The Winning of Barbara Worth

by Harold Bell Wright

"Mine?" Barbara turned to her father, who explained, Abe having told him the night before of the purchase.

When her father finished, the delighted girl announced that she "simply couldn't wait" but must go for a ride immediately. Running into the house she returned a few minutes later in her riding dress and, mounting with—"I'll be back for dinner, daddy," and "Adios, Pablo!"—rode away toward the open country, while the Mexican and the banker watched her out of sight.

By the time they had passed the last of the tent houses in the town Barbara and El Capitan were friends. There is no doubt whatever that a worthy horse appreciates a worthy rider and the girl, accustomed to riding since childhood, certainly appreciated her mount.

"Oh, you beauty!" she cried, leaning forward in the saddle to pat the shining neck. "Oh, you beauty!"

As though to return the compliment and express his pleasure at finding such an agreeable companion, El Capitan turned his delicate pointed ears forward, arched his neck, and, stepping as on a velvet carpet, sprang lightly to the other side of the road in sheer overflow of good spirits and confidence in his rider, while the girl, at his play, laughed aloud.

But Barbara had eyes and thoughts for more than her horse that morning. It was her first day in "her Desert" and there was much for her to see. Through her father she had kept in close touch with every phase of the work of reclaiming The King's Basin and had often begged him to take her with him into the new country. Now at last her wish was realized. She was where she could see with her own eyes the Seer's dream—the Seer's and her own—coming true.

On either hand as she rode, stretching away until all fixed lines and objects were lost in the shifting mirage and many-colored lights of the desert, the dun plain with its thin growth of thirsty vegetation was broken by the green cultivated fields, newly leveled acres, buildings and stacks of the ranches, with canals, ditches and ponds filled with water that reflected the colors of the morning. Everywhere, in what had been a land of death, life was stirring. In one field beside the road a herd of soft-eyed cattle, knee-deep in rich alfalfa, lifted their heads to greet her. In another a band of horses and colts scampered along with her as far as their fence would permit, as if good-naturedly seeking her further acquaintance. Everywhere men with their teams were at work in the fields newly won from the desert. At one house a woman was hanging her weekly wash on the line, while a group of children played in the yard. As the girl passed the woman waved her hand and the children shouted a greeting. And a little farther on a meadow-lark, perched on a fence-post, filled the world with liquid music.

The wine-like atmosphere, the glorious light, the odor of the fields and the strength and beauty of the life new-born in the desert, with the spirit and freedom of the animal she rode, all appealed with almost painful intensity to the girl who was herself so richly alive. She felt her close kinship with it all and answered to it all out of the fullness of her own young woman's strength. She wanted to cry aloud with the joy and gladness of the victory over barrenness and desolation. It was her Desert that was yielding itself to the strong ones; for them it had waited—waited through the ages, and at last they had come.

Busy with her thoughts, Barbara rode on until she had passed out of the settled district of which Kingston was the center and found herself in the desert. Save for the lightly marked trail she was following and the thin line of her father's telephone poles that led southward to Frontera, she saw no sign of a human being. Checking her horse and turning, she looked back. A tiny spot of thin color—the red of brick, the yellow of new lumber and the white of tents—marked Kingston. The ranches about the desert town were scattered spots of green scarcely seen at that distance. All the rest, from the distant snow-capped sentinels of the Pass in the north to Lone Mountain in the south and from the purple mountain wall on the west to the sky-line of the Mesa on the east, was the same dun plain as she had always known it.

Barbara caught her breath. Seen near at hand the work accomplished had seemed so great, so brave; seen from even so short a distance as she had come, it looked so pitifully small, so helpless. The desert was so huge, so masterful, so dominating in its silent grandeur, in its awful loneliness. All her life Barbara had seen the desert from her home in Rubio City. Many, many times she had ridden into it and back a day's ride. But never had she felt the dreadful spirit of the land as she felt it now, alone in the still, lonely heart of it. She was afraid with an unreasoning fear.