The Desert Valley Book PDF Download

d her father. They ate their meal in silence for the most
part, made their beds close together, picketed their horses near by and
said their listless ‘good nights’ early. Each heard the other turn and
fidget many times before both went to sleep. Helen saw how her father,
with a fine assumption of careless habit, laid a big new revolver close
to his head.

The girl dozed and woke when the pallid moon shone upon her face. She
lifted herself upon her elbow. The moonlight touched upon the willow
stick she had thrust into the sand at her bedside; the feather was
upright and like a plume. She considered it gravely; it became the
starting-point of many romantic imaginings. Somehow it was a token; of
just exactly what, to be sure, she could not decide. Not definitely,
that is; it was always indisputable that the message of the bluebird is
one of good fortune.

A less vivid imagination than Helen’s would have found a tang of
ghostliness in the night. The crest of the ridge over which they had
come through