Low down, the ravine broadens out to inclose
a meadow the width of a lark's flight, blossomy
and wet and good. Here the stream ran once in
a maze of soddy banks and watered all the
ground, and afterward ran out at the canyon's
mouth across the mesa in a wash of bone-white
boulders as far as it could. That was not very
far, for it was a slender stream. It had its source
on the high crests and hollows of the near-by
mountain, in the snow banks that melted and
seeped downward through the rocks. But the
stream did not know any more of that than you
know of what happened to you before you were
born, and could give no account of itself except
that it crept out from under a great heap of
rubble far up in the Canyon of the Pinon Pines.
And because it had no pools in it deep enough
for trout, and no trees on its borders but gray nut
pines; because, try as it might, it could never get
across the mesa to the town, the stream had fully
made up its mind to run away.
``Pray, what good will that do you?'' said the
pines. ``If you get to the town, they will turn
you into an irrigating ditch, and set you to watering crops.''
``As to that,'' said the stream, ``if I once get
started I will not stop at the town.''
Then it would fret between its banks until the
spangled frills of the mimulus were all tattered
with its spray.
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