“How long were you in the desert?”
“Close to a year.”
Tim’s eyes opened wider. He saw that the man was speaking the truth.
“Got to thinking in the desert, and sort of willing things to come to pass, and mooning along, you, and the sky, and the vultures, and the hot hills, and the snakes, and the flowers—eh?”
“There weren’t any flowers till I got to the grass-country.”
“Oh, cuss me, if you ain’t simple for your kind! I know all about that. And when you got to the grass-country, you just picked up the honey, and the flowers, and a calf, and a lamb, and a mule here and there, ‘without money and without price,’ and walked on—that it?”
The other shrank before the steel in the voice, and nodded his head.
“But you kept thinking in the grass-country of what you’d felt and said and done—and willed, in the desert, I suppose?”
Again the other nodded.
“It seemed to you in the desert, as if you’d saved your own life a hundred times, as if you’d just willed food and drink and safety to come; as if Providence had been at your elbow?”