ing and inviting to her from the ship, from her closer acquaintance with it in the short journey the day before. It seemed to have withdrawn its—friendly welcome, to be sulking behind barriers of mystery and alien traits. The broad valley which they were journeying through was a monochrome of gray, as if every green leaf had taken a sickness, every stem an ashen leprosy, such was the effect of the atom-fine dust the desert wind bore, impalpable, mysterious, working its magic on the light of day.
As the morning advanced the temper of the sun became more ardent, a languorous, drowsy heat such as comes but a few days in the year to the seacoast country. The animals in Padre Mateo's cavalcade marched listlessly, with heads hanging, the sweat dried on their flanks by the desert blast as quickly as it oozed, their feet chugging with stocky indifference in the white dust of the road.
Quite different from their journey of the day before between the harbor and the Dominguez ranch, when the wind was from the sea, crisp as cabbage leaves, as Padre Mateo said, the sky so blue and serene that one longed to taste the breath of it, and plunge like a dolphin through its untainted depths. Then Padre Mateo had ridden without a fear, beguiled by the innocent face of the day, perhaps, into belief in a security that was no greater than that of today, his mule-bell tinkling with a comfortable pastoral sound among the bosque as they passed.
Now Padre Mateo's mule-bell was stuffed with
