"Yes, Mr. Bryant," Imogene Martin affirmed. "A man now and then in the
scenery will help out wonderfully."

"I'll stop the first time I'm passing," he stated.

Lee Bryant understood the significance of the invitation: they were
starved for company and would be grateful for the society of a person
they believed respectable. He had seen a good deal of homesteading
conditions in the West; he knew the hardships involved in "holding
down" claims, of which the dreary monotony and loneliness of the life
were not the least. One earned ten times over every bit one got of a
free government homestead. For men it was bad enough; but for woman,
for girls like these, who had probably come from the East in trustful
ignorance and with rosy visions, the homestead venture impressed him
not only as pitiful but as tragic.

"I'll certainly ride down to see you," he assured them again.

"And perhaps, being an engineer, you'll show us why the water doesn't
run downhill in our bean patch, as it ought to do," Imogene Martin
remarked.

Bryant laughed and nodded agreement.

"You'll find that it's your eyes, and not the water, that have been
playing tricks," he said. "Ground levels and ditch grades are
deceiving things close to the mountains, because the latter tilt one's
natural line of vision. That's why water seems to run uphill when you
look toward the range. I'll soon fix your ditch line when I set an