At five o'clock the next morning the two heavily laden wagons crawled out on the desert trail, campwards. It was slow going, particularly after they struck the deep sand which began ten miles out of the town. Gustav Schmidt was rather silent when they stopped at noon, to water and feed their horses and to eat the lunch the Chinaman had put up for them. He was heavily coated with dust and his face had burned badly. Half way through the second sandwich he said: "Ve'll get even with that sun, eh? Ve harness him and make him pump vater on us and on this damn sand, eh? Gott, vat a country!" "What's the matter with this country?" asked Roger, blowing the sand off a ripe olive. "It's exactly the kind of country I want to make solar power with and it's exactly the kind of country you want to cure your bad lungs. If you don't like it--" "Vait! Vait!" interrupted Schmidt. "I know vat you vill say. If I don't like it, go back to Germany. Some day I do go back, but not yet. Ven I go, I try to take you and young Wolf mit me. This is the land of nature's opportunity. In the Fatherland, the government gif the opportunity. This is the land for the adventure, for the exploitation, nicht wahr? Germany the land for the thinker, like you? Nicht wahr?" Roger shook his head. Nevertheless, his eyes were wistful. Many times during the afternoon he thought of Schmidt's remark. Roger's education and reading had long ago persuaded him that Germany was the land for the thinker, that there a man would not have to struggle for ten years to give birth to an idea such as his. He wondered why he never had cut loose and gone to the Fatherland. Some subconscious sense of obligation to his own country, he supposed. And yet, he thought bitterly what a fool he had been! Surely there could be no passion, not even the love for women, as deep-rooted, as overwhelming and as racially right as a man's desire to express his dreams. And that expression was denied him in his own country unless he put up a fight that depleted his creative force, surely by half. He sighed heavily and yet his thoughts returned to the little new power plant with a vague heart warming as though already it spelled home to him. Toward sundown, a curiously picturesque group passed them on the trail. Half a dozen squaws, with bare black heads and capes of red bandannas sewed together, were plodding toward town laden with ollas. Roger pulled up his team and called to them. Dick had told him to buy one of the great Indian water jars at his first opportunity. "Will you sell me one?" he asked. The oldest squaw nodded and held up a fine two gallon jar. It was just the color of the desert sand and was ornamented with swastikas and triangles in lines of vivid black. "How much?" asked Roger. "Eight bits," she said.