"I am glad you like it," she said, "and I hope you'll get your share of the fabled wealth that it is supposed to grow--and, oh, yes, by the way, do you happen to need another Chinaman?" "No, I've got more than I can pay now." "We are going to let Chang Lee go the last of the month. He's a good Chinaman, and I wanted him to have a job." "Why let him go?" "We won't need him." "Won't need him!" Bob exclaimed. "With a hundred and sixty acres of cotton to irrigate and keep chopped out?" "I can do a lot of the irrigating"--the girl spoke a little evasively--"and daddy can manage the rest." He knew this was another case of exhausted funds. "Can't you borrow any more?" She laughed a frank confession. "You guessed it. We haven't money to pay him. I've borrowed six hundred on the crop, and can't get another dollar." He sat silent for several minutes looking off toward the cotton fields that would cry for water to-morrow in their fight against the eternal desert that brooded over this valley, thinking of her pluck. It made him ashamed of any wavering thought that ever scouted through his own mind. He stood up. "And are you going to see it through?" Alone beside the field as the moon rose she had wavered in doubt; but the answer came now with perfect assurance. "Most surely." "So am I," he said. "Good-night." But before he turned she put out her hand to touch his violin--her fingers touched his hand instead. "Please--just once more," she asked. He laughed whimsically as he sat down on the box and drew the bow. "I'm proud of the human race," he said, "that fights for bread and still looks at the stars." He began to play: he did not know what. It might have been something he had heard; but anyway to-night it was his and hers, the song of the rose that fought the desert all day for its life and then blossomed with fragrance in the night. At the sound of the violin a man sitting on the edge of the canal by the cottonwood trees stirred sharply. There was a guitar across his knee. He had been waiting for the sound of voices to cease; and now the accursed fiddle was playing again. He spat vindictively into the stream. "Damn the Americano!" CHAPTER XII Bob saw as he turned into the Bungalow Court at El Centro a youngish woman in white sitting on the second porch. In spite of the absence of the weeds he recognized her as the widow who had come down the street that other morning to meet Jim Crill. This, then, was Crill's place. Evidently the twelve months of bereavement had elapsed, and Mrs. Barnett, having done her full duty, felt that the ghost of her departed could no longer have any just complaints if she wore a little white of her own.