. “Yourself or the specimen?”
“Why, the specimen!” answered Linda, in impatience. “California is full of girls; but this is the finest Cotyledon of this family I have ever seen. Don’t mistake this for any common stonecrop. It looks to me like an Echeveria. I know what I mean to do with the picture I have made of her, and I know exactly where she is going to grow from this day on.”
“Is there any way we can help you?” inquired the elder of the two men.
For the first time Linda glanced at him, and her impression was that he was decidedly attractive.
“No, thank you!” she answered briskly. “I am going to climb back up to the boulder and collect the belongings I spilled on the way down. Then I am going to carry Coty to the car line in a kind of triumphal march, because she is the rarest find that I have ever made. I hope you have no dark designs on Coty, because this is ‘what the owner had to do to redeem her.’”
Linda indicated her trail down the canyon side, brushed soil and twigs from her trousers, turned her straight young back, carefully set down her specimen, and by the aid of her recovered stick began expertly making her way up the canyon side. “Here, let me do that,” offered the younger man. “You rest until I collect your belongings.” Linda glanced back over her shoulder. “Thanks,” she said. “I have a mental inventory of all the pencils and knives and trowels I must find. You might overlook the most important part of my paraphernalia; and really I am not damaged. I’m merely hurt. Good-bye!”