"You're right," agreed Milton. "Judge, couldn't you complete the trip with us?"
Enoch laughed, then said slowly: "There's nothing I'd like to do better, but I must go home, from the Ferry."
Milton gazed at Enoch for a time without speaking. Then he said, a little wistfully, "I suppose that while this is the most important experience so far in my life, to you it is the merest episode, that you'll forget the moment you get into the Pullman for the East."
"Why should you think that?" asked Enoch.
"I can't quite tell you why. But there's something about you that makes me believe that in your own section of the country, you're a power. Perhaps it's merely your facial expression. I don't know--you look like some one whom I can't recall. Perhaps that some one has the power and I confuse the two of you, but--I beg your pardon, Judge!" as Enoch's eyebrows went up.
"You have nothing to beg it for, Milton. But you're wrong when you think this trip is merely an episode to me. All my life I have longed for just such an experience in the Canyon. It's like enchantment to really find myself here."
Milton smiled. "Well, we all have our Carcasonnes."
The younger man hesitated. "It's so absurd--but--well, I've always wanted to be Chief of the Geological Survey."
"Why did you dream of a wild trip down the Colorado as the realization of your greatest desire?" asked Milton.
"I couldn't put it into words," answered Enoch. "But I suppose it's the pioneer in me or something elemental that never quite dies in any of us, of Anglo-Saxon blood."
Milton nodded. "The Chief of the Geological Survey's job is to administer nature in the raw. I'd like to have a chance at it."
"I believe you'd get away with it, too, Milton," Enoch replied thoughtfully.
Milton laughed. "Too bad you aren't Secretary of the Interior! Well, I'm all in! Let's go to bed."
"You go ahead. I'll sit here with my pipe a bit longer."
But, after all, Enoch did not write in his diary that night. Before Milton had established himself in his blankets, Harden rose and went to a canteen for a drink of water. On his return he stumbled over Forrester's feet. Instantly Forrester sat erect.
"What're you doing, you clumsy dub foot?" he shouted.
"Oh, dry up, Forr; I didn't mean to hurt you, you great boob!"