Down under the spreading oaks a young man in rough ranchman's dress stood leaning against a low bough, absorbed in thought. He was tall, symmetrically built, and strong of muscle, without a pound of superfluous fat to suggest anything of ease and idleness in his day's run. Some of the lines that mark the stubborn will were graven in his brown face, but the eyes were all-redeeming. Even as he stared out with unseeing gaze, lost in his own thoughts, the smile that lighted them hovered ready to illuminate what might otherwise have been a severe countenance.
In all the wide reach of level land there was no other living creature in sight. The breeze pulsing gently through the oak boughs poured the sunlight noiselessly down on the shadow-cooled grass about the tree-trunks. The freshness of the morning lingered in the air of the grove.
Suddenly the young man caught the sound of an automobile coasting down the long slide from the three cottonwoods, and turned to see a young girl in a shining gray car gliding down into the edge of the shade. A soft hat of Delft-blue, ornamented, valkyrie-wise, with two white wings; golden-gleaming hair overshadowing a face full of charm; blue eyes; cheeks of peach-blossom pink; firm, red lips; a well-defined chin and white throat; a soft gown, Delft-blue in color; and white gauntlet gloves—all these were in the blurred picture of that confused moment.
As for Jerry Swaim, all farmer folk looked alike to her. It was not the sudden appearance of a stranger, but the landscape beyond him, that held her speechless, until the shrill whistle of a train broke the silence.
"Is that the Sage Brush Railroad so near?" she asked, at last, with no effort at formal greeting.
"Yes, ma'am. It is just behind the palisades over there. You can't see it from here because the sand-drifts are so high. That's the morning freight now."
The light died out of Jerry Swaim's eyes, the pink bloom faded to ivory in her cheeks, even the red lips grew pale, as she stared at the scene before her. For the oak-grove stood a lone outpost of greenness defending a more or less fertile countryside from a formless, senseless monster beyond it. Jerry had pictured herself standing in the very center of her heritage, where she might "run her eyes around," as Ponk had said, "and figure how many acres she could see, and they were all hers." And now she was here.
Wide away before her eyes rippled acre on acre, all hers, and all of billowing sand, pointed only by a few straggling green shrubs. The glare of the sunlight on it was intolerable, and the north wind, sweeping cool and sweet under the oak-trees, brought no comfort to this glaring desert.
Suddenly she recalled the pitying look in Ponk's eyes when he had begged her to wait for York Macpherson to come with her to this place, and she had thought he might be envious of her good fortune. And then she remembered that Laura Macpherson had put up the same plea for York. He was the shield and buckler for all New Eden, it would seem. And the three, Laura and York and Ponk, all knew and were pitying her, Jerry Swaim, who had been envied many a time, but never, never pitied. Even in the loss of the Swaim estate in Philadelphia, Mrs. Jerusha Darby had made it clear to every one that her pretty niece was still to be envied as a child of good fortune.
Flinging aside her hat and gloves, unconscious of the stray sunbeams sifting down through the oak boughs on her golden hair, Jerry Swaim gazed toward the railroad with wide-open, burning eyes, and her white face was pitiful to see. At length she turned to the young man who still stood leaning against the oak bough beyond her car, waiting for her to speak.