train proved an excellent plan, for on the station platform he met Paula Wendell, who evidently had the same idea. She was trim and charming in riding togs, and her eyes sparkled with life.
"Hello," she said. "Where are you bound?"
"Going to Barstow, on business," Eden explained.
"Is it important?"
"Naturally. Wouldn't squander my vast talents on any other kind."
A dinky little train wandered in, and they found a seat together in one of its two cars.
"Sorry to hear you're needed in Barstow," remarked the girl. "I'm getting off a few stations down. Going to rent a horse and take a long ride up into Lonely Canyon. It wouldn't have been so lonely if you could have come along."
Eden smiled happily. Certainly one had few opportunities to look into eyes like hers. "What station do we get off at?" he inquired.
"We? I thought you said—"
"The truth isn't in me, these days. Barstow doesn't need my presence any more than you need a beauty doctor. Lonely Canyon, after today, will have to change its name."
"Good," she answered. "We get off at Seven Palms. The old rancher who rents me a horse will find one for you, I'm sure."
"I'm not precisely dressed for the role," admitted Eden. "But I trust it will be all the same to the horse."
The horse didn't appear to mind. His rather dejected manner suggested that he had expected something like this. They left the tiny settlement known as Seven Palms and cantered off across the desert.
"For to admire and for to see, for to behold this world so wide," said Eden. "Never realized how very wide it was until I came down here."
"Beginning to like the desert?" the girl inquired.
"Well, there's something about it," he admitted. "It grows on you, that's a fact. I don't know that I could put the feeling into words."
"I'm sure I can't," she answered. "Oh, I envy you, coming here for the first time. If only I could look at this country again with a fresh, disinterested eye. But it's just location to me. I see all about me the cowboys, the cavalcades, the caballeros of Hollywood. Tragedies and feats of daring, rescues and escapes. I tell you, these dunes and canyons have seen more movies than Will Hays."
"Hunting locations today?" Eden asked.
"Always hunting," she sighed. "They've just sent me a new script—as new as those mountains over there. All about the rough cowpuncher and the millionaire's dainty daughter from the East—you know."
"I certainly do. Girl's fed up on those society orgies, isn't she?"
"Who wouldn't be? However, the orgies are given in full, with the swimming pool working overtime, as always. But that part doesn't concern me. It's after she comes out here, sort of hungering to meet a real man, that I must start worrying. Need I add, she meets him? Her horse runs away over the desert, and tosses her off amid the sagebrush. In the nick of time, the cowpuncher finds her. Despite their different stations, love blossoms here in the waste land. Sometimes I'm almost glad that mine is beginning to be an obsolete profession."
"Is it? How come?"
"Oh, the movies move. A few years back the location finder was a rather important person. Today most of this country has been explored and charted, and every studio is equipped with big albums full of pictures. So every time a new efficiency expert comes along—which is about once a week—and starts lopping off heads, it's the people in my line who are the first to go. In a little while we'll be as extinct as the dodo."
"You may be extinct," Eden answered. "But there the similarity between you and the dodo will stop abruptly."
The girl halted her horse. "Just a minute. I want to take a few pictures here. It looks to me like a bit of desert we haven't used yet. Just the sort of thing to thrill the shopgirls and the bookkeepers back there where the East hangs out." When she had swung again into the saddle, she added: "It isn't strange they love it, those tired people in the cities. Each one thinks—oh, if only I could go there."
"Yes, and if they got here once, they'd die of loneliness the first night," Bob Eden said. "Just pass out in agony moaning for the subway and the comics in the evening paper."
"I know they would," the girl replied. "But fortunately they'll never come."
They rode on, and the girl began to point out the various unfriendly-looking plants of the desert, naming them one by one. Arrowweed, bitter-brush, mesquite, desert plantain, catclaw, thistle-sage.
"That's a cholla," she announced. "Another variety of cactus. There are seventeen thousand in all."
"All right," Eden replied. "I'll take your word for it. You needn't name them." His head was beginning to ache with all this learning.
Presently sumac and Canterbury bell proclaimed their nearness to the canyon, and they cantered out of the desert heat into the cathedral-like coolness of the hills. In and out over almost hidden trails the horses went. Wild plum glowed on the slopes, and far below under native palms a narrow stream tinkled invitingly.
Life seemed very simple and pleasant there in Lonely Canyon, and Bob Eden felt suddenly close indeed to this lively girl with the eager eyes. All a lie that there were crowded cities. The world was new, unsullied and unspoiled, and they were alone in it.
They descended by way of a rather treacherous path and in the shelter of the palms that fringed the tiny stream, dismounted for a lunch which Paula Wendell claimed to have concealed in her knapsack.
"Wonderfully restful here," Bob Eden said.
"But you said the other day you weren't tired," the girl reminded him.
"Well, I'm not. But somehow I like this anyhow. However, I guess it isn't all a matter of geography. It's not so much the place you're in—it's who you're with. After which highly original remark, I hasten to add that I really can't eat a thing."
"You were right," she laughed. "The truth isn't in you. I know what you're thinking—I didn't bring enough for two. But these Oasis sandwiches are meant for ranchers, and one is my limit. There are four of them—I must have had a premonition. We'll divide the milk equally."
"But look here, it's your lunch. I should have thought to get something at Seven Palms."
"There's a roast beef sandwich. Try that, and maybe you won't feel so talkative."
"Well, I—am—gumph—"
"What did I tell you? Oh, the Oasis aims to fill. Milk?"
"Ashamed of myself," mumbled Eden. But he was easily persuaded.
"You haven't eaten a thing," he said finally.
"Oh, yes I have. More than I usually do. I'm one of those dainty eaters."
"Good news for Wilbur," replied Eden. "The upkeep won't be high. Though if he has any sense, he'll know that whatever the upkeep on a girl like you, it will be worth it."
"I sent him your love," said the girl.
"Is
