1 Chapter 1 few miles south of Soledad, the Salinas River drops in close to the hillside bank and runs deep and green. The water is warm too, for it has slipped twinkling over the yellow sands in the sunlight before reaching the narrow pool. On one side of the river the golden foothill slopes curve up to the strong and rocky Gabilan Mountains, but on the valley side the water is lined with trees — willows fresh and green with every spring, carrying in their lower leaf junctures the debris of the winter ’s flooding; and sycamores with mottled, white, recumbent limbs and branches that arch over the pool. On the sandy bank under the trees the leaves lie deep and so crisp that a lizard makes a great skittering if he runs among them. e out of the brush to sit on the sand in the evening, and the damp flats are covered with the night tracks of‘ coons, and with the spreadpads of dogs from the ranches, and with the split-wedge tracks of deer e to drink in the dark. There isa path through the willows and among the sycamores, a path beaten hard by ing down from the ranches to swim in the deep pool, and beaten hard by tramps e wearily down from the highway in the evening to jungle-up near water. In front of the low horizontal limb ofa giant sycamore there is an ash pile made by many fires; the limb is worn smooth by men who have sat on it. Evening ofa hot day started the little wind to moving among the leaves. The shade climbed up the hills toward the top. On the sand banks the rabbits sat as quietly as little gray sculptured stones. And then from the direction of the state highway came the sound of footsteps on crisp sycamore leaves. The rabbits hurried noiselessly for cover. A stilted heron labored up into the air and pounded down river. For a moment the place was lifeless, and then two men emerged from the path and came into the opening by the green pool. They had walked in single file down the path, and even in the open one stayed behind the other. Both were dressed in deni
