CHAPTER XXV
The November morning was keen and cold and Adam and Genie were on their way to spend the day at Andreas Canyon. Adam carried a lunch, a gun, and a book. Genie seemed so exuberant with wonderful spirits that she could scarcely keep her little moccasined feet on the sand. Adam had an unconscious joy in the sight of her.
A dim old Indian trail led up one of the slopes of Andreas Canyon, to which Adam called Genie’s attention.
“We’ll climb this some day—when it comes time to take you away,” said Adam. “It’s a hard climb, but the shortest way out. And you’ll get to see the desert from the top of old Jacinto. That will be worth all the climb.”
His words made Genie pensive. Of late the girl had become more and more beyond Adam’s comprehension—wistful and sad and dreamy by turns, now like a bird and again like a thundercloud, but mostly a dancing, singing creature full of unutterable sweetness of life.
Beyond the oasis, some distance up the canyon, was a dense growth of mesquite and other brush. It surrounded a sandy glade in which bubbled forth a crystal spring of hot water. The bottom was clean white sand that boiled up in the center like shining bubbles. Indians in times past had laid stones around the pool. A small cottonwood tree on the west side of the glade had begun to change the green color of the leaves to amber and gold. All around the glade, like a wild, untrimmed hedge, the green and brown mesquites stood up, hiding the gray desert, insulating this cool, sandy, beautiful spot, hiding it away from the stern hardness outside.
Genie had never been here. Quickly she lost her pensiveness and began to sing like a lark. She kicked one moccasin one way and the other in another direction. Straightway she was on the stones, with her bare, slender, brown feet in the water.
“Ooooo! It’s hot!” she cried, ecstatically. “But, oh, it’s fine!” And she dipped them back.
“Genie, you stay here and amuse yourself,” said Adam. “I’m going to climb. Maybe I’ll be back soon—maybe not. You play and read, and eat the lunch when you’re hungry.”
“All right, Wanny,” she replied, gayly. “But I should think you’d rather stay with me.”