Ram did not know what to say. The thought of an Anglo woman nursing a Punjabi man back to health seemed impossible. Now he realized: that was why the shrubs were watered, why the doors and windows remained shuttered against scorpions, snakes, and desert creatures, why Kishen swept there every week.

“We use Stephen’s silo and his barn,” Karak said. “Jivan Singh built the packing shed and ramada. Jivan Singh pays Eggenberger some part of the crops. His land agent, Clive Edgar, reviews the books every month and takes payment. Twice a year Eggenberger visits the land office, pays his taxes and water rights, and stays a night in his home.”

Ram was quiet. He was thinking of how the bosses at the lumber mill spoke to the members of the work gangs, calling them ragheads, towelheads.

“You did not expect this,” Karak said. “That we have so much independence.”

“No.” He heard his voice crack with emotion.

Karak walked to the house and knocked on the door. “Not like our huts back home, is it?” Ram could see how much he admired it, running his hands along the edge of the doorway. “If I had a place like this, and so much land, I would not have gone back to Los Angeles where my in-laws could dictate to me,” he said, laughing.

So now Ram knew: Karak was jealous. Jealous of a white man living in America, as if he had the right to something this white man had.

Karak went on: Jivan knew other farmers, shippers, bankers, the district official for the water company, many zanjeros by name—everyone needed to plant and harvest a crop and make a profit. People trusted him. He purchased seed, hired the pickers and the packers. He kept the books. “I think he should share more of these responsibilities with me, but he doesn’t want to give up the power,” Karak said.

Ram did not respond. Karak was jealous of Jivan too. Suddenly he did not want to hear more. “How did he manage to bring Kishen Kaur?”

“Things were not so strict in 1910,” Karak said. “If she is unhappy, I don’t know. She never complains. Leela was born here.”

He was not the same man Ram had known on the steamship. He was more serious, more jealous. In the past year, the desert wind had etched lines around his lips and on his forehead. A tanned border on his neck and wrists was prominent; his teeth flashed whiter than before. His letters had told of large crops of cantaloupe and melons, another of barley, two fields made level after the grazing cattle had been moved off. Seeing the farm, comparing it with what Ram knew from his uncle’s lands, Ram had no reason to think he was lying. But Karak did not appear relaxed. Ram knew he was mulling something; when their eyes met, Karak knew that Ram saw this too.