The sweet forces of Nature shut out, for a season, Paul's _cri du coeur_. One may keep a chamber sacred to one's sadder obligations and yet the house be filled with joy. Further ramifications of the search were mapped out with Jimmy's indifferent assistance. For good reasons of his own, Jimmy did little to encourage an early start. He would explain that his maps were of ancient date and full of misinformation as to stage routes. “See that now! The stages was pulled off that line five year ago, on account of the railroad cuttin' in on them. Ye couldn't make it wid'out ye took a camp outfit. There's ne'er a station left, and when ye come to it, it's ruins ye'll find. A chimbly and a few rails, if the mule-skinners hasn't burned them. 'Tis a country very devoid of fuel; sagebrush and grease-wood, and a wind, bedad! that blows the grass-seeds into the next county.” When these camping-trips were proposed to Moya, she hesitated and responded languidly; but when Paul suggested leaving her even for a day, her fears fluttered across his path and wiled him another way. Vaguely he felt that she was unlike herself--less buoyant, though often restless; and sometimes he fancied she was pale underneath her sun-burned color like that of rose-hips in October. Various causes kept him inert, while strength mounted in his veins, and life seemed made for the pure joy of living. The moon of May in that valley is the moon of roses, for the heats once due come on apace. The young people gave up their all-day horseback rides and took morning walks instead, following the shore-paths lazily to shaded coverts dedicated to those happy silences which it takes two to make. Or, they climbed the bluffs and gazed at the impenetrable vast horizon, and thought perhaps of their errand with that pang of self-reproach which, when shared, becomes a subtler form of self-indulgence. But at night, all the teeming life of the plain rushed up into the sky and blazed there in a million friendly stars. After the languor of the sleepy afternoons, it was like a fresh awakening--the dawn of those white May nights. The wide plain stirred softly through all its miles of sage. The river's cadenced roar paused beyond the bend and outbroke again. All that was eerie and furtive in the wild dark found a curdling voice in the coyote's hunting-call.