The search within the checkered blouse ended. The inquisitor produced a pipe and lit it. It took three matches.
"My uncle never wrote me of that. He told me once of adopting a girl. Bess he called her, was it not?"
"Yes."
Already the pipe had gone dead, and Craig struggled anew in getting it alight, with the awkwardness of one unused to smoking out of doors.
"Do you like this country, this—desert?" he digressed suddenly.
"It is the only one I know."
"You mean know well, doubtless?"
"I have never been outside the State."
Unconsciously the other shrugged, in an action that was habitual.
"You have something to look forward to then. I read somewhere that it were better to hold down six feet of earth in an Eastern cemetery than to own a section of land in the West. I'm beginning to believe it."