Often at the end of the summer
it was worn quite thin and small with running,
and not able to do more than reach the meadow.
``But some day,'' it whispered to the stones,
``I shall run quite away.''
If the stream had been inclined for it, there
was no lack of good company on its own borders.
Birds nested in the willows, rabbits came to
drink; one summer a bobcat made its lair up the
bank opposite the brown birches, and often the
deer fed in the meadow.
In the spring of one year two old men came up
into the Canyon of Pinon Pines. They had been
miners and partners together for many years.
They had grown rich and grown poor, and had
seen many hard places and strange times. It was
a day when the creek ran clear and the south
wind smelled of the earth. Wild bees began to
whine among the willows, and the meadow
bloomed over with poppy-breasted larks.
Then said one of the old men: ``Here is good
meadow and water enough; let us build a house
and grow trees. We are too old to dig in the
mines.''
``Let us set about it,'' said the other; for that
is the way with two who have been a long time
together,--what one thinks of, the other is for
doing.
So they brought their possessions, and they
built a house by the water border and planted
trees. One of the men was all for an orchard but
the other preferred vegetables.
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