the Desert Of Wheat (2001)

the Desert Of Wheat (2001) Read Free

Book: the Desert Of Wheat (2001) Read Free
Author: Zane Grey
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something as black and hopeless as despair.
    "Haven't I seen you--before?" asked the girl.
    The query surprised and thrilled Kurt out of his self-centered thought.
    "I don't know. Have you? Where?" he answered, facing her. It was a relief to find that she still averted her face.
    "At Berkeley, in California, the first time, and the second at Spokane, in front of the Davenport," she replied.
    "First--and--second?... You--you remembered both times!" he burst out, incredulously.
    "Yes. I don't see how I could have helped remembering." Her laugh was low, musical, a little hurried, yet cool.
    Dorn was not familiar with girls. He had worked hard all his life, there among those desert hills, and during the few years his father had allowed him for education. He knew wheat, but nothing of the eternal feminine. So it was impossible for him to grasp that this girl was not wholly at her ease. Her words and the cool little laugh suddenly brought home to Kurt the immeasurable distance between him and a daughter of one of the richest ranchers in Washington.
    "You mean I--I was impertinent," he began, struggling between shame and pride. "I--I stared at you.... Oh, I must have been rude.... But, Miss Anderson, I--I didn't mean to be. I didn't think you saw me--at all. I don't know what made me do that. It never happened before. I beg your pardon."
    A subtle indefinable change, perceptible to Dorn, even in his confused state, came over the girl.
    "I did not say you were impertinent," she returned. "I remembered seeing you--notice me, that is all."
    Self-possessed, aloof, and kind, Miss Anderson now became an impenetrable mystery to Dorn. But that only accentuated the distance she had intimated lay between them. Her kindness stung him to recover his composure. He wished she had not been kind. What a singular chance that had brought her here to his home--the daughter of a man who came to demand a long-unpaid debt! What a dispelling of the vague thing that had been only a dream! Dorn gazed away across the yellowing hills to the dim blue of the mountains where rolled the Oregon. Despite the color, it was gray--like his future.
    "I heard you tell father you had studied wheat," said the girl, presently, evidently trying to make conversation.
    "Yes, all my life," replied Kurt. "My study has mostly been under my father. Look at my hands." He held out big, strong hands, scarred and knotted, with horny palms uppermost, and he laughed. "I can be proud of them, Miss Anderson.... But I had a splendid year in California at the university and I graduated from the Washington State Agricultural College."
    "You love wheat--the raising of it, I mean?" she inquired.
    "It must be that I do, though I never had such a thought. Wheat is so wonderful. No one can guess who does not know it!... The clean, plump grain, the sowing on fallow ground, the long wait, the first tender green, and the change day by day to the deep waving fields of gold--then the harvest, hot, noisy, smoky, full of dust and chaff, and the great combine-harvesters with thirty-four horses. Oh! I guess I do love it all.... I worked in a Spokane flour-mill, too, just to learn how flour is made. There is nothing in the world so white, so clean, so pure as flour made from the wheat of these hills!"
    "Next you'll be telling me that you can bake bread," she rejoined, and her laugh was low and sweet. Her eyes shone with soft blue gleams.
    "Indeed I can! I bake all the bread we use," he said, stoutly. "And I flatter myself I can beat any girl you know."
    "You can beat mine, I'm sure. Before I went to college I did pretty well. But I learned too much there. Now my mother and sisters, and brother Jim, all the family except dad, make fun of my bread."
    "You have a brother? How old is he?"
    "One brother--Jim, we call him. He--he is just past twenty-one." She faltered the last few words.
    Kurt felt on common ground with her then. The sudden break in her voice, the change in her face, the shadowing of the blue

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