Anderson tramped along the edge of the field, peering down, here and
there pulling a shaft of wheat and examining it. The girl gazed with
dreamy eyes across the undulating sea. And Dorn watched her.

"We have a ranch--thousands of acres--but not like this," she said.

"What's the difference?" asked Dorn.

She appeared pensive and in doubt.

"I hardly know. What would you call this--this scene?"

"Why, I call it the desert of wheat! But no one else does," he replied.

"I named father's ranch 'Many Waters.' I think those names tell the
difference."

"Isn't my desert beautiful?"

"No. It has a sameness--a monotony that would drive me mad. It looks as
if the whole world had gone to wheat. It makes me think--oppresses me.
All this means that we live by wheat alone. These bare hills! They're
too open to wind and sun and snow. They look like the toil of ages."

"Miss Anderson, there is such a thing as love for the earth--the bare
brown earth. You know we came from dust, and to dust we return! These
fields are human to my father. And they have come to speak to me--a
language I don't understand yet. But I mean--w hat you see--the growing
wheat here, the field of clods over there, the wind and dust and glare
and heat, the eternal sameness of the open space--these are the things