"A mile! I think I'll turn right here," Jerry declared.
Then, as the meek unknown watched her in open-mouthed wonder, she swung her car deftly about, the outer wheels barely keeping a toe-hold on the edge of the river-bank, with hardly more than an inch of space between them and the crumbling sand above the water. As she faced the way over which she had come she reached out to drop a piece of silver into the man's hand. He let it fall to the ground, then picked it up and laid it on the top of the car door.
"I ain't workin' for the gov'mint," he quavered. "I thankee, but I don't have no knowin's to sell. Ye're welcome to my ketch of information any day ye're on the river."
He made an odd half-military salute toward his old yellow-brown cap and shuffled across the road toward a narrow path running back through the bushes.
At the bend in the river Jerry found herself.
"That must be the ranch-house that Mr. Ponk gave me for a landmark, for there goes the river bending east, all right. What a quaint, picturesque thing that is, and built of stone, too, with ivy all over it! It must have been here a long time. And how well kept everything is! The old Teddy Bear said it was 'Joe's place.' Well, Joe keeps it looking as different from some of the places I've passed as 'Eden' differs from other country-places back in Pennsylvania."
The long, low, stone ranch-house, nestling under its sheltering vines, had an old and familiarly homey look to Jerry.
"That wide porch is a dream. I'll have one just like it on my place. I wonder if this farm has any name. I suppose not. What shall I call mine? 'New Eden' wouldn't do, of course. I might call it 'Paradise Prairie.' That's pretty and smooth. Gene would like that, and talk a lot about going 'from Nature up to Nature's God.' I don't care a whiff about all his religious talk, somehow. That's just one thing wherein we will never agree. If I can go from nature to the finished produce I'll be satisfied. Oh, yonder are my three trees."
At the bend of the Sage Brush Jerry left the stream road and sped across a long level swell toward three cottonwood-trees standing sentinel on a small rise of the prairie. From there she was to see the oak-grove, the center of her own rich holdings. Oh, Jerry!