a of the big stones, fell over jutting cliffs, spread in
whispering pools, wound back and forth across the road at its
will, singing every foot of its downward way and watering beds of
crisp, cool miners' lettuce, great ferns, and heliotrope,
climbing clematis, soil and blue-eyed grass. All along its
length grew willows, and in a few places white-bodied sycamores.
Everywhere over the walls red above it that vegetation could find
a footing grew mosses, vines, flowers, and shrubs. On the
shadiest side homed most of the ferns and the Cotyledon. In the
sun, larkspur, lupin, and monkey flower; everywhere wild rose,
holly, mahogany, gooseberry, and bayoneted yucca all
intermingling in a curtain of variegated greens, brocaded with
flower arabesques of vivid red, white, yellow, and blue. Canyon
wrens and vireos sang as they nested. The air was clear, cool,
and salty from the near-by sea. Myriad leaf shadows danced on
the black roadbed, level as a barn floor, and across it trailed
the wavering image of hawk and vulture, gull and white sea
swallow. Linda studied the canyon with intent eyes, but bruised
flesh pleaded, so reluctantly she arose, shouldered her
belongings, and slowly followed the road out to the car line that
passed through Lilac Valley, still carefully bearing in triumph
the precious Cotyledon. An hour later she entered the driveway
of her home. She stopped to set her plant carefully in the wild
garden she and her father had worked all her life at collecting,
then followed the back porch and kitchen route.

"Whatever have ye been doing to yourself, honey?" cried Katy.

"I came a cropper down Multiflores Canyon where it is so steep
that it leans the other way. I pretty well pulverized myself for