VI


Seen from a balloon, Moonstone would have looked
like a Noah's ark town set out in the sand and lightly
shaded by gray-green tamarisks and cottonwoods. A few
people were trying to make soft maples grow in their
turfed lawns, but the fashion of planting incongruous
trees from the North Atlantic States had not become gen-
eral then, and the frail, brightly painted desert town was
shaded by the light-reflecting, wind-loving trees of the
desert, whose roots are always seeking water and whose
leaves are always talking about it, making the sound of
rain. The long porous roots of the cottonwood are irre-
pressible. They break into the wells as rats do into grana-
ries, and thieve the water.

The long street which connected Moonstone with the
depot settlement traversed in its course a considerable
stretch of rough open country, staked out in lots but not
built up at all, a weedy hiatus between the town and the
railroad. When you set out along this street to go to the
station, you noticed that the houses became smaller and
farther apart, until they ceased altogether, and the board