“Tell me about your stick,” Adam said. “How does it work?”

Samuel stroked the fork now tied to his saddle strings. “I don’t really believe in it save that it works.” He smiled at Adam. “Maybe it’s this way. Maybe I know where the water is, feel it in my skin. Some people have a gift in this direction or that. Suppose—well, call it humility, or a deep disbelief in myself, forced me to do a magic to bring up to the surface the thing I know anyway. Does that make any sense to you?”

“I’d have to think about it,” said Adam.

The horses picked their own way, heads hung low, reins loosened against the bits.

“Can you stay the night?” Adam asked.

“I can but better not. I didn’t tell Liza I’d be away the night. I’d not like to give her a worry.”

“But she knows where you are.”

“Sure she knows. But I’ll ride home tonight. It doesn’t matter the time. If you’d like to ask me to supper I’d be glad. And when do you want me to start on the wells?”

“Now—as soon as you can.”

“You know it’s no cheap thing, indulging yourself with water. I’d have to charge you fifty cents or more a foot, depending on what we find down there. It can run into money.”

“I have the money. I want the wells. Look, Mr. Hamilton—”

“ ‘Samuel’ would be easier.”

“Look, Samuel, I mean to make a garden of my land. Remember my name is Adam. So far I’ve had no Eden, let alone been driven out.”

“It’s the best reason I ever heard for making a garden,” Samuel exclaimed. He chuckled. “Where will the orchard be?”

Adam said, “I won’t plant apples. That would be looking for accidents.”

“What does Eve say to that? She has a say, you remember. And Eves delight in apples.”

“Not this one.” Adam’s eyes were shining. “You don’t know this Eve. She’ll celebrate my choice. I don’t think anyone can know her goodness.”

“You have a rarity. Right now I can’t recall any greater gift.”

They were coming near to the entrance to the little side valley in which was the Sanchez house. They could see the rounded green tops of the great live oaks.

“Gift,” Adam said softly. “You can’t know. No one can know. I had a gray life, Mr. Hamilton—Samuel. Not that it was bad compared to other lives, but it was nothing. I don’t know why I tell you this.”

“Maybe because I like to hear.”

“My mother—died—before my memory. My stepmother was a good woman but troubled and ill. My father was a stern, fine man—maybe a great man.”

“You couldn’t love him?”

“I had the kind of feeling you have in church, and not a little fear in it.”

Samuel nodded. “I know—and some men want that.” He smiled ruefully. “I’ve always wanted the other. Liza says it’s the weak thing in me.”

“My father put me in the army, in the West, against the Indians.”