"Like this?" Ruth exclaimed. "Harvey! Look at those giant fruit trees. Look at them."
Harvey caught her shoulder in a tight grip. "Honey, we just can't let ourselves go overboard till we're sure everything's okay," he said quietly. "We've had our hopes built up and slapped down so many times." He looked down into her brown eyes. "Kitten, do you remember the time old man Reeber came climbing over the fence, yelling that the blight was going, it was moving off his cornfield, and we believed, we actually believed some miracle had happened, and we went chasing after him and found it was just a sunbeam breaking through a cloud bank. What a mirage that was!"
"Harvey," Ruth said softly, "do you really think that this"—her hand traced the horizon—"is a mirage?"
"I want to get a closer look, honey—I want to feel it and taste it before I believe it," he said. But when he glanced again at the landscape, his breath quickened and a tingle rode over his skin. "No, honey," he said quickly, "I don't think it's a mirage. I think it's what we've been dreaming about a long, long time."
Ruth gave a relieved cry and flung her arms around him. He held her, patting her gently. "Now take it easy," he said.
She looked up abruptly, her eyes wet. "The first thing, you've got to get some color back," she said fiercely. "You've gotten so awfully pale!"
"And you're lovelier than ever," he said, running a hand along her cheek. "Now let's get moving before they put us back on the ship and send us home for being slow-pokes."
She pounced down on a big, leather-thonged trunk. He pushed her aside. "Half pint, you take the little ones."
Together they loaded their baggage on the red four-wheeled cart. Most of the other immigrants had already loaded their luggage and now stood beside the carts, each couple a little island of chatter and excitement. Next to Harvey and Ruth were Dr. Norbert Lurie and his wife Edna, both spectacled, scholarly, and too thin; both earnest, conscientious, and eager to help; rather boring company on a ten-month space voyage, but very comforting to have as neighbors in a strange land. After them came the Schweitzer twins, husky, blond, pink-faced youths, each with his little china-doll wife. Beyond them stood big, red-headed Jim Brace and his slim brunette wife, Nancy. Brace was heaving the last of his trunks onto his cart, his biceps bulging awesomely.
"Real pioneer stock, this Red Brace," Harvey said. "Shame there are no Indians around—he'd have been a good man to have around in a scrap."