So sharp was the contrast between the desert and the valley, and so potent was its appeal to him, that the hard calm of his face threatened to soften.

It was as though he had ridden out of a desolate, ages-old world where death mocked at life, into a new one in which life reigned supreme.
There was no change in Calumet's expression, however, though below him, spreading and dipping away into the interminable distance, slumbering in the glare of the afternoon sun, lay the land of his youth.

He remembered it well and he sat for a long time looking at it, searching out familiar spots, reviving incidents with which those spots had been connected.

During the days of his exile he had forgotten, but now it all came back to him; his brain was illumined and memories moved in it in orderly array--like a vast army passing in review.

And he sat there on his pony, singling out the more important personages of the army--the officers, the guiding spirits of the invisible columns.
Five miles into the distance, at a point where the river doubled sharply, rose the roofs of several ranch buildings--his father's ranch, the Lazy Y.