“An' him a drink-slinger!” Billy marveled. “He can sure sling the temperance dope if anybody should ask you.”
“It's lovely to think about—all that water, and all the happy people that will come here to live—”
“But it ain't the valley of the moon!” Billy laughed.
“No,” she responded. “They don't have to irrigate in the valley of the moon, unless for alfalfa and such crops. What we want is the water bubbling naturally from the ground, and crossing the farm in little brooks, and on the boundary a fine big creek—”
“With trout in it!” Billy took her up. “An' willows and trees of all kinds growing along the edges, and here a riffle where you can flip out trout, and there a deep pool where you can swim and high-dive. An' kingfishers, an' rabbits comin' down to drink, an', maybe, a deer.”
“And meadowlarks in the pasture,” Saxon added. “And mourning doves in the trees. We must have mourning doves—and the big, gray tree-squirrels.”
“Gee!—that valley of the moon's goin' to be some valley,” Billy meditated, flicking a fly away with his whip from Hattie's side. “Think we'll ever find it?”
Saxon nodded her head with great certitude.
“Just as the Jews found the promised land, and the Mormons Utah, and the Pioneers California. You remember the last advice we got when we left Oakland? 'Tis them that looks that finds.'”