CHAPTER IV
I
THE dry season stretched on beyond its wont. People began anxiously to speculate about the rain, calling upon old precedents, old signs, and portents to support their views or hopes. The brown hills turned pale silver as the grasses bleached. In the cañons lay a tangle of dead old stalks and vines. Where had been a lush thicket of ferns now the earth lay naked and baked, displaying unexpected simplicities of contour that had before been mysteriously veiled. So hard and trodden looked this earth that it seemed incredible that any green thing had ever, or could ever again, pierce its steel-like shell. The land was stripped bare. In the trees the wind rustled dryly. In the sky the sun shone glaringly. The morning fogs were no more. No smallest wisp of mist relieved the steel blue of the heavens. Animals and birds drowsed through the days, seeming to stir abroad only at night. Even the buzzards sat on the cross arms of the telegraph poles with their wings held half out from their bodies, as though panting. Along the roads, for many yards on either side, the earth and trees were powdered white with dust; and in the roadways lay a thick white carpet that rose to smother you at a touch. The land was as if in suspended animation, waiting, It was athirst.
All the old timers watched these things with interest, hope, or dismay, according to their temperaments. The Boyds had not been in California long enough to think of rain in terms of inches. Kenneth, if he gave it a thought, merely delighted in the unbroken sunshine; or noticed that at sunset the coloured veils over the ramparts of the Sur had deepened in tint and tenderness.
The completion of the house aroused in him a belated inter-
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