"Where do you go?" said the boy.
"To Pahrump, the valley of Corn Water. It was there my people were happiest in old days."
They went on between the oaks, and smelled the musky sweet smell of the wild grapevines along the water borders. The sagebrush began to fail from the slopes, and buckthorn to grow up tall and thicker; the wind brought them a long sigh from the lowest pines. They came up with the silver firs and passed them, passed the drooping spruces, the wet meadows, and the wood of thimble-cone pines. The air under them had an earthy smell. Presently they came out upon a cleared space very high up where the rocks were sharp and steep.
"Why are there no trees here?" asked Alan.
"I will tell you about that," said the Basket Woman. "In the old flood time, and that is longer ago than is worth counting, the water came up and covered the land, all but the high tops of mountains. Here then the Indians fled and lived, and with them the animals that escaped from the flood. There were trees growing then over all the high places, but because the waters were long on the earth the Indians were obliged to cut them down for firewood. Also they killed all the large animals for food, but the small ones hid in the rocks. After that the waters went down; trees and grass began to grow over all the earth, but never any more on the tops of high mountains. They had all been burned off. You can see that it is so."
From the top of the mountain Alan could see all the hills on the other side shouldering and peering down toward the happy valley of Corn Water.
"Here," said the Basket Woman, "my people came of old time in the growing season of the year; they planted corn, and the streams came down from the hills and watered it. Now we, too, will go down."
They went by a winding trail, steep and stony. The pines stood up around and locked them closely in.
"I see smoke arising," said Alan, "blue smoke above the pines."
"It is the smoke of their hearth fires," said the Basket Woman, and they went down and down.