"And now, if you please, sir, you may bring me some of that water-cress; we'll sit over there in the shade, and who cares whether Granite Basin, the Mannings, and your fellow cow-punchers, are fifteen or fifty miles away?"
He brought a generous bunch of the water-cress, and stretched himself full length beside her, as she sat on the ground under a tall sycamore.
"Selah!" he laughed contentedly. "We seem to lack only the book of verses, the loaf and the jug; the wilderness is here, all right, and that's a perfectly good bough up there, and, of course, you could furnish the song; I might recite 'The Boy Stood on the Burning Deck,' but, alas! we haven't even a flask and biscuit."
"What a pity that you should be so near and yet so far from paradise!" she retorted quickly. Then she added, with a mischievous smile, "It just happens that I have a sandwich in my saddle pocket."
"Won't you sing? Please do," he returned, with an eagerness that amused her.
But she shook her head reprovingly. "We would still lack the jug of wine, you know, and, really, I don't think that paradise is for cow-punchers, anyway, do you?"
"Evidently not," he answered. And at her jesting words a queer feeling of rebellion possessed him. Why should he be condemned to years of loneliness? Why must he face a life without the companionship of a mate? If the paradise he had sought so hard to attain were denied him, why should he not still take what happiness he might?
He was lying flat on his back, his hands clasped beneath his head, watching an eagle that wheeled, a tiny black speck, high under the blue arch of the sky. He seemed to have forgotten his companion.
Kitty leaned toward him, and held a sprig of water-cress over his upturned face. "I haven't a penny," she said, "but I'll give you this."
He sat up quickly. "Even at that price, my thoughts might cost you too much. But you haven't told me what you have done with our dear friend the professor? Haven't you a guilty conscience, deserting him like this?"