"Am I wrong?" he said again, but Hardy did not answer in words. Holding the crumpled letter behind him he took up his own fair missive--such a one as he would have died for in years gone by--and laid it on the fire, and when the tiny flame leaped up he dropped the other on it and watched them burn together. "Well, how about it?" inquired Creede, awed by the long silence, but the little man only bowed his head. "Who am I, to judge?" he said. CHAPTER XX THE DROUGHT For a year the shadowy clouds had flitted past Hidden Water, drifting like flocks of snowy birds to their resting-place against the Peaks, and as the wind raged and the darkness gathered the cattle had raised their heads and bellowed, sniffing the wet air. In Summer the thunder-heads had mounted to high heaven and spread from east to west; the heat lightning had played along the horizon at night, restless and incessant; the sky had turned black and the south wind had rushed up, laden with the smell of distant showers. At last the rain had fallen, graciously, bringing up grass and browse, and flowers for those who sought them. But all the time the water lay in black pools along the shrunken river, trickling among the rocks and eddying around huge snags of driftwood, clear, limpid, sparkling, yet always less and less. Where the winter floods had scoured the lowlands clear, a fuzz of baby trees sprang up, growing to a rank prosperity and dying suddenly beneath the sun. Along the river's edge little shreds of watercress took root and threw out sprouts and blossoms; the clean water brought forth snaky eel-grass and scum which fed a multitude of fishes; in the shadows of deep rocks the great bony-tails and Colorado River salmon lay in contented shoals, like hogs in wallows, but all the time the water grew less and less. At every shower the Indian wheat sprang up on the mesas, the myriad grass-seeds germinated and struggled forth, sucking the last moisture from the earth to endow it with more seeds. In springtime the deep-rooted mesquites and _palo verdes_ threw out the golden halo of their flowers until the canyons were aflame; the soggy _sahuaros_ drank a little at each sparse downpour and defied the drought; all the world of desert plants flaunted their pigmented green against the barren sky as if in grim contempt; but the little streams ran weaker and weaker, creeping along under the sand to escape the pitiless sun. As Creede and Hardy rode out from Hidden Water, the earth lay dead beneath their horses' feet--stark and naked, stripped to the rocks by the sheep. Even on Bronco Mesa the ground was shorn of its covering; the cloven hoofs of the sheep had passed over it like a scalping knife, tearing off the last sun-blasted fringe of grass. In open spaces where they had not found their way the gaunt cattle still curled their hungry tongues beneath the bushes and fetched out spears of grass, or licked the scanty Indian wheat from the earth itself.