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+Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for
+eBook #51893 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/51893)
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-The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Land of Little Rain, by Mary Austin
-
-This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most
-other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
-whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of
-the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at
-www.gutenberg.org.  If you are not located in the United States, you'll have
-to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook.
-
-Title: The Land of Little Rain
-
-Author: Mary Austin
-
-Release Date: April 30, 2016 [EBook #51893]
-
-Language: English
-
-Character set encoding: UTF-8
-
-*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LAND OF LITTLE RAIN ***
-
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-
-
-Produced by Larry B. Harrison, Charlie Howard, and the
-Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
-(This file was produced from images generously made
-available by The Internet Archive)
-
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-
-
-
-
-[Illustration: (cover)]
-
-
-
-
-THE LAND OF LITTLE RAIN
-
-[Illustration: PETITE PETE (Page 157)]
-
-
-
-
-  THE LAND
-  OF
-  LITTLE RAIN
-
-  BY
-  MARY AUSTIN
-
-  [Illustration]
-
-  BOSTON AND NEW YORK
-  HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY
-  The Riverside Press, Cambridge
-  1903
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-  COPYRIGHT 1903 BY MARY AUSTIN
-  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
-
-  _Published October 1903_
-
-
-
-
-  TO EVE
-
-  “THE COMFORTRESS OF UNSUCCESS”
-
-
-
-
-PREFACE
-
-
-I confess to a great liking for the Indian fashion of name-giving:
-every man known by that phrase which best expresses him to whoso names
-him. Thus he may be Mighty-Hunter, or Man-Afraid-of-a-Bear, according
-as he is called by friend or enemy, and Scar-Face to those who knew
-him by the eye’s grasp only. No other fashion, I think, sets so well
-with the various natures that inhabit in us, and if you agree with me
-you will understand why so few names are written here as they appear
-in the geography. For if I love a lake known by the name of the man
-who discovered it, which endears itself by reason of the close-locked
-pines it nourishes about its borders, you may look in my account to
-find it so described. But if the Indians have been there before me, you
-shall have their name, which is always beautifully fit and does not
-originate in the poor human desire for perpetuity.
-
-Nevertheless there are certain peaks, cañons, and clear meadow spaces
-which are above all compassing of words, and have a certain fame as
-of the nobly great to whom we give no familiar names. Guided by these
-you may reach my country and find or not find, according as it lieth
-in you, much that is set down here. And more. The earth is no wanton
-to give up all her best to every comer, but keeps a sweet, separate
-intimacy for each. But if you do not find it all as I write, think
-me not less dependable nor yourself less clever. There is a sort of
-pretense allowed in matters of the heart, as one should say by way
-of illustration, “I know a man who ...,” and so give up his dearest
-experience without betrayal. And I am in no mind to direct you to
-delectable places toward which you will hold yourself less tenderly
-than I. So by this fashion of naming I keep faith with the land and
-annex to my own estate a very great territory to which none has a surer
-title.
-
-The country where you may have sight and touch of that which is written
-lies between the high Sierras south from Yosemite--east and south over
-a very great assemblage of broken ranges beyond Death Valley, and on
-illimitably into the Mojave Desert. You may come into the borders of
-it from the south by a stage journey that has the effect of involving
-a great lapse of time, or from the north by rail, dropping out of the
-overland route at Reno. The best of all ways is over the Sierra passes
-by pack and trail, seeing and believing. But the real heart and core
-of the country are not to be come at in a month’s vacation. One must
-summer and winter with the land and wait its occasions. Pine woods that
-take two and three seasons to the ripening of cones, roots that lie by
-in the sand seven years awaiting a growing rain, firs that grow fifty
-years before flowering,--these do not scrape acquaintance. But if ever
-you come beyond the borders as far as the town that lies in a hill
-dimple at the foot of Kearsarge, never leave it until you have knocked
-at the door of the brown house under the willow-tree at the end of the
-village street, and there you shall have such news of the land, of
-its trails and what is astir in them, as one lover of it can give to
-another.
-
-
-
-
-NOTE ON THE ILLUSTRATIONS
-
-
-The Publishers feel that they have been peculiarly fortunate in
-securing Mr. E. Boyd Smith as the illustrator and interpreter of
-Mrs. Austin’s charming sketches of the “Land of Little Rain.” His
-familiarity with the region and his rare artistic skill have enabled
-him to give the very atmosphere of the desert, and graphically to
-portray its life, animal and human. This will be felt not only in
-the full-page compositions, but in the delightful marginal sketches,
-which are not less illustrative, although, from their nature, it is
-impracticable to enumerate them in a formal list.
-
-
-
-
-CONTENTS
-
-
-                                         PAGE
-
-  THE LAND OF LITTLE RAIN                   1
-
-  WATER TRAILS OF THE CERISO               23
-
-  THE SCAVENGERS                           45
-
-  THE POCKET HUNTER                        61
-
-  SHOSHONE LAND                            81
-
-  JIMVILLE--A BRET HARTE TOWN             103
-
-  MY NEIGHBOR’S FIELD                     123
-
-  THE MESA TRAIL                          141
-
-  THE BASKET MAKER                        161
-
-  THE STREETS OF THE MOUNTAINS            181
-
-  WATER BORDERS                           203
-
-  OTHER WATER BORDERS                     223
-
-  NURSLINGS OF THE SKY                    243
-
-  THE LITTLE TOWN OF THE GRAPE VINES      263
-
-
-
-
-THE LAND OF LITTLE RAIN
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-East away from the Sierras, south from Panamint and Amargosa, east and
-south many an uncounted mile, is the Country of Lost Borders.
-
-Ute, Paiute, Mojave, and Shoshone inhabit its frontiers, and as far
-into the heart of it as a man dare go. Not the law, but the land sets
-the limit. Desert is the name it wears upon the maps, but the Indian’s
-is the better word. Desert is a loose term to indicate land that
-supports no man; whether the land can be bitted and broken to that
-purpose is not proven. Void of life it never is, however dry the air
-and villainous the soil.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-This is the nature of that country. There are hills, rounded, blunt,
-burned, squeezed up out of chaos, chrome and vermilion painted,
-aspiring to the snow-line. Between the hills lie high level-looking
-plains full of intolerable sun glare, or narrow valleys drowned in
-a blue haze. The hill surface is streaked with ash drift and black,
-unweathered lava flows. After rains water accumulates in the hollows of
-small closed valleys, and, evaporating, leaves hard dry levels of pure
-desertness that get the local name of dry lakes. Where the mountains
-are steep and the rains heavy, the pool is never quite dry, but dark
-and bitter, rimmed about with the efflorescence of alkaline deposits. A
-thin crust of it lies along the marsh over the vegetating area, which
-has neither beauty nor freshness. In the broad wastes open to the wind
-the sand drifts in hummocks about the stubby shrubs, and between them
-the soil shows saline traces. The sculpture of the hills here is more
-wind than water work, though the quick storms do sometimes scar them
-past many a year’s redeeming. In all the Western desert edges there are
-essays in miniature at the famed, terrible Grand Cañon, to which, if
-you keep on long enough in this country, you will come at last.
-
-Since this is a hill country one expects to find springs, but not
-to depend upon them; for when found they are often brackish and
-unwholesome, or maddening, slow dribbles in a thirsty soil. Here you
-find the hot sink of Death Valley, or high rolling districts where
-the air has always a tang of frost. Here are the long heavy winds and
-breathless calms on the tilted mesas where dust devils dance, whirling
-up into a wide, pale sky. Here you have no rain when all the earth
-cries for it, or quick downpours called cloud-bursts for violence. A
-land of lost rivers, with little in it to love; yet a land that once
-visited must be come back to inevitably. If it were not so there would
-be little told of it.
-
-This is the country of three seasons. From June on to November it lies
-hot, still, and unbearable, sick with violent unrelieving storms; then
-on until April, chill, quiescent, drinking its scant rain and scanter
-snows; from April to the hot season again, blossoming, radiant, and
-seductive. These months are only approximate; later or earlier the
-rain-laden wind may drift up the water gate of the Colorado from the
-Gulf, and the land sets its seasons by the rain.
-
-The desert floras shame us with their cheerful adaptations to the
-seasonal limitations. Their whole duty is to flower and fruit, and
-they do it hardly, or with tropical luxuriance, as the rain admits. It
-is recorded in the report of the Death Valley expedition that after a
-year of abundant rains, on the Colorado desert was found a specimen of
-Amaranthus ten feet high. A year later the same species in the same
-place matured in the drought at four inches. One hopes the land may
-breed like qualities in her human offspring, not tritely to “try,” but
-to do. Seldom does the desert herb attain the full stature of the type.
-Extreme aridity and extreme altitude have the same dwarfing effect, so
-that we find in the high Sierras and in Death Valley related species in
-miniature that reach a comely growth in mean temperatures. Very fertile
-are the desert plants in expedients to prevent evaporation, turning
-their foliage edgewise toward the sun, growing silky hairs, exuding
-viscid gum. The wind, which has a long sweep, harries and helps them.
-It rolls up dunes about the stocky stems, encompassing and protective,
-and above the dunes, which may be, as with the mesquite, three times as
-high as a man, the blossoming twigs flourish and bear fruit.
-
-There are many areas in the desert where drinkable water lies within
-a few feet of the surface, indicated by the mesquite and the bunch
-grass (_Sporobolus airoides_). It is this nearness of unimagined help
-that makes the tragedy of desert deaths. It is related that the final
-breakdown of that hapless party that gave Death Valley its forbidding
-name occurred in a locality where shallow wells would have saved them.
-But how were they to know that? Properly equipped it is possible to
-go safely across that ghastly sink, yet every year it takes its toll
-of death, and yet men find there sun-dried mummies, of whom no trace
-or recollection is preserved. To underestimate one’s thirst, to pass
-a given landmark to the right or left, to find a dry spring where one
-looked for running water--there is no help for any of these things.
-
-Along springs and sunken watercourses one is surprised to find such
-water-loving plants as grow widely in moist ground, but the true desert
-breeds its own kind, each in its particular habitat. The angle of the
-slope, the frontage of a hill, the structure of the soil determines the
-plant. South-looking hills are nearly bare, and the lower tree-line
-higher here by a thousand feet. Cañons running east and west will
-have one wall naked and one clothed. Around dry lakes and marshes the
-herbage preserves a set and orderly arrangement. Most species have
-well-defined areas of growth, the best index the voiceless land can
-give the traveler of his whereabouts.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-If you have any doubt about it, know that the desert begins with the
-creosote. This immortal shrub spreads down into Death Valley and up to
-the lower timber-line, odorous and medicinal as you might guess from
-the name, wandlike, with shining fretted foliage. Its vivid green is
-grateful to the eye in a wilderness of gray and greenish white shrubs.
-In the spring it exudes a resinous gum which the Indians of those parts
-know how to use with pulverized rock for cementing arrow points to
-shafts. Trust Indians not to miss any virtues of the plant world!
-
-[Illustration]
-
-Nothing the desert produces expresses it better than the unhappy growth
-of the tree yuccas. Tormented, thin forests of it stalk drearily in
-the high mesas, particularly in that triangular slip that fans out
-eastward from the meeting of the Sierras and coastwise hills where
-the first swings across the southern end of the San Joaquin Valley.
-The yucca bristles with bayonet-pointed leaves, dull green, growing
-shaggy with age, tipped with panicles of fetid, greenish bloom. After
-death, which is slow, the ghostly hollow network of its woody skeleton,
-with hardly power to rot, makes the moonlight fearful. Before the
-yucca has come to flower, while yet its bloom is a creamy cone-shaped
-bud of the size of a small cabbage, full of sugary sap, the Indians
-twist it deftly out of its fence of daggers and roast it for their
-own delectation. So it is that in those parts where man inhabits one
-sees young plants of _Yucca arborensis_ infrequently. Other yuccas,
-cacti, low herbs, a thousand sorts, one finds journeying east from
-the coastwise hills. There is neither poverty of soil nor species to
-account for the sparseness of desert growth, but simply that each plant
-requires more room. So much earth must be preëmpted to extract so much
-moisture. The real struggle for existence, the real brain of the plant,
-is underground; above there is room for a rounded perfect growth. In
-Death Valley, reputed the very core of desolation, are nearly two
-hundred identified species.
-
-Above the lower tree-line, which is also the snow-line, mapped out
-abruptly by the sun, one finds spreading growth of piñon, juniper,
-branched nearly to the ground, lilac and sage, and scattering white
-pines.
-
-There is no special preponderance of self-fertilized or
-wind-fertilized plants, but everywhere the demand for and evidence
-of insect life. Now where there are seeds and insects there will be
-birds and small mammals, and where these are, will come the slinking,
-sharp-toothed kind that prey on them. Go as far as you dare in the
-heart of a lonely land, you cannot go so far that life and death are
-not before you. Painted lizards slip in and out of rock crevices, and
-pant on the white hot sands. Birds, hummingbirds even, nest in the
-cactus scrub; woodpeckers befriend the demoniac yuccas; out of the
-stark, treeless waste rings the music of the night-singing mockingbird.
-If it be summer and the sun well down, there will be a burrowing owl
-to call. Strange, furry, tricksy things dart across the open places,
-or sit motionless in the conning towers of the creosote. The poet may
-have “named all the birds without a gun,” but not the fairy-footed,
-ground-inhabiting, furtive, small folk of the rainless regions. They
-are too many and too swift; how many you would not believe without
-seeing the footprint tracings in the sand. They are nearly all night
-workers, finding the days too hot and white. In mid-desert where there
-are no cattle, there are no birds of carrion, but if you go far in
-that direction the chances are that you will find yourself shadowed by
-their tilted wings. Nothing so large as a man can move unspied upon in
-that country, and they know well how the land deals with strangers.
-There are hints to be had here of the way in which a land forces new
-habits on its dwellers. The quick increase of suns at the end of spring
-sometimes overtakes birds in their nesting and effects a reversal of
-the ordinary manner of incubation. It becomes necessary to keep eggs
-cool rather than warm. One hot, stifling spring in the Little Antelope
-I had occasion to pass and repass frequently the nest of a pair of
-meadowlarks, located unhappily in the shelter of a very slender weed. I
-never caught them sitting except near night, but at midday they stood,
-or drooped above it, half fainting with pitifully parted bills, between
-their treasure and the sun. Sometimes both of them together with wings
-spread and half lifted continued a spot of shade in a temperature
-that constrained me at last in a fellow feeling to spare them a bit
-of canvas for permanent shelter. There was a fence in that country
-shutting in a cattle range, and along its fifteen miles of posts one
-could be sure of finding a bird or two in every strip of shadow;
-sometimes the sparrow and the hawk, with wings trailed and beaks
-parted, drooping in the white truce of noon.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-If one is inclined to wonder at first how so many dwellers came to be
-in the loneliest land that ever came out of God’s hands, what they do
-there and why stay, one does not wonder so much after having lived
-there. None other than this long brown land lays such a hold on the
-affections. The rainbow hills, the tender bluish mists, the luminous
-radiance of the spring, have the lotus charm. They trick the sense
-of time, so that once inhabiting there you always mean to go away
-without quite realizing that you have not done it. Men who have lived
-there, miners and cattle-men, will tell you this, not so fluently, but
-emphatically, cursing the land and going back to it. For one thing
-there is the divinest, cleanest air to be breathed anywhere in God’s
-world. Some day the world will understand that, and the little oases on
-the windy tops of hills will harbor for healing its ailing, house-weary
-broods. There is promise there of great wealth in ores and earths,
-which is no wealth by reason of being so far removed from water and
-workable conditions, but men are bewitched by it and tempted to try the
-impossible.
-
-You should hear Salty Williams tell how he used to drive eighteen and
-twenty-mule teams from the borax marsh to Mojave, ninety miles, with
-the trail wagon full of water barrels. Hot days the mules would go
-so mad for drink that the clank of the water bucket set them into an
-uproar of hideous, maimed noises, and a tangle of harness chains, while
-Salty would sit on the high seat with the sun glare heavy in his eyes,
-dealing out curses of pacification in a level, uninterested voice until
-the clamor fell off from sheer exhaustion. There was a line of shallow
-graves along that road; they used to count on dropping a man or two
-of every new gang of coolies brought out in the hot season. But when
-he lost his swamper, smitten without warning at the noon halt, Salty
-quit his job; he said it was “too durn hot.” The swamper he buried by
-the way with stones upon him to keep the coyotes from digging him up,
-and seven years later I read the penciled lines on the pine headboard,
-still bright and unweathered.
-
-But before that, driving up on the Mojave stage, I met Salty again
-crossing Indian Wells, his face from the high seat, tanned and ruddy
-as a harvest moon, looming through the golden dust above his eighteen
-mules. The land had called him.
-
-The palpable sense of mystery in the desert air breeds fables, chiefly
-of lost treasure. Somewhere within its stark borders, if one believes
-report, is a hill strewn with nuggets; one seamed with virgin silver;
-an old clayey water-bed where Indians scooped up earth to make cooking
-pots and shaped them reeking with grains of pure gold. Old miners
-drifting about the desert edges, weathered into the semblance of the
-tawny hills, will tell you tales like these convincingly. After a
-little sojourn in that land you will believe them on their own account.
-It is a question whether it is not better to be bitten by the little
-horned snake of the desert that goes sidewise and strikes without
-coiling, than by the tradition of a lost mine.
-
-And yet--and yet--is it not perhaps to satisfy expectation that one
-falls into the tragic key in writing of desertness? The more you wish
-of it the more you get, and in the mean time lose much of pleasantness.
-In that country which begins at the foot of the east slope of the
-Sierras and spreads out by less and less lofty hill ranges toward the
-Great Basin, it is possible to live with great zest, to have red blood
-and delicate joys, to pass and repass about one’s daily performance
-an area that would make an Atlantic seaboard State, and that with no
-peril, and, according to our way of thought, no particular difficulty.
-At any rate, it was not people who went into the desert merely to write
-it up who invented the fabled Hassaympa, of whose waters, if any drink,
-they can no more see fact as naked fact, but all radiant with the color
-of romance. I, who must have drunk of it in my twice seven years’
-wanderings, am assured that it is worth while.
-
-For all the toll the desert takes of a man it gives compensations,
-deep breaths, deep sleep, and the communion of the stars. It comes
-upon one with new force in the pauses of the night that the Chaldeans
-were a desert-bred people. It is hard to escape the sense of mastery
-as the stars move in the wide clear heavens to risings and settings
-unobscured. They look large and near and palpitant; as if they moved on
-some stately service not needful to declare. Wheeling to their stations
-in the sky, they make the poor world-fret of no account. Of no account
-you who lie out there watching, nor the lean coyote that stands off in
-the scrub from you and howls and howls.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-WATER TRAILS OF THE CERISO
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-By the end of the dry season the water trails of the Ceriso are worn
-to a white ribbon in the leaning grass, spread out faint and fan wise
-toward the homes of gopher and ground rat and squirrel. But however
-faint to man-sight, they are sufficiently plain to the furred and
-feathered folk who travel them. Getting down to the eye level of rat
-and squirrel kind, one perceives what might easily be wide and winding
-roads to us if they occurred in thick plantations of trees three times
-the height of a man. It needs but a slender thread of barrenness to
-make a mouse trail in the forest of the sod. To the little people the
-water trails are as country roads, with scents as signboards.
-
-It seems that man-height is the least fortunate of all heights from
-which to study trails. It is better to go up the front of some tall
-hill, say the spur of Black Mountain, looking back and down across the
-hollow of the Ceriso. Strange how long the soil keeps the impression
-of any continuous treading, even after grass has overgrown it. Twenty
-years since, a brief heyday of mining at Black Mountain made a stage
-road across the Ceriso, yet the parallel lines that are the wheel
-traces show from the height dark and well defined. Afoot in the Ceriso
-one looks in vain for any sign of it. So all the paths that wild
-creatures use going down to the Lone Tree Spring are mapped out whitely
-from this level, which is also the level of the hawks.
-
-There is little water in the Ceriso at the best of times, and that
-little brackish and smelling vilely, but by a lone juniper where
-the rim of the Ceriso breaks away to the lower country, there is a
-perpetual rill of fresh sweet drink in the midst of lush grass and
-watercress. In the dry season there is no water else for a man’s long
-journey of a day. East to the foot of Black Mountain, and north and
-south without counting, are the burrows of small rodents, rat and
-squirrel kind. Under the sage are the shallow forms of the jackrabbits,
-and in the dry banks of washes, and among the strewn fragments of black
-rock, lairs of bobcat, fox, and coyote.
-
-The coyote is your true water-witch, one who snuffs and paws, snuffs
-and paws again at the smallest spot of moisture-scented earth until he
-has freed the blind water from the soil. Many water-holes are no more
-than this detected by the lean hobo of the hills in localities where
-not even an Indian would look for it.
-
-It is the opinion of many wise and busy people that the hill-folk pass
-the ten-month interval between the end and renewal of winter rains,
-with no drink; but your true idler, with days and nights to spend
-beside the water trails, will not subscribe to it. The trails begin,
-as I said, very far back in the Ceriso, faintly, and converge in one
-span broad, white, hard-trodden way in the gully of the spring. And why
-trails if there are no travelers in that direction?
-
-I have yet to find the land not scarred by the thin, far roadways of
-rabbits and what not of furry folks that run in them. Venture to look
-for some seldom-touched water-hole, and so long as the trails run with
-your general direction make sure you are right, but if they begin to
-cross yours at never so slight an angle, to converge toward a point
-left or right of your objective, no matter what the maps say, or your
-memory, trust them; they _know_.
-
-It is very still in the Ceriso by day, so that were it not for the
-evidence of those white beaten ways, it might be the desert it looks.
-The sun is hot in the dry season, and the days are filled with the
-glare of it. Now and again some unseen coyote signals his pack in a
-long-drawn, dolorous whine that comes from no determinate point, but
-nothing stirs much before mid-afternoon. It is a sign when there begin
-to be hawks skimming above the sage that the little people are going
-about their business.
-
-We have fallen on a very careless usage, speaking of wild creatures as
-if they were bound by some such limitation as hampers clockwork. When
-we say of one and another, they are night prowlers, it is perhaps true
-only as the things they feed upon are more easily come by in the dark,
-and they know well how to adjust themselves to conditions wherein food
-is more plentiful by day. And their accustomed performance is very much
-a matter of keen eye, keener scent, quick ear, and a better memory of
-sights and sounds than man dares boast. Watch a coyote come out of his
-lair and cast about in his mind where he will go for his daily killing.
-You cannot very well tell what decides him, but very easily that he has
-decided. He trots or breaks into short gallops, with very perceptible
-pauses to look up and about at landmarks, alters his tack a little,
-looking forward and back to steer his proper course. I am persuaded
-that the coyotes in my valley, which is narrow and beset with steep,
-sharp hills, in long passages steer by the pinnacles of the sky-line,
-going with head cocked to one side to keep to the left or right of such
-and such a promontory.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-I have trailed a coyote often, going across country, perhaps to where
-some slant-winged scavenger hanging in the air signaled prospect of
-a dinner, and found his track such as a man, a very intelligent man
-accustomed to a hill country, and a little cautious, would make to
-the same point. Here a detour to avoid a stretch of too little cover,
-there a pause on the rim of a gully to pick the better way,--and it is
-usually the best way,--and making his point with the greatest economy
-of effort. Since the time of Seyavi the deer have shifted their feeding
-ground across the valley at the beginning of deep snows, by way of the
-Black Rock, fording the river at Charley’s Butte, and making straight
-for the mouth of the cañon that is the easiest going to the winter
-pastures on Waban. So they still cross, though whatever trail they had
-has been long broken by ploughed ground; but from the mouth of Tinpah
-Creek, where the deer come out of the Sierras, it is easily seen that
-the creek, the point of Black Rock, and Charley’s Butte are in line
-with the wide bulk of shade that is the foot of Waban Pass. And along
-with this the deer have learned that Charley’s Butte is almost the only
-possible ford, and all the shortest crossing of the valley. It seems
-that the wild creatures have learned all that is important to their
-way of life except the changes of the moon. I have seen some prowling
-fox or coyote, surprised by its sudden rising from behind the mountain
-wall, slink in its increasing glow, watch it furtively from the cover
-of near-by brush, unprepared and half uncertain of its identity until
-it rode clear of the peaks, and finally make off with all the air of
-one caught napping by an ancient joke. The moon in its wanderings
-must be a sort of exasperation to cunning beasts, likely to spoil by
-untimely risings some fore-planned mischief.
-
-But to take the trail again; the coyotes that are astir in the Ceriso
-of late afternoons, harrying the rabbits from their shallow forms,
-and the hawks that sweep and swing above them, are not there from
-any mechanical promptings of instinct, but because they know of old
-experience that the small fry are about to take to seed gathering and
-the water trails. The rabbits begin it, taking the trail with long,
-light leaps, one eye and ear cocked to the hills from whence a coyote
-might descend upon them at any moment. Rabbits are a foolish people.
-They do not fight except with their own kind, nor use their paws except
-for feet, and appear to have no reason for existence but to furnish
-meals for meat-eaters. In flight they seem to rebound from the earth
-of their own elasticity, but keep a sober pace going to the spring. It
-is the young watercress that tempts them and the pleasures of society,
-for they seldom drink. Even in localities where there are flowing
-streams they seem to prefer the moisture that collects on herbage, and
-after rains may be seen rising on their haunches to drink delicately
-the clear drops caught in the tops of the young sage. But drink they
-must, as I have often seen them mornings and evenings at the rill that
-goes by my door. Wait long enough at the Lone Tree Spring and sooner or
-later they will all come in. But here their matings are accomplished,
-and though they are fearful of so little as a cloud shadow or blown
-leaf, they contrive to have some playful hours. At the spring the
-bobcat drops down upon them from the black rock, and the red fox picks
-them up returning in the dark. By day the hawk and eagle overshadow
-them, and the coyote has all times and seasons for his own.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-Cattle, when there are any in the Ceriso, drink morning and evening,
-spending the night on the warm last lighted slopes of neighboring
-hills, stirring with the peep o’ day. In these half wild spotted
-steers the habits of an earlier lineage persist. It must be long since
-they have made beds for themselves, but before lying down they turn
-themselves round and round as dogs do. They choose bare and stony
-ground, exposed fronts of westward facing hills, and lie down in
-companies. Usually by the end of the summer the cattle have been driven
-or gone of their own choosing to the mountain meadows. One year a
-maverick yearling, strayed or overlooked by the vaqueros, kept on until
-the season’s end, and so betrayed another visitor to the spring that
-else I might have missed. On a certain morning the half-eaten carcass
-lay at the foot of the black rock, and in moist earth by the rill of
-the spring, the foot-pads of a cougar, puma, mountain lion, or whatever
-the beast is rightly called. The kill must have been made early in the
-evening, for it appeared that the cougar had been twice to the spring;
-and since the meat-eater drinks little until he has eaten, he must have
-fed and drunk, and after an interval of lying up in the black rock, had
-eaten and drunk again. There was no knowing how far he had come, but
-if he came again the second night he found that the coyotes had left
-him very little of his kill.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-Nobody ventures to say how infrequently and at what hour the small
-fry visit the spring. There are such numbers of them that if each
-came once between the last of spring and the first of winter rains,
-there would still be water trails. I have seen badgers drinking about
-the hour when the light takes on the yellow tinge it has from coming
-slantwise through the hills. They find out shallow places, and are
-loath to wet their feet. Rats and chipmunks have been observed visiting
-the spring as late as nine o’clock mornings. The larger spermophiles
-that live near the spring and keep awake to work all day, come and
-go at no particular hour, drinking sparingly. At long intervals on
-half-lighted days, meadow and field mice steal delicately along the
-trail. These visitors are all too small to be watched carefully at
-night, but for evidence of their frequent coming there are the trails
-that may be traced miles out among the crisping grasses. On rare
-nights, in the places where no grass grows between the shrubs, and the
-sand silvers whitely to the moon, one sees them whisking to and fro
-on innumerable errands of seed gathering, but the chief witnesses of
-their presence near the spring are the elf owls. Those burrow-haunting,
-speckled fluffs of greediness begin a twilight flitting toward the
-spring, feeding as they go on grasshoppers, lizards, and small, swift
-creatures, diving into burrows to catch field mice asleep, battling
-with chipmunks at their own doors, and getting down in great numbers
-toward the lone juniper. Now owls do not love water greatly on its own
-account. Not to my knowledge have I caught one drinking or bathing,
-though on night wanderings across the mesa they flit up from under the
-horse’s feet along stream borders. Their presence near the spring in
-great numbers would indicate the presence of the things they feed upon.
-All night the rustle and soft hooting keeps on in the neighborhood of
-the spring, with seldom small shrieks of mortal agony. It is clear day
-before they have all gotten back to their particular hummocks, and if
-one follows cautiously, not to frighten them into some near-by burrow,
-it is possible to trail them far up the slope.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-The crested quail that troop in the Ceriso are the happiest frequenters
-of the water trails. There is no furtiveness about their morning
-drink. About the time the burrowers and all that feed upon them are
-addressing themselves to sleep, great flocks pour down the trails with
-that peculiar melting motion of moving quail, twittering, shoving, and
-shouldering. They splatter into the shallows, drink daintily, shake out
-small showers over their perfect coats, and melt away again into the
-scrub, preening and pranking, with soft contented noises.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-After the quail, sparrows and ground-inhabiting birds bathe with
-the utmost frankness and a great deal of splutter; and here in the
-heart of noon hawks resort, sitting panting, with wings aslant, and a
-truce to all hostilities because of the heat. One summer there came
-a road-runner up from the lower valley, peeking and prying, and he
-had never any patience with the water baths of the sparrows. His own
-ablutions were performed in the clean, hopeful dust of the chaparral;
-and whenever he happened on their morning splatterings, he would
-depress his glossy crest, slant his shining tail to the level of his
-body, until he looked most like some bright venomous snake, daunting
-them with shrill abuse and feint of battle. Then suddenly he would go
-tilting and balancing down the gully in fine disdain, only to return in
-a day or two to make sure the foolish bodies were still at it.
-
-[Illustration: Fig. 1.]
-
-Out on the Ceriso about five miles, and wholly out of sight of it,
-near where the immemorial foot trail goes up from Saline Flat toward
-Black Mountain, is a water sign worth turning out of the trail to see.
-It is a laid circle of stones large enough not to be disturbed by any
-ordinary hap, with an opening flanked by two parallel rows of similar
-stones, between which were an arrow placed, touching the opposite rim
-of the circle, thus (Fig. 1), it would point as the crow flies to the
-spring. It is the old, indubitable water mark of the Shoshones. One
-still finds it in the desert ranges in Salt Wells and Mesquite valleys,
-and along the slopes of Waban. On the other side of Ceriso, where the
-black rock begins, about a mile from the spring, is the work of an
-older, forgotten people. The rock hereabout is all volcanic, fracturing
-with a crystalline whitish surface, but weathered outside to furnace
-blackness. Around the spring, where must have been a gathering place
-of the tribes, it is scored over with strange pictures and symbols
-that have no meaning to the Indians of the present day; but out where
-the rock begins, there is carved into the white heart of it a pointing
-arrow over the symbol for distance and a circle full of wavy lines
-(Fig. 2) reading thus: “In this direction three [units of measurement
-unknown] is a spring of sweet water; look for it.”
-
-[Illustration: Fig. 2.]
-
-
-
-
-THE SCAVENGERS
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-[Illustration]
-
-Fifty-seven buzzards, one on each of fifty-seven fence posts at the
-rancho El Tejon, on a mirage-breeding September morning, sat solemnly
-while the white tilted travelers’ vans lumbered down the Canada de los
-Uvas. After three hours they had only clapped their wings, or exchanged
-posts. The season’s end in the vast dim valley of the San Joaquin is
-palpitatingly hot, and the air breathes like cotton wool. Through it
-all the buzzards sit on the fences and low hummocks, with wings spread
-fanwise for air. There is no end to them, and they smell to heaven.
-Their heads droop, and all their communication is a rare, horrid croak.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-The increase of wild creatures is in proportion to the things they
-feed upon: the more carrion the more buzzards. The end of the third
-successive dry year bred them beyond belief. The first year quail
-mated sparingly; the second year the wild oats matured no seed; the
-third, cattle died in their tracks with their heads towards the stopped
-watercourses. And that year the scavengers were as black as the plague
-all across the mesa and up the treeless, tumbled hills. On clear days
-they betook themselves to the upper air, where they hung motionless for
-hours. That year there were vultures among them, distinguished by the
-white patches under the wings. All their offensiveness notwithstanding,
-they have a stately flight. They must also have what pass for good
-qualities among themselves, for they are social, not to say clannish.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-It is a very squalid tragedy,--that of the dying brutes and the
-scavenger birds. Death by starvation is slow. The heavy-headed,
-rack-boned cattle totter in the fruitless trails; they stand for
-long, patient intervals; they lie down and do not rise. There is
-fear in their eyes when they are first stricken, but afterward only
-intolerable weariness. I suppose the dumb creatures know nearly as
-much of death as do their betters, who have only the more imagination.
-Their even-breathing submission after the first agony is their tribute
-to its inevitableness. It needs a nice discrimination to say which of
-the basket-ribbed cattle is likest to afford the next meal, but the
-scavengers make few mistakes. One stoops to the quarry and the flock
-follows.
-
-Cattle once down may be days in dying. They stretch out their necks
-along the ground, and roll up their slow eyes at longer intervals. The
-buzzards have all the time, and no beak is dropped or talon struck
-until the breath is wholly passed. It is doubtless the economy of
-nature to have the scavengers by to clean up the carrion, but a wolf at
-the throat would be a shorter agony than the long stalking and sometime
-perchings of these loathsome watchers. Suppose now it were a man in
-this long-drawn, hungrily spied upon distress! When Timmie O’Shea was
-lost on Armogossa Flats for three days without water, Long Tom Basset
-found him, not by any trail, but by making straight away for the points
-where he saw buzzards stooping. He could hear the beat of their wings,
-Tom said, and trod on their shadows, but O’Shea was past recalling what
-he thought about things after the second day. My friend Ewan told
-me, among other things, when he came back from San Juan Hill, that not
-all the carnage of battle turned his bowels as the sight of slant black
-wings rising flockwise before the burial squad.
-
-[Illustration: LOST FOR THREE DAYS IN THE DESERT]
-
-There are three kinds of noises buzzards make,--it is impossible to
-call them notes,--raucous and elemental. There is a short croak of
-alarm, and the same syllable in a modified tone to serve all the
-purposes of ordinary conversation. The old birds make a kind of throaty
-chuckling to their young, but if they have any love song I have not
-heard it. The young yawp in the nest a little, with more breath than
-noise. It is seldom one finds a buzzard’s nest, seldom that grown-ups
-find a nest of any sort; it is only children to whom these things
-happen by right. But by making a business of it one may come upon
-them in wide, quiet cañons, or on the lookouts of lonely, table-topped
-mountains, three or four together, in the tops of stubby trees or on
-rotten cliffs well open to the sky.
-
-It is probable that the buzzard is gregarious, but it seems unlikely
-from the small number of young noted at any time that every female
-incubates each year. The young birds are easily distinguished by their
-size when feeding, and high up in air by the worn primaries of the
-older birds. It is when the young go out of the nest on their first
-foraging that the parents, full of a crass and simple pride, make their
-indescribable chucklings of gobbling, gluttonous delight. The little
-ones would be amusing as they tug and tussle, if one could forget what
-it is they feed upon.
-
-One never comes any nearer to the vulture’s nest or nestlings than
-hearsay. They keep to the southerly Sierras, and are bold enough, it
-seems, to do killing on their own account when no carrion is at hand.
-They dog the shepherd from camp to camp, the hunter home from the hill,
-and will even carry away offal from under his hand.
-
-The vulture merits respect for his bigness and for his bandit airs, but
-he is a sombre bird, with none of the buzzard’s frank satisfaction in
-his offensiveness.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-The least objectionable of the inland scavengers is the raven,
-frequenter of the desert ranges, the same called locally “carrion
-crow.” He is handsomer and has such an air. He is nice in his habits
-and is said to have likable traits. A tame one in a Shoshone camp was
-the butt of much sport and enjoyed it. He could all but talk and was
-another with the children, but an arrant thief. The raven will eat
-most things that come his way,--eggs and young of ground-nesting birds,
-seeds even, lizards and grasshoppers, which he catches cleverly; and
-whatever he is about, let a coyote trot never so softly by, the raven
-flaps up and after; for whatever the coyote can pull down or nose out
-is meat also for the carrion crow.
-
-And never a coyote comes out of his lair for killing, in the country
-of the carrion crows, but looks up first to see where they may be
-gathering. It is a sufficient occupation for a windy morning, on the
-lineless, level mesa, to watch the pair of them eying each other
-furtively, with a tolerable assumption of unconcern, but no doubt with
-a certain amount of good understanding about it. Once at Red Rock, in a
-year of green pasture, which is a bad time for the scavengers, we saw
-two buzzards, five ravens, and a coyote feeding on the same carrion,
-and only the coyote seemed ashamed of the company.
-
-Probably we never fully credit the interdependence of wild creatures,
-and their cognizance of the affairs of their own kind. When the five
-coyotes that range the Tejon from Pasteria to Tunawai planned a relay
-race to bring down an antelope strayed from the band, beside myself
-to watch, an eagle swung down from Mt. Pinos, buzzards materialized
-out of invisible ether, and hawks came trooping like small boys to a
-street fight. Rabbits sat up in the chaparral and cocked their ears,
-feeling themselves quite safe for the once as the hunt swung near them.
-Nothing happens in the deep wood that the blue jays are not all agog
-to tell. The hawk follows the badger, the coyote the carrion crow,
-and from their aerial stations the buzzards watch each other. What
-would be worth knowing is how much of their neighbor’s affairs the new
-generations learn for themselves, and how much they are taught of their
-elders.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-So wide is the range of the scavengers that it is never safe to say,
-eyewitness to the contrary, that there are few or many in such a place.
-Where the carrion is, there will the buzzards be gathered together,
-and in three days’ journey you will not sight another one. The way up
-from Mojave to Red Butte is all desertness, affording no pasture and
-scarcely a rill of water. In a year of little rain in the south, flocks
-and herds were driven to the number of thousands along this road to
-the perennial pastures of the high ranges. It is a long, slow trail,
-ankle deep in bitter dust that gets up in the slow wind and moves along
-the backs of the crawling cattle. In the worst of times one in three
-will pine and fall out by the way. In the defiles of Red Rock, the
-sheep piled up a stinking lane; it was the sun smiting by day. To these
-shambles came buzzards, vultures, and coyotes from all the country
-round, so that on the Tejon, the Ceriso, and the Little Antelope there
-were not scavengers enough to keep the country clean. All that summer
-the dead mummified in the open or dropped slowly back to earth in the
-quagmires of the bitter springs. Meanwhile from Red Rock to Coyote
-Holes, and from Coyote Holes to Haiwai the scavengers gorged and gorged.
-
-The coyote is not a scavenger by choice, preferring his own kill, but
-being on the whole a lazy dog, is apt to fall into carrion eating
-because it is easier. The red fox and bobcat, a little pressed by
-hunger, will eat of any other animal’s kill, but will not ordinarily
-touch what dies of itself, and are exceedingly shy of food that has
-been manhandled.
-
-Very clean and handsome, quite belying his relationship in appearance,
-is Clark’s crow, that scavenger and plunderer of mountain camps. It
-is permissible to call him by his common name, “Camp Robber:” he has
-earned it. Not content with refuse, he pecks open meal sacks, filches
-whole potatoes, is a gormand for bacon, drills holes in packing cases,
-and is daunted by nothing short of tin. All the while he does not
-neglect to vituperate the chipmunks and sparrows that whisk off crumbs
-of comfort from under the camper’s feet. The Camp Robber’s gray coat,
-black and white barred wings, and slender bill, with certain tricks of
-perching, accuse him of attempts to pass himself off among woodpeckers;
-but his behavior is all crow. He frequents the higher pine belts,
-and has a noisy strident call like a jay’s, and how clean he and the
-frisk-tailed chipmunks keep the camp! No crumb or paring or bit of
-eggshell goes amiss.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-High as the camp may be, so it is not above timber-line, it is not
-too high for the coyote, the bobcat, or the wolf. It is the complaint
-of the ordinary camper that the woods are too still, depleted of wild
-life. But what dead body of wild thing, or neglected game untouched by
-its kind, do you find? And put out offal away from camp over night, and
-look next day at the foot tracks where it lay.
-
-Man is a great blunderer going about in the woods, and there is no
-other except the bear makes so much noise. Being so well warned
-beforehand, it is a very stupid animal, or a very bold one, that cannot
-keep safely hid. The cunningest hunter is hunted in turn, and what
-he leaves of his kill is meat for some other. That is the economy of
-nature, but with it all there is not sufficient account taken of the
-works of man. There is no scavenger that eats tin cans, and no wild
-thing leaves a like disfigurement on the forest floor.
-
-
-
-
-THE POCKET HUNTER
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-I remember very well when I first met him. Walking in the evening glow
-to spy the marriages of the white gilias, I sniffed the unmistakable
-odor of burning sage. It is a smell that carries far and indicates
-usually the nearness of a campoodie, but on the level mesa nothing
-taller showed than Diana’s sage. Over the tops of it, beginning to dusk
-under a young white moon, trailed a wavering ghost of smoke, and at
-the end of it I came upon the Pocket Hunter making a dry camp in the
-friendly scrub. He sat tailorwise in the sand, with his coffee-pot on
-the coals, his supper ready to hand in the frying-pan, and himself in
-a mood for talk. His pack burros in hobbles strayed off to hunt for a
-wetter mouthful than the sage afforded, and gave him no concern.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-We came upon him often after that, threading the windy passes, or by
-water-holes in the desert hills, and got to know much of his way of
-life. He was a small, bowed man, with a face and manner and speech of
-no character at all, as if he had that faculty of small hunted things
-of taking on the protective color of his surroundings. His clothes were
-of no fashion that I could remember, except that they bore liberal
-markings of pot black, and he had a curious fashion of going about
-with his mouth open, which gave him a vacant look until you came near
-enough to perceive him busy about an endless hummed, wordless tune.
-He traveled far and took a long time to it, but the simplicity of his
-kitchen arrangements was elemental. A pot for beans, a coffee-pot, a
-frying-pan, a tin to mix bread in--he fed the burros in this when there
-was need--with these he had been half round our western world and back.
-He explained to me very early in our acquaintance what was good to take
-to the hills for food: nothing sticky, for that “dirtied the pots;”
-nothing with “juice” to it, for that would not pack to advantage; and
-nothing likely to ferment. He used no gun, but he would set snares
-by the water-holes for quail and doves, and in the trout country he
-carried a line. Burros he kept, one or two according to his pack, for
-this chief excellence, that they would eat potato parings and firewood.
-He had owned a horse in the foothill country, but when he came to
-the desert with no forage but mesquite, he found himself under the
-necessity of picking the beans from the briers, a labor that drove him
-to the use of pack animals to whom thorns were a relish.
-
-I suppose no man becomes a pocket hunter by first intention. He must be
-born with the faculty, and along comes the occasion, like the tap on
-the test tube that induces crystallization. My friend had been several
-things of no moment until he struck a thousand-dollar pocket in the
-Lee District and came into his vocation. A pocket, you must know, is
-a small body of rich ore occurring by itself, or in a vein of poorer
-stuff. Nearly every mineral ledge contains such, if only one has the
-luck to hit upon them without too much labor. The sensible thing for a
-man to do who has found a good pocket is to buy himself into business
-and keep away from the hills. The logical thing is to set out looking
-for another one. My friend the Pocket Hunter had been looking twenty
-years. His working outfit was a shovel, a pick, a gold pan which he
-kept cleaner than his plate, and a pocket magnifier. When he came to a
-watercourse he would pan out the gravel of its bed for “colors,” and
-under the glass determine if they had come from far or near, and so
-spying he would work up the stream until he found where the drift of
-the gold-bearing outcrop fanned out into the creek; then up the side
-of the cañon till he came to the proper vein. I think he said the best
-indication of small pockets was an iron stain, but I could never get
-the run of miner’s talk enough to feel instructed for pocket hunting.
-He had another method in the waterless hills, where he would work
-in and out of blind gullies and all windings of the manifold strata
-that appeared not to have cooled since they had been heaved up. His
-itinerary began with the east slope of the Sierras of the Snows, where
-that range swings across to meet the coast hills, and all up that slope
-to the Truckee River country, where the long cold forbade his progress
-north. Then he worked back down one or another of the nearly parallel
-ranges that lie out desertward, and so down to the sink of the Mojave
-River, burrowing to oblivion in the sand,--a big mysterious land, a
-lonely, inhospitable land, beautiful, terrible. But he came to no harm
-in it; the land tolerated him as it might a gopher or a badger. Of all
-its inhabitants it has the least concern for man.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-There are many strange sorts of humans bred in a mining country, each
-sort despising the queernesses of the other, but of them all I found
-the Pocket Hunter most acceptable for his clean, companionable talk.
-There was more color to his reminiscences than the faded sandy old
-miners “kyoteing,” that is, tunneling like a coyote (kyote in the
-vernacular) in the core of a lonesome hill. Such a one has found,
-perhaps, a body of tolerable ore in a poor lead,--remember that I can
-never be depended on to get the terms right,--and followed it into the
-heart of country rock to no profit, hoping, burrowing, and hoping.
-These men go harmlessly mad in time, believing themselves just behind
-the wall of fortune--most likable and simple men, for whom it is well
-to do any kindly thing that occurs to you except lend them money. I
-have known “grub stakers” too, those persuasive sinners to whom you
-make allowances of flour and pork and coffee in consideration of the
-ledges they are about to find; but none of these proved so much worth
-while as the Pocket Hunter. He wanted nothing of you and maintained a
-cheerful preference for his own way of life. It was an excellent way
-if you had the constitution for it. The Pocket Hunter had gotten to
-that point where he knew no bad weather, and all places were equally
-happy so long as they were out of doors. I do not know just how long
-it takes to become saturated with the elements so that one takes no
-account of them. Myself can never get past the glow and exhilaration of
-a storm, the wrestle of long dust-heavy winds, the play of live thunder
-on the rocks, nor past the keen fret of fatigue when the storm outlasts
-physical endurance. But prospectors and Indians get a kind of a weather
-shell that remains on the body until death.
-
-The Pocket Hunter had seen destruction by the violence of nature and
-the violence of men, and felt himself in the grip of an All-wisdom
-that killed men or spared them as seemed for their good; but of death
-by sickness he knew nothing except that he believed he should never
-suffer it. He had been in Grape-vine Cañon the year of storms that
-changed the whole front of the mountain. All day he had come down
-under the wing of the storm, hoping to win past it, but finding it
-traveling with him until night. It kept on after that, he supposed, a
-steady downpour, but could not with certainty say, being securely deep
-in sleep. But the weather instinct does not sleep. In the night the
-heavens behind the hill dissolved in rain, and the roar of the storm
-was borne in and mixed with his dreaming, so that it moved him, still
-asleep, to get up and out of the path of it. What finally woke him was
-the crash of pine logs as they went down before the unbridled flood,
-and the swirl of foam that lashed him where he clung in the tangle of
-scrub while the wall of water went by. It went on against the cabin of
-Bill Gerry and laid Bill stripped and broken on a sand bar at the mouth
-of the Grape-vine, seven miles away. There, when the sun was up and the
-wrath of the rain spent, the Pocket Hunter found and buried him; but he
-never laid his own escape at any door but the unintelligible favor of
-the Powers.
-
-The journeyings of the Pocket Hunter led him often into that mysterious
-country beyond Hot Creek where a hidden force works mischief,
-mole-like, under the crust of the earth. Whatever agency is at work
-in that neighborhood, and it is popularly supposed to be the devil,
-it changes means and direction without time or season. It creeps up
-whole hillsides with insidious heat, unguessed until one notes the
-pine woods dying at the top, and having scorched out a good block of
-timber returns to steam and spout in caked, forgotten crevices of years
-before. It will break up sometimes blue-hot and bubbling, in the midst
-of a clear creek, or make a sucking, scalding quicksand at the ford.
-These outbreaks had the kind of morbid interest for the Pocket Hunter
-that a house of unsavory reputation has in a respectable neighborhood,
-but I always found the accounts he brought me more interesting than
-his explanations, which were compounded of fag ends of miner’s talk
-and superstition. He was a perfect gossip of the woods, this Pocket
-Hunter, and when I could get him away from “leads” and “strikes” and
-“contacts,” full of fascinating small talk about the ebb and flood of
-creeks, the piñon crop on Black Mountain, and the wolves of Mesquite
-Valley. I suppose he never knew how much he depended for the necessary
-sense of home and companionship on the beasts and trees, meeting and
-finding them in their wonted places,--the bear that used to come down
-Pine Creek in the spring, pawing out trout from the shelters of sod
-banks, the juniper at Lone Tree Spring, and the quail at Paddy Jack’s.
-
-There is a place on Waban, south of White Mountain, where flat,
-wind-tilted cedars make low tents and coves of shade and shelter,
-where the wild sheep winter in the snow. Woodcutters and prospectors
-had brought me word of that, but the Pocket Hunter was accessory to
-the fact. About the opening of winter, when one looks for sudden big
-storms, he had attempted a crossing by the nearest path, beginning the
-ascent at noon. It grew cold, the snow came on thick and blinding, and
-wiped out the trail in a white smudge; the storm drift blew in and cut
-off landmarks, the early dark obscured the rising drifts. According to
-the Pocket Hunter’s account, he knew where he was, but couldn’t exactly
-say. Three days before he had been in the west arm of Death Valley on
-a short water allowance, ankle deep in shifty sand; now he was on the
-rise of Waban, knee-deep in sodden snow, and in both cases he did the
-only allowable thing--he walked on. That is the only thing to do in a
-snowstorm in any case. It might have been the creature instinct, which
-in his way of life had room to grow, that led him to the cedar shelter;
-at any rate he found it about four hours after dark, and heard the
-heavy breathing of the flock. He said that if he thought at all at this
-juncture he must have thought that he had stumbled on a storm-belated
-shepherd with his silly sheep; but in fact he took no note of anything
-but the warmth of packed fleeces, and snuggled in between them dead
-with sleep. If the flock stirred in the night he stirred drowsily to
-keep close and let the storm go by. That was all until morning woke him
-shining on a white world. Then the very soul of him shook to see the
-wild sheep of God stand up about him, nodding their great horns beneath
-the cedar roof, looking out on the wonder of the snow. They had moved a
-little away from him with the coming of the light, but paid him no more
-heed. The light broadened and the white pavilions of the snow swam in
-the heavenly blueness of the sea from which they rose. The cloud drift
-scattered and broke billowing in the cañons. The leader stamped lightly
-on the litter to put the flock in motion, suddenly they took the drifts
-in those long light leaps that are nearest to flight, down and away
-on the slopes of Waban. Think of that to happen to a Pocket Hunter!
-But though he had fallen on many a wished-for hap, he was curiously
-inapt at getting the truth about beasts in general. He believed in
-the venom of toads, and charms for snake bites, and--for this I could
-never forgive him--had all the miner’s prejudices against my friend the
-coyote. Thief, sneak, and son of a thief were the friendliest words he
-had for this little gray dog of the wilderness.
-
-Of course with so much seeking he came occasionally upon pockets of
-more or less value, otherwise he could not have kept up his way of
-life; but he had as much luck in missing great ledges as in finding
-small ones. He had been all over the Tonopah country, and brought away
-float without happening upon anything that gave promise of what that
-district was to become in a few years. He claimed to have chipped
-bits off the very outcrop of the California Rand, without finding it
-worth while to bring away, but none of these things put him out of
-countenance.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-It was once in roving weather, when we found him shifting pack on a
-steep trail, that I observed certain of his belongings done up in green
-canvas bags, the veritable “green bag” of English novels. It seemed
-so incongruous a reminder in this untenanted West that I dropped
-down beside the trail overlooking the vast dim valley, to hear about
-the green canvas. He had gotten it, he said, in London years before,
-and that was the first I had known of his having been abroad. It was
-after one of his “big strikes” that he had made the Grand Tour, and
-had brought nothing away from it but the green canvas bags, which he
-conceived would fit his needs, and an ambition. This last was nothing
-less than to strike it rich and set himself up among the eminently
-bourgeois of London. It seemed that the situation of the wealthy
-English middle class, with just enough gentility above to aspire to,
-and sufficient smaller fry to bully and patronize, appealed to his
-imagination, though of course he did not put it so crudely as that.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-It was no news to me then, two or three years after, to learn that he
-had taken ten thousand dollars from an abandoned claim, just the sort
-of luck to have pleased him, and gone to London to spend it. The land
-seemed not to miss him any more than it had minded him, but I missed
-him and could not forget the trick of expecting him in least likely
-situations. Therefore it was with a pricking sense of the familiar that
-I followed a twilight trail of smoke, a year or two later, to the swale
-of a dripping spring, and came upon a man by the fire with a coffee-pot
-and frying-pan. I was not surprised to find it was the Pocket Hunter.
-No man can be stronger than his destiny.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-SHOSHONE LAND
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-It is true I have been in Shoshone Land, but before that, long
-before, I had seen it through the eyes of Winnenap´ in a rosy mist of
-reminiscence, and must always see it with a sense of intimacy in the
-light that never was. Sitting on the golden slope at the campoodie,
-looking across the Bitter Lake to the purple tops of Mutarango, the
-medicine-man drew up its happy places one by one, like little blessed
-islands in a sea of talk. For he was born a Shoshone, was Winnenap´;
-and though his name, his wife, his children, and his tribal relations
-were of the Paiutes, his thoughts turned homesickly toward Shoshone
-Land. Once a Shoshone always a Shoshone. Winnenap´ lived gingerly
-among the Paiutes and in his heart despised them. But he could speak
-a tolerable English when he would, and he always would if it were of
-Shoshone Land.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-He had come into the keeping of the Paiutes as a hostage for the long
-peace which the authority of the whites made interminable, and, though
-there was now no order in the tribe, nor any power that could have
-lawfully restrained him, kept on in the old usage, to save his honor
-and the word of his vanished kin. He had seen his children’s children
-in the borders of the Paiutes, but loved best his own miles of sand
-and rainbow-painted hills. Professedly he had not seen them since the
-beginning of his hostage; but every year about the end of the rains and
-before the strength of the sun had come upon us from the south, the
-medicine-man went apart on the mountains to gather herbs, and when he
-came again I knew by the new fortitude of his countenance and the new
-color of his reminiscences that he had been alone and unspied upon in
-Shoshone Land.
-
-To reach that country from the campoodie, one goes south and south,
-within hearing of the lip-lip-lapping of the great tideless lake,
-and south by east over a high rolling district, miles and miles of
-sage and nothing else. So one comes to the country of the painted
-hills,--old red cones of craters, wasteful beds of mineral earths, hot,
-acrid springs, and steam jets issuing from a leprous soil. After the
-hills the black rock, after the craters the spewed lava, ash strewn,
-of incredible thickness, and full of sharp, winding rifts. There are
-picture writings carved deep in the face of the cliffs to mark the way
-for those who do not know it. On the very edge of the black rock the
-earth falls away in a wide sweeping hollow, which is Shoshone Land.
-
-South the land rises in very blue hills, blue because thickly wooded
-with ceanothus and manzanita, the haunt of deer and the border of the
-Shoshones. Eastward the land goes very far by broken ranges, narrow
-valleys of pure desertness, and huge mesas uplifted to the sky-line,
-east and east, and no man knows the end of it.
-
-It is the country of the bighorn, the wapiti, and the wolf, nesting
-place of buzzards, land of cloud-nourished trees and wild things that
-live without drink. Above all, it is the land of the creosote and the
-mesquite. The mesquite is God’s best thought in all this desertness. It
-grows in the open, is thorny, stocky, close grown, and iron-rooted.
-Long winds move in the draughty valleys, blown sand fills and fills
-about the lower branches, piling pyramidal dunes, from the top of which
-the mesquite twigs flourish greenly. Fifteen or twenty feet under the
-drift, where it seems no rain could penetrate, the main trunk grows,
-attaining often a yard’s thickness, resistant as oak. In Shoshone Land
-one digs for large timber; that is in the southerly, sandy exposures.
-Higher on the table-topped ranges low trees of juniper and piñon stand
-each apart, rounded and spreading heaps of greenness. Between them, but
-each to itself in smooth clear spaces, tufts of tall feathered grass.
-
-This is the sense of the desert hills, that there is room enough and
-time enough. Trees grow to consummate domes; every plant has its
-perfect work. Noxious weeds such as come up thickly in crowded fields
-do not flourish in the free spaces. Live long enough with an Indian,
-and he or the wild things will show you a use for everything that grows
-in these borders.
-
-The manner of the country makes the usage of life there, and the land
-will not be lived in except in its own fashion. The Shoshones live
-like their trees, with great spaces between, and in pairs and in
-family groups they set up wattled huts by the infrequent springs. More
-wickiups than two make a very great number. Their shelters are lightly
-built, for they travel much and far, following where deer feed and
-seeds ripen, but they are not more lonely than other creatures that
-inhabit there.
-
-The year’s round is somewhat in this fashion. After the piñon
-harvest the clans foregather on a warm southward slope for the
-annual adjustment of tribal difficulties and the medicine dance, for
-marriage and mourning and vengeance, and the exchange of serviceable
-information; if, for example, the deer have shifted their feeding
-ground, if the wild sheep have come back to Waban, or certain springs
-run full or dry. Here the Shoshones winter flockwise, weaving baskets
-and hunting big game driven down from the country of the deep snow.
-And this brief intercourse is all the use they have of their kind, for
-now there are no wars, and many of their ancient crafts have fallen
-into disuse. The solitariness of the life breeds in the men, as in the
-plants, a certain well-roundedness and sufficiency to its own ends.
-Any Shoshone family has in itself the man-seed, power to multiply
-and replenish, potentialities for food and clothing and shelter, for
-healing and beautifying.
-
-When the rain is over and gone they are stirred by the instinct of
-those that journeyed eastward from Eden, and go up each with his mate
-and young brood, like birds to old nesting places. The beginning of
-spring in Shoshone Land--oh the soft wonder of it!--is a mistiness
-as of incense smoke, a veil of greenness over the whitish stubby
-shrubs, a web of color on the silver sanded soil. No counting covers
-the multitude of rayed blossoms that break suddenly underfoot in the
-brief season of the winter rains, with silky furred or prickly viscid
-foliage, or no foliage at all. They are morning and evening bloomers
-chiefly, and strong seeders. Years of scant rains they lie shut and
-safe in the winnowed sands, so that some species appear to be extinct.
-Years of long storms they break so thickly into bloom that no horse
-treads without crushing them. These years the gullies of the hills are
-rank with fern and a great tangle of climbing vines.
-
-Just as the mesa twilights have their vocal note in the love call of
-the burrowing owl, so the desert spring is voiced by the mourning
-doves. Welcome and sweet they sound in the smoky mornings before
-breeding time, and where they frequent in any great numbers water is
-confidently looked for. Still by the springs one finds the cunning
-brush shelters from which the Shoshones shot arrows at them when the
-doves came to drink.
-
-Now as to these same Shoshones there are some who claim that they
-have no right to the name, which belongs to a more northerly tribe;
-but that is the word they will be called by, and there is no greater
-offense than to call an Indian out of his name. According to their
-traditions and all proper evidence, they were a great people occupying
-far north and east of their present bounds, driven thence by the
-Paiutes. Between the two tribes is the residuum of old hostilities.
-
-Winnenap´, whose memory ran to the time when the boundary of the Paiute
-country was a dead-line to Shoshones, told me once how himself and
-another lad, in an unforgotten spring, discovered a nesting place of
-buzzards a bit of a way beyond the borders. And they two burned to
-rob those nests. Oh, for no purpose at all except as boys rob nests
-immemorially, for the fun of it, to have and handle and show to other
-lads as an exceeding treasure, and afterwards discard. So, not quite
-meaning to, but breathless with daring, they crept up a gully, across
-a sage brush flat and through a waste of boulders, to the rugged pines
-where their sharp eyes had made out the buzzards settling.
-
-The medicine-man told me, always with a quaking relish at this point,
-that while they, grown bold by success, were still in the tree, they
-sighted a Paiute hunting party crossing between them and their own
-land. That was mid-morning, and all day on into the dark the boys crept
-and crawled and slid, from boulder to bush, and bush to boulder, in
-cactus scrub and on naked sand, always in a sweat of fear, until the
-dust caked in the nostrils and the breath sobbed in the body, around
-and away many a mile until they came to their own land again. And all
-the time Winnenap´ carried those buzzard’s eggs in the slack of his
-single buckskin garment! Young Shoshones are like young quail, knowing
-without teaching about feeding and hiding, and learning what civilized
-children never learn, to be still and to keep on being still, at the
-first hint of danger or strangeness.
-
-As for food, that appears to be chiefly a matter of being willing.
-Desert Indians all eat chuck-wallas, big black and white lizards that
-have delicate white flesh savored like chicken. Both the Shoshones and
-the coyotes are fond of the flesh of _Gopherus agassizii_, the turtle
-that by feeding on buds, going without drink, and burrowing in the sand
-through the winter, contrives to live a known period of twenty-five
-years. It seems that most seeds are foodful in the arid regions, most
-berries edible, and many shrubs good for firewood with the sap in
-them. The mesquite bean, whether the screw or straight pod, pounded to
-a meal, boiled to a kind of mush, and dried in cakes, sulphur-colored
-and needing an axe to cut it, is an excellent food for long journeys.
-Fermented in water with wild honey and the honeycomb, it makes a
-pleasant, mildly intoxicating drink.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-Next to spring, the best time to visit Shoshone Land is when the
-deer-star hangs low and white like a torch over the morning hills. Go
-up past Winnedumah and down Saline and up again to the rim of Mesquite
-Valley. Take no tent, but if you will, have an Indian build you a
-wickiup, willows planted in a circle, drawn over to an arch, and bound
-cunningly with withes, all the leaves on, and chinks to count the stars
-through. But there was never any but Winnenap´ who could tell and make
-it worth telling about Shoshone Land.
-
-And Winnenap´ will not any more. He died, as do most medicine-men of
-the Paiutes.
-
-Where the lot falls when the campoodie chooses a medicine-man there
-it rests. It is an honor a man seldom seeks but must wear, an honor
-with a condition. When three patients die under his ministrations, the
-medicine-man must yield his life and his office. Wounds do not count;
-broken bones and bullet holes the Indian can understand, but measles,
-pneumonia, and smallpox are witchcraft. Winnenap´ was medicine-man for
-fifteen years. Besides considerable skill in healing herbs, he used his
-prerogatives cunningly. It is permitted the medicine-man to decline the
-case when the patient has had treatment from any other, say the white
-doctor, whom many of the younger generation consult. Or, if before
-having seen the patient, he can definitely refer his disorder to some
-supernatural cause wholly out of the medicine-man’s jurisdiction, say
-to the spite of an evil spirit going about in the form of a coyote,
-and states the case convincingly, he may avoid the penalty. But this
-must not be pushed too far. All else failing, he can hide. Winnenap´
-did this the time of the measles epidemic. Returning from his yearly
-herb gathering, he heard of it at Black Rock, and turning aside, he was
-not to be found, nor did he return to his own place until the disease
-had spent itself, and half the children of the campoodie were in their
-shallow graves with beads sprinkled over them.
-
-It is possible the tale of Winnenap´’s patients had not been strictly
-kept. There had not been a medicine-man killed in the valley for twelve
-years, and for that the perpetrators had been severely punished by the
-whites. The winter of the Big Snow an epidemic of pneumonia carried off
-the Indians with scarcely a warning; from the lake northward to the
-lava flats they died in the sweat-houses, and under the hands of the
-medicine-men. Even the drugs of the white physician had no power.
-
-[Illustration: ARRIVAL OF THE EXECUTIONERS]
-
-After two weeks of this plague the Paiutes drew to council to consider
-the remissness of their medicine-men. They were sore with grief and
-afraid for themselves; as a result of the council, one in every
-campoodie was sentenced to the ancient penalty. But schooling and
-native shrewdness had raised up in the younger men an unfaith in old
-usages, so judgment halted between sentence and execution. At Three
-Pines the government teacher brought out influential whites to threaten
-and cajole the stubborn tribes. At Tunawai the conservatives sent into
-Nevada for that pacific old humbug, Johnson Sides, most notable of
-Paiute orators, to harangue his people. Citizens of the towns turned
-out with food and comforts, and so after a season the trouble passed.
-
-But here at Maverick there was no school, no oratory, and no
-alleviation. One third of the campoodie died, and the rest killed
-the medicine-men. Winnenap´ expected it, and for days walked and sat
-a little apart from his family that he might meet it as became a
-Shoshone, no doubt suffering the agony of dread deferred. When finally
-three men came and sat at his fire without greeting he knew his time.
-He turned a little from them, dropped his chin upon his knees, and
-looked out over Shoshone Land, breathing evenly. The women went into
-the wickiup and covered their heads with their blankets.
-
-So much has the Indian lost of savageness by merely desisting from
-killing, that the executioners braved themselves to their work
-by drinking and a show of quarrelsomeness. In the end a sharp
-hatchet-stroke discharged the duty of the campoodie. Afterward his
-women buried him, and a warm wind coming out of the south, the force of
-the disease was broken, and even they acquiesced in the wisdom of the
-tribe. That summer they told me all except the names of the Three.
-
-Since it appears that we make our own heaven here, no doubt we shall
-have a hand in the heaven of hereafter; and I know what Winnenap´’s
-will be like: worth going to if one has leave to live in it according
-to his liking. It will be tawny gold underfoot, walled up with jacinth
-and jasper, ribbed with chalcedony, and yet no hymn-book heaven, but
-the free air and free spaces of Shoshone Land.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-JIMVILLE
-
-A BRET HARTE TOWN
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-When Mr. Harte found himself with a fresh palette and his particular
-local color fading from the West, he did what he considered the only
-safe thing, and carried his young impression away to be worked out
-untroubled by any newer fact. He should have gone to Jimville. There he
-would have found cast up on the ore-ribbed hills the bleached timbers
-of more tales, and better ones.
-
-You could not think of Jimville as anything more than a survival, like
-the herb-eating, bony-cased old tortoise that pokes cheerfully about
-those borders some thousands of years beyond his proper epoch. Not
-that Jimville is old, but it has an atmosphere favorable to the type of
-a half century back, if not “forty-niners,” of that breed. It is said
-of Jimville that getting away from it is such a piece of work that it
-encourages permanence in the population; the fact is that most have
-been drawn there by some real likeness or liking. Not however that
-I would deny the difficulty of getting into or out of that cove of
-reminder, I who have made the journey so many times at great pains of
-a poor body. Any way you go at it, Jimville is about three days from
-anywhere in particular. North or south, after the railroad there is a
-stage journey of such interminable monotony as induces forgetfulness of
-all previous states of existence.
-
-The road to Jimville is the happy hunting ground of old stage-coaches
-bought up from superseded routes the West over, rocking, lumbering,
-wide vehicles far gone in the odor of romance, coaches that Vasquez has
-held up, from whose high seats express messengers have shot or been
-shot as their luck held. This is to comfort you when the driver stops
-to rummage for wire to mend a failing bolt. There is enough of this
-sort of thing to quite prepare you to believe what the driver insists,
-namely, that all that country and Jimville are held together by wire.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-First on the way to Jimville you cross a lonely open land, with a hint
-in the sky of things going on under the horizon, a palpitant, white,
-hot land where the wheels gird at the sand and the midday heaven shuts
-it in breathlessly like a tent. So in still weather; and when the
-wind blows there is occupation enough for the passengers, shifting
-seats to hold down the windward side of the wagging coach. This is
-a mere trifle. The Jimville stage is built for five passengers, but
-when you have seven, with four trunks, several parcels, three sacks
-of grain, the mail and express, you begin to understand that proverb
-about the road which has been reported to you. In time you learn to
-engage the high seat beside the driver, where you get good air and the
-best company. Beyond the desert rise the lava flats, scoriæ strewn;
-sharp-cutting walls of narrow cañons; league-wide, frozen puddles of
-black rock, intolerable and forbidding. Beyond the lava the mouths
-that spewed it out, ragged-lipped, ruined craters shouldering to the
-cloud-line, mostly of red earth, as red as a red heifer. These have
-some comforting of shrubs and grass. You get the very spirit of the
-meaning of that country when you see Little Pete feeding his sheep
-in the red, choked maw of an old vent,--a kind of silly pastoral
-gentleness that glozes over an elemental violence. Beyond the craters
-rise worn, auriferous hills of a quiet sort, tumbled together; a valley
-full of mists; whitish green scrub; and bright, small, panting lizards;
-then Jimville.
-
-The town looks to have spilled out of Squaw Gulch, and that, in fact,
-is the sequence of its growth. It began around the Bully Boy and
-Theresa group of mines midway up Squaw Gulch, spreading down to the
-smelter at the mouth of the ravine. The freight wagons dumped their
-loads as near to the mill as the slope allowed, and Jimville grew
-in between. Above the Gulch begins a pine wood with sparsely grown
-thickets of lilac, azalea, and odorous blossoming shrubs.
-
-Squaw Gulch is a very sharp, steep, ragged-walled ravine, and that
-part of Jimville which is built in it has only one street,--in summer
-paved with bone-white cobbles, in the wet months a frothy yellow flood.
-All between the ore dumps and solitary small cabins, pieced out with
-tin cans and packing cases, run footpaths drawing down to the Silver
-Dollar saloon. When Jimville was having the time of its life the Silver
-Dollar had those same coins let into the bar top for a border, but the
-proprietor pried them out when the glory departed. There are three
-hundred inhabitants in Jimville and four bars, though you are not to
-argue anything from that.
-
-Hear now how Jimville came by its name. Jim Calkins discovered the
-Bully Boy, Jim Baker located the Theresa. When Jim Jenkins opened an
-eating-house in his tent he chalked up on the flap, “Best meals in
-Jimville, $1.00,” and the name stuck.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-There was more human interest in the origin of Squaw Gulch, though it
-tickled no humor. It was Dimmick’s squaw from Aurora way. If Dimmick
-had been anything except New Englander he would have called her a
-mahala, but that would not have bettered his behavior. Dimmick made a
-strike, went East, and the squaw who had been to him as his wife took
-to drink. That was the bald way of stating it in the Aurora country.
-The milk of human kindness, like some wine, must not be uncorked too
-much in speech lest it lose savor. This is what they did. The woman
-would have returned to her own people, being far gone with child,
-but the drink worked her bane. By the river of this ravine her pains
-overtook her. There Jim Calkins, prospecting, found her dying with a
-three days’ babe nozzling at her breast. Jim heartened her for the
-end, buried her, and walked back to Poso, eighteen miles, the child
-poking in the folds of his denim shirt with small mewing noises, and
-won support for it from the rough-handed folks of that place. Then he
-came back to Squaw Gulch, so named from that day, and discovered the
-Bully Boy. Jim humbly regarded this piece of luck as interposed for his
-reward, and I for one believed him. If it had been in mediæval times
-you would have had a legend or a ballad. Bret Harte would have given
-you a tale. You see in me a mere recorder, for I know what is best for
-you; you shall blow out this bubble from your own breath.
-
-You could never get into any proper relation to Jimville unless you
-could slough off and swallow your acquired prejudices as a lizard
-does his skin. Once wanting some womanly attentions, the stage-driver
-assured me I might have them at the Nine-Mile House from the lady
-barkeeper. The phrase tickled all my after-dinner-coffee sense of humor
-into an anticipation of Poker Flat. The stage-driver proved himself
-really right, though you are not to suppose from this that Jimville had
-no conventions and no caste. They work out these things in the personal
-equation largely. Almost every latitude of behavior is allowed a good
-fellow, one no liar, a free spender, and a backer of his friends’
-quarrels. You are respected in as much ground as you can shoot over,
-in as many pretensions as you can make good.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-That probably explains Mr. Fanshawe, the gentlemanly faro dealer of
-those parts, built for the rôle of Oakhurst, going white-shirted and
-frock-coated in a community of overalls; and persuading you that
-whatever shifts and tricks of the game were laid to his deal, he
-could not practice them on a person of your penetration. But he does.
-By his own account and the evidence of his manners he had been bred
-for a clergyman, and he certainly has gifts for the part. You find
-him always in possession of your point of view, and with an evident
-though not obtrusive desire to stand well with you. For an account of
-his killings, for his way with women and the way of women with him, I
-refer you to Brown of Calaveras and some others of that stripe. His
-improprieties had a certain sanction of long standing not accorded to
-the gay ladies who wore Mr. Fanshawe’s favors. There were perhaps too
-many of them. On the whole, the point of the moral distinctions of
-Jimville appears to be a point of honor, with an absence of humorous
-appreciation that strangers mistake for dullness. At Jimville they see
-behavior as history and judge it by facts, untroubled by invention and
-the dramatic sense. You glimpse a crude equity in their dealings with
-Wilkins, who had shot a man at Lone Tree, fairly, in an open quarrel.
-Rumor of it reached Jimville before Wilkins rested there in flight. I
-saw Wilkins, all Jimville saw him; in fact, he came into the Silver
-Dollar when we were holding a church fair and bought a pink silk
-pincushion. I have often wondered what became of it. Some of us shook
-hands with him, not because we did not know, but because we had not
-been officially notified, and there were those present who knew how
-it was themselves. When the sheriff arrived Wilkins had moved on, and
-Jimville organized a posse and brought him back, because the sheriff
-was a Jimville man and we had to stand by him.
-
-I said we had the church fair at the Silver Dollar. We had most things
-there, dances, town meetings, and the kinetoscope exhibition of the
-Passion Play. The Silver Dollar had been built when the borders of
-Jimville spread from Minton to the red hill the Defiance twisted
-through. “Side-Winder” Smith scrubbed the floor for us and moved the
-bar to the back room. The fair was designed for the support of the
-circuit rider who preached to the few that would hear, and buried us
-all in turn. He was the symbol of Jimville’s respectability, although
-he was of a sect that held dancing among the cardinal sins. The
-management took no chances on offending the minister; at 11.30 they
-tendered him the receipts of the evening in the chairman’s hat, as a
-delicate intimation that the fair was closed. The company filed out of
-the front door and around to the back. Then the dance began formally
-with no feelings hurt. These were the sort of courtesies, common enough
-in Jimville, that brought tears of delicate inner laughter.
-
-There were others besides Mr. Fanshawe who had walked out of Mr.
-Harte’s demesne to Jimville and wore names that smacked of the
-soil,--“Alkali Bill,” “Pike” Wilson, “Three Finger,” and “Mono Jim;”
-fierce, shy, profane, sun-dried derelicts of the windy hills, who each
-owned, or had owned, a mine and was wishful to own one again. They
-laid up on the worn benches of the Silver Dollar or the Same Old Luck
-like beached vessels, and their talk ran on endlessly of “strike” and
-“contact” and “mother lode,” and worked around to fights and hold-ups,
-villainy, haunts, and the hoodoo of the Minietta, told austerely
-without imagination.
-
-Do not suppose I am going to repeat it all; you who want these things
-written up from the point of view of people who do not do them every
-day would get no savor in their speech.
-
-Says Three Finger, relating the history of the Mariposa, “I took it
-off’n Tom Beatty, cheap, after his brother Bill was shot.”
-
-Says Jim Jenkins, “What was the matter of him?”
-
-“Who? Bill? Abe Johnson shot him; he was fooling around Johnson’s wife,
-an’ Tom sold me the mine dirt cheap.”
-
-“Why didn’t he work it himself?”
-
-“Him? Oh, he was laying for Abe and calculated to have to leave the
-country pretty quick.”
-
-“Huh!” says Jim Jenkins, and the tale flows smoothly on.
-
-Yearly the spring fret floats the loose population of Jimville out
-into the desolate waste hot lands, guiding by the peaks and a few
-rarely touched water-holes, always, always with the golden hope. They
-develop prospects and grow rich, develop others and grow poor but
-never embittered. Say the hills, It is all one, there is gold enough,
-time enough, and men enough to come after you. And at Jimville they
-understand the language of the hills.
-
-Jimville does not know a great deal about the crust of the earth, it
-prefers a “hunch.” That is an intimation from the gods that if you go
-over a brown back of the hills, by a dripping spring, up Coso way, you
-will find what is worth while. I have never heard that the failure of
-any particular hunch disproved the principle. Somehow the rawness of
-the land favors the sense of personal relation to the supernatural.
-There is not much intervention of crops, cities, clothes, and manners
-between you and the organizing forces to cut off communication. All
-this begets in Jimville a state that passes explanation unless you
-will accept an explanation that passes belief. Along with killing
-and drunkenness, coveting of women, charity, simplicity, there is
-a certain indifference, blankness, emptiness if you will, of all
-vaporings, no bubbling of the pot,--it wants the German to coin a word
-for that,--no bread-envy, no brother-fervor. Western writers have not
-sensed it yet; they smack the savor of lawlessness too much upon their
-tongues, but you have these to witness it is not mean-spiritedness. It
-is pure Greek in that it represents the courage to sheer off what is
-not worth while. Beyond that it endures without sniveling, renounces
-without self-pity, fears no death, rates itself not too great in the
-scheme of things; so do beasts, so did St. Jerome in the desert, so
-also in the elder day did gods. Life, its performance, cessation, is no
-new thing to gape and wonder at.
-
-Here you have the repose of the perfectly accepted instinct which
-includes passion and death in its perquisites. I suppose that the end
-of all our hammering and yawping will be something like the point of
-view of Jimville. The only difference will be in the decorations.
-
-
-
-
-MY NEIGHBOR’S FIELD
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-It is one of those places God must have meant for a field from all
-time, lying very level at the foot of the slope that crowds up against
-Kearsarge, falling slightly toward the town. North and south it is
-fenced by low old glacial ridges, boulder strewn and untenable.
-Eastward it butts on orchard closes and the village gardens, brimming
-over into them by wild brier and creeping grass. The village street,
-with its double row of unlike houses, breaks off abruptly at the edge
-of the field in a footpath that goes up the streamside, beyond it, to
-the source of waters.
-
-The field is not greatly esteemed of the town, not being put to the
-plough nor affording firewood, but breeding all manner of wild seeds
-that go down in the irrigating ditches to come up as weeds in the
-gardens and grass plots. But when I had no more than seen it in the
-charm of its spring smiling, I knew I should have no peace until I had
-bought ground and built me a house beside it, with a little wicket to
-go in and out at all hours, as afterward came about.
-
-Edswick, Roeder, Connor, and Ruffin owned the field before it fell to
-my neighbor. But before that the Paiutes, mesne lords of the soil, made
-a campoodie by the rill of Pine Creek; and after, contesting the soil
-with them, cattle-men, who found its foodful pastures greatly to their
-advantage; and bands of blethering flocks shepherded by wild, hairy
-men of little speech, who attested their rights to the feeding ground
-with their long staves upon each other’s skulls. Edswick homesteaded
-the field about the time the wild tide of mining life was roaring and
-rioting up Kearsarge, and where the village now stands built a stone
-hut, with loopholes to make good his claim against cattle-men or
-Indians. But Edswick died and Roeder became master of the field. Roeder
-owned cattle on a thousand hills, and made it a recruiting ground for
-his bellowing herds before beginning the long drive to market across a
-shifty desert. He kept the field fifteen years, and afterward falling
-into difficulties, put it out as security against certain sums. Connor,
-who held the securities, was cleverer than Roeder and not so busy. The
-money fell due the winter of the Big Snow, when all the trails were
-forty feet under drifts, and Roeder was away in San Francisco selling
-his cattle. At the set time Connor took the law by the forelock and
-was adjudged possession of the field. Eighteen days later Roeder
-arrived on snowshoes, both feet frozen, and the money in his pack. In
-the long suit at law ensuing, the field fell to Ruffin, that clever
-one-armed lawyer with the tongue to wile a bird out of the bush,
-Connor’s counsel, and was sold by him to my neighbor, whom from envying
-his possession I call Naboth.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-Curiously, all this human occupancy of greed and mischief left no mark
-on the field, but the Indians did, and the unthinking sheep. Round its
-corners children pick up chipped arrow points of obsidian, scattered
-through it are kitchen middens and pits of old sweat-houses. By the
-south corner, where the campoodie stood, is a single shrub of “hoopee”
-(_Lycium Andersonii_), maintaining itself hardly among alien shrubs,
-and near by, three low rakish trees of hackberry, so far from home that
-no prying of mine has been able to find another in any cañon east or
-west. But the berries of both were food for the Paiutes, eagerly sought
-and traded for as far south as Shoshone Land. By the fork of the creek
-where the shepherds camp is a single clump of mesquite of the variety
-called “screw bean.” The seed must have shaken there from some sheep’s
-coat, for this is not the habitat of mesquite, and except for other
-single shrubs at sheep camps, none grows freely for a hundred and fifty
-miles south or east.
-
-Naboth has put a fence about the best of the field, but neither the
-Indians nor the shepherds can quite forego it. They make camp and build
-their wattled huts about the borders of it, and no doubt they have
-some sense of home in its familiar aspect.
-
-As I have said, it is a low-lying field, between the mesa and the town,
-with no hillocks in it, but a gentle swale where the waste water of the
-creek goes down to certain farms, and the hackberry-trees, of which
-the tallest might be three times the height of a man, are the tallest
-things in it. A mile up from the water gate that turns the creek into
-supply pipes for the town, begins a row of long-leaved pines, threading
-the watercourse to the foot of Kearsarge. These are the pines that
-puzzle the local botanist, not easily determined, and unrelated to
-other conifers of the Sierra slope; the same pines of which the Indians
-relate a legend mixed of brotherliness and the retribution of God.
-Once the pines possessed the field, as the worn stumps of them along
-the streamside show, and it would seem their secret purpose to regain
-their old footing. Now and then some seedling escapes the devastating
-sheep a rod or two down-stream. Since I came to live by the field
-one of these has tiptoed above the gully of the creek, beckoning the
-procession from the hills, as if in fact they would make back toward
-that skyward-pointing finger of granite on the opposite range, from
-which, according to the legend, when they were bad Indians and it a
-great chief, they ran away. This year the summer floods brought the
-round, brown, fruitful cones to my very door, and I look, if I live
-long enough, to see them come up greenly in my neighbor’s field.
-
-It is interesting to watch this retaking of old ground by the wild
-plants, banished by human use. Since Naboth drew his fence about the
-field and restricted it to a few wild-eyed steers, halting between the
-hills and the shambles, many old habitués of the field have come back
-to their haunts. The willow and brown birch, long ago cut off by the
-Indians for wattles, have come back to the streamside, slender and
-virginal in their spring greenness, and leaving long stretches of the
-brown water open to the sky. In stony places where no grass grows,
-wild olives sprawl; close-twigged, blue-gray patches in winter, more
-translucent greenish gold in spring than any aureole. Along with willow
-and birch and brier, the clematis, that shyest plant of water borders,
-slips down season by season to within a hundred yards of the village
-street. Convinced after three years that it would come no nearer, we
-spent time fruitlessly pulling up roots to plant in the garden. All
-this while, when no coaxing or care prevailed upon any transplanted
-slip to grow, one was coming up silently outside the fence near the
-wicket, coiling so secretly in the rabbit-brush that its presence was
-never suspected until it flowered delicately along its twining length.
-The horehound comes through the fence and under it, shouldering the
-pickets off the railings; the brier rose mines under the horehound;
-and no care, though I own I am not a close weeder, keeps the small
-pale moons of the primrose from rising to the night moth under my
-apple-trees. The first summer in the new place, a clump of cypripediums
-came up by the irrigating ditch at the bottom of the lawn. But the
-clematis will not come inside, nor the wild almond.
-
-I have forgotten to find out, though I meant to, whether the wild
-almond grew in that country where Moses kept the flocks of his
-father-in-law, but if so one can account for the burning bush. It
-comes upon one with a flame-burst as of revelation; little hard red
-buds on leafless twigs, swelling unnoticeably, then one, two, or three
-strong suns, and from tip to tip one soft fiery glow, whispering with
-bees as a singing flame. A twig of finger size will be furred to the
-thickness of one’s wrist by pink five-petaled bloom, so close that
-only the blunt-faced wild bees find their way in it. In this latitude
-late frosts cut off the hope of fruit too often for the wild almond to
-multiply greatly, but the spiny, tap-rooted shrubs are resistant to
-most plant evils.
-
-It is not easy always to be attentive to the maturing of wild fruit.
-Plants are so unobtrusive in their material processes, and always at
-the significant moment some other bloom has reached its perfect hour.
-One can never fix the precise moment when the rosy tint the field has
-from the wild almond passes into the inspiring blue of lupines. One
-notices here and there a spike of bloom, and a day later the whole
-field royal and ruffling lightly to the wind. Part of the charm of
-the lupine is the continual stir of its plumes to airs not suspected
-otherwhere. Go and stand by any crown of bloom and the tall stalks do
-but rock a little as for drowsiness, but look off across the field,
-and on the stillest days there is always a trepidation in the purple
-patches.
-
-From midsummer until frost the prevailing note of the field is
-clear gold, passing into the rusty tone of bigelovia going into a
-decline, a succession of color schemes more admirably managed than the
-transformation scene at the theatre. Under my window a colony of cleome
-made a soft web of bloom that drew me every morning for a long still
-time; and one day I discovered that I was looking into a rare fretwork
-of fawn and straw colored twigs from which both bloom and leaf had
-gone, and I could not say if it had been for a matter of weeks or days.
-The time to plant cucumbers and set out cabbages may be set down in the
-almanac, but never seed-time nor blossom in Naboth’s field.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-Certain winged and mailed denizens of the field seem to reach their
-heyday along with the plants they most affect. In June the leaning
-towers of the white milkweed are jeweled over with red and gold
-beetles, climbing dizzily. This is that milkweed from whose stems
-the Indians flayed fibre to make snares for small game, but what
-use the beetles put it to except for a displaying ground for their
-gay coats, I could never discover. The white butterfly crop comes
-on with the bigelovia bloom, and on warm mornings makes an airy
-twinkling all across the field. In September young linnets grow out
-of the rabbit-brush in the night. All the nests discoverable in
-the neighboring orchards will not account for the numbers of them.
-Somewhere, by the same secret process by which the field matures a
-million more seeds than it needs, it is maturing red-hooded linnets
-for their devouring. All the purlieus of bigelovia and artemisia are
-noisy with them for a month. Suddenly as they come as suddenly go the
-fly-by-nights, that pitch and toss on dusky barred wings above the
-field of summer twilights. Never one of these nighthawks will you see
-after linnet time, though the hurtle of their wings makes a pleasant
-sound across the dusk in their season.
-
-For two summers a great red-tailed hawk has visited the field every
-afternoon between three and four o’clock, swooping and soaring with
-the airs of a gentleman adventurer. What he finds there is chiefly
-conjectured, so secretive are the little people of Naboth’s field. Only
-when leaves fall and the light is low and slant, one sees the long
-clean flanks of the jackrabbits, leaping like small deer, and of late
-afternoons little cotton-tails scamper in the runways. But the most
-one sees of the burrowers, gophers, and mice is the fresh earthwork of
-their newly opened doors, or the pitiful small shreds the butcher-bird
-hangs on spiny shrubs.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-It is a still field, this of my neighbor’s, though so busy, and
-admirably compounded for variety and pleasantness,--a little sand, a
-little loam, a grassy plot, a stony rise or two, a full brown stream,
-a little touch of humanness, a footpath trodden out by moccasins.
-Naboth expects to make town lots of it and his fortune in one and the
-same day; but when I take the trail to talk with old Seyavi at the
-campoodie, it occurs to me that though the field may serve a good turn
-in those days it will hardly be happier. No, certainly not happier.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-THE MESA TRAIL
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-The mesa trail begins in the campoodie at the corner of Naboth’s field,
-though one may drop into it from the wood road toward the cañon, or
-from any of the cattle paths that go up along the streamside; a clean,
-pale, smooth-trodden way between spiny shrubs, comfortably wide for a
-horse or an Indian. It begins, I say, at the campoodie, and goes on
-toward the twilight hills and the borders of Shoshone Land. It strikes
-diagonally across the foot of the hill-slope from the field until
-it reaches the larkspur level, and holds south along the front of
-Oppapago, having the high ranges to the right and the foothills and the
-great Bitter Lake below it on the left. The mesa holds very level here,
-cut across at intervals by the deep washes of dwindling streams, and
-its treeless spaces uncramp the soul.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-Mesa trails were meant to be traveled on horseback, at the jigging
-coyote trot that only western-bred horses learn successfully. A
-foot-pace carries one too slowly past the units in a decorative scheme
-that is on a scale with the country round for bigness. It takes days’
-journeys to give a note of variety to the country of the social
-shrubs. These chiefly clothe the benches and eastern foot-slopes of
-the Sierras,--great spreads of artemisia, _coleogyne_, and spinosa,
-suffering no other woody stemmed thing in their purlieus; this by
-election apparently, with no elbowing; and the several shrubs have each
-their clientèle of flowering herbs. It would be worth knowing how much
-the devastating sheep have had to do with driving the tender plants
-to the shelter of the prickle bushes. It might have begun earlier, in
-the time Seyavi of the campoodie tells of, when antelope ran on the
-mesa like sheep for numbers, but scarcely any foot-high herb rears
-itself except from the midst of some stout twigged shrub; larkspur in
-the _coleogyne_, and for every spinosa the purpling coils of phacelia.
-In the shrub shelter, in the season, flock the little stemless things
-whose blossom time is as short as a marriage song. The larkspurs make
-the best showing, being tall and sweet, swaying a little above the
-shrubbery, scattering pollen dust which Navajo brides gather to fill
-their marriage baskets. This were an easier task than to find two of
-them of a shade. Larkspurs in the botany are blue, but if you were to
-slip rein to the stub of some black sage and set about proving it
-you would be still at it by the hour when the white gilias set their
-pale disks to the westering sun. This is the gilia the children call
-“evening snow,” and it is no use trying to improve on children’s names
-for wild flowers.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-From the height of a horse you look down to clean spaces in a shifty
-yellow soil, bare to the eye as a newly sanded floor. Then as soon as
-ever the hill shadows begin to swell out from the sidelong ranges, come
-little flakes of whiteness fluttering at the edge of the sand. By dusk
-there are tiny drifts in the lee of every strong shrub, rosy-tipped
-corollas as riotous in the sliding mesa wind as if they were real
-flakes shaken out of a cloud, not sprung from the ground on wiry
-three-inch stems. They keep awake all night, and all the air is heavy
-and musky sweet because of them.
-
-Farther south on the trail there will be poppies meeting ankle deep,
-and singly, peacock-painted bubbles of calochortus blown out at the
-tops of tall stems. But before the season is in tune for the gayer
-blossoms the best display of color is in the lupin wash. There is
-always a lupin wash somewhere on a mesa trail,--a broad, shallow,
-cobble-paved sink of vanished waters, where the hummocks of _Lupinus
-ornatus_ run a delicate gamut from silvery green of spring to silvery
-white of winter foliage. They look in fullest leaf, except for color,
-most like the huddled huts of the campoodie, and the largest of them
-might be a man’s length in diameter. In their season, which is after
-the gilias are at their best, and before the larkspurs are ripe for
-pollen gathering, every terminal whorl of the lupin sends up its
-blossom stalk, not holding any constant blue, but paling and purpling
-to guide the friendly bee to virginal honey sips, or away from the
-perfected and depleted flower. The length of the blossom stalk conforms
-to the rounded contour of the plant, and of these there will be a
-million moving indescribably in the airy current that flows down the
-swale of the wash.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-There is always a little wind on the mesa, a sliding current of cooler
-air going down the face of the mountain of its own momentum, but not to
-disturb the silence of great space. Passing the wide mouths of cañons,
-one gets the effect of whatever is doing in them, openly or behind a
-screen of cloud,--thunder of falls, wind in the pine leaves, or rush
-and roar of rain. The rumor of tumult grows and dies in passing, as
-from open doors gaping on a village street, but does not impinge on the
-effect of solitariness. In quiet weather mesa days have no parallel for
-stillness, but the night silence breaks into certain mellow or poignant
-notes. Late afternoons the burrowing owls may be seen blinking at the
-doors of their hummocks with perhaps four or five elfish nestlings
-arow, and by twilight begin a soft _whoo-oo-ing_, rounder, sweeter,
-more incessant in mating time. It is not possible to disassociate
-the call of the burrowing owl from the late slant light of the mesa.
-If the fine vibrations which are the golden-violet glow of spring
-twilights were to tremble into sound, it would be just that mellow
-double note breaking along the blossom-tops. While the glow holds one
-sees the thistle-down flights and pouncings after prey, and on into
-the dark hears their soft _pus-ssh!_ clearing out of the trail ahead.
-Maybe the pin-point shriek of field mouse or kangaroo rat that pricks
-the wakeful pauses of the night is extorted by these mellow-voiced
-plunderers, though it is just as like to be the work of the red fox on
-his twenty-mile constitutional.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-Both the red fox and the coyote are free of the night hours, and both
-killers for the pure love of slaughter. The fox is no great talker, but
-the coyote goes garrulously through the dark in twenty keys at once,
-gossip, warning, and abuse. They are light treaders, the split-feet,
-so that the solitary camper sees their eyes about him in the dark
-sometimes, and hears the soft intake of breath when no leaf has
-stirred and no twig snapped underfoot. The coyote is your real lord
-of the mesa, and so he makes sure you are armed with no long black
-instrument to spit your teeth into his vitals at a thousand yards, is
-both bold and curious. Not so bold, however, as the badger and not so
-much of a curmudgeon. This shortlegged meat-eater loves half lights and
-lowering days, has no friends, no enemies, and disowns his offspring.
-Very likely if he knew how hawk and crow dog him for dinners, he would
-resent it. But the badger is not very well contrived for looking up
-or far to either side. Dull afternoons he may be met nosing a trail
-hot-foot to the home of ground rat or squirrel, and is with difficulty
-persuaded to give the right of way. The badger is a pot-hunter and no
-sportsman. Once at the hill, he dives for the central chamber, his
-sharp-clawed, splayey feet splashing up the sand like a bather in the
-surf. He is a swift trailer, but not so swift or secretive but some
-small sailing hawk or lazy crow, perhaps one or two of each, has spied
-upon him and come drifting down the wind to the killing.
-
-No burrower is so unwise as not to have several exits from his dwelling
-under protecting shrubs. When the badger goes down, as many of the
-furry people as are not caught napping come up by the back doors, and
-the hawks make short work of them. I suspect that the crows get nothing
-but the gratification of curiosity and the pickings of some secret
-store of seeds unearthed by the badger. Once the excavation begins they
-walk about expectantly, but the little gray hawks beat slow circles
-about the doors of exit, and are wiser in their generation, though they
-do not look it.
-
-There are always solitary hawks sailing above the mesa, and where some
-blue tower of silence lifts out of the neighboring range, an eagle
-hanging dizzily, and always buzzards high up in the thin, translucent
-air making a merry-go-round. Between the coyote and the birds of
-carrion the mesa is kept clear of miserable dead.
-
-The wind, too, is a besom over the treeless spaces, whisking new sand
-over the litter of the scant-leaved shrubs, and the little doorways
-of the burrowers are as trim as city fronts. It takes man to leave
-unsightly scars on the face of the earth. Here on the mesa the
-abandoned campoodies of the Paiutes are spots of desolation long after
-the wattles of the huts have warped in the brush heaps. The campoodies
-are near the watercourses, but never in the swale of the stream. The
-Paiute seeks rising ground, depending on air and sun for purification
-of his dwelling, and when it becomes wholly untenable, moves.
-
-A campoodie at noontime, when there is no smoke rising and no stir of
-life, resembles nothing so much as a collection of prodigious wasps’
-nests. The huts are squat and brown and chimneyless, facing east, and
-the inhabitants have the faculty of quail for making themselves scarce
-in the underbrush at the approach of strangers. But they are really
-not often at home during midday, only the blind and incompetent left
-to keep the camp. These are working hours, and all across the mesa
-one sees the women whisking seeds of _chia_ into their spoon-shaped
-baskets, these emptied again into the huge conical carriers, supported
-on the shoulders by a leather band about the forehead.
-
-Mornings and late afternoons one meets the men singly and afoot on
-unguessable errands, or riding shaggy, browbeaten ponies, with game
-slung across the saddle-bows. This might be deer or even antelope,
-rabbits, or, very far south towards Shoshone Land, lizards.
-
-There are myriads of lizards on the mesa, little gray darts, or larger
-salmon-sided ones that may be found swallowing their skins in the
-safety of a prickle-bush in early spring. Now and then a palm’s breadth
-of the trail gathers itself together and scurries off with a little
-rustle under the brush, to resolve itself into sand again. This is pure
-witchcraft. If you succeed in catching it in transit, it loses its
-power and becomes a flat, horned, toad-like creature, horrid looking
-and harmless, of the color of the soil; and the curio dealer will give
-you two bits for it, to stuff.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-Men have their season on the mesa as much as plants and four-footed
-things, and one is not like to meet them out of their time. For
-example, at the time of _rodeos_, which is perhaps April, one meets
-free riding vaqueros who need no trails and can find cattle where to
-the layman no cattle exist. As early as February bands of sheep work up
-from the south to the high Sierra pastures. It appears that shepherds
-have not changed more than sheep in the process of time. The shy hairy
-men who herd the tractile flocks might be, except for some added
-clothing, the very brethren of David. Of necessity they are hardy,
-simple livers, superstitious, fearful, given to seeing visions, and
-almost without speech. It needs the bustle of shearings and copious
-libations of sour, weak wine to restore the human faculty. Petite Pete,
-who works a circuit up from the Ceriso to Red Butte and around by way
-of Salt Flats, passes year by year on the mesa trail, his thick hairy
-chest thrown open to all weathers, twirling his long staff, and dealing
-brotherly with his dogs, who are possibly as intelligent, certainly
-handsomer.
-
-A flock’s journey is seven miles, ten if pasture fails, in a windless
-blur of dust, feeding as it goes, and resting at noons. Such hours Pete
-weaves a little screen of twigs between his head and the sun--the rest
-of him is as impervious as one of his own sheep--and sleeps while his
-dogs have the flocks upon their consciences. At night, wherever he may
-be, there Pete camps, and fortunate the trail-weary traveler who falls
-in with him. When the fire kindles and savory meat seethes in the pot,
-when there is a drowsy blether from the flock, and far down the mesa
-the twilight twinkle of shepherd fires, when there is a hint of blossom
-underfoot and a heavenly whiteness on the hills, one harks back without
-effort to Judæa and the Nativity. But one feels by day anything but
-good will to note the shorn shrubs and cropped blossom-tops. So many
-seasons’ effort, so many suns and rains to make a pound of wool! And
-then there is the loss of ground-inhabiting birds that must fail from
-the mesa when few herbs ripen seed.
-
-Out West, the west of the mesas and the unpatented hills, there is more
-sky than any place in the world. It does not sit flatly on the rim of
-earth, but begins somewhere out in the space in which the earth is
-poised, hollows more, and is full of clean winey winds. There are some
-odors, too, that get into the blood. There is the spring smell of sage
-that is the warning that sap is beginning to work in a soil that looks
-to have none of the juices of life in it; it is the sort of smell that
-sets one thinking what a long furrow the plough would turn up here,
-the sort of smell that is the beginning of new leafage, is best at the
-plant’s best, and leaves a pungent trail where wild cattle crop. There
-is the smell of sage at sundown, burning sage from campoodies and sheep
-camps, that travels on the thin blue wraiths of smoke; the kind of
-smell that gets into the hair and garments, is not much liked except
-upon long acquaintance, and every Paiute and shepherd smells of it
-indubitably. There is the palpable smell of the bitter dust that comes
-up from the alkali flats at the end of the dry seasons, and the smell
-of rain from the wide-mouthed cañons. And last the smell of the salt
-grass country, which is the beginning of other things that are the end
-of the mesa trail.
-
-
-
-
-THE BASKET MAKER
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-“A man,” says Seyavi of the campoodie, “must have a woman, but a woman
-who has a child will do very well.”
-
-That was perhaps why, when she lost her mate in the dying struggle of
-his race, she never took another, but set her wit to fend for herself
-and her young son. No doubt she was often put to it in the beginning to
-find food for them both. The Paiutes had made their last stand at the
-border of the Bitter Lake; battle-driven they died in its waters, and
-the land filled with cattle-men and adventurers for gold: this while
-Seyavi and the boy lay up in the caverns of the Black Rock and ate tule
-roots and fresh-water clams that they dug out of the slough bottoms
-with their toes. In the interim, while the tribes swallowed their
-defeat, and before the rumor of war died out, they must have come very
-near to the bare core of things. That was the time Seyavi learned the
-sufficiency of mother wit, and how much more easily one can do without
-a man than might at first be supposed.
-
-To understand the fashion of any life, one must know the land it is
-lived in and the procession of the year. This valley is a narrow one, a
-mere trough between hills, a draught for storms, hardly a crow’s flight
-from the sharp Sierras of the Snows to the curled, red and ochre,
-uncomforted, bare ribs of Waban. Midway of the groove runs a burrowing,
-dull river, nearly a hundred miles from where it cuts the lava flats
-of the north to its widening in a thick, tideless pool of a lake.
-Hereabouts the ranges have no foothills, but rise up steeply from the
-bench lands above the river. Down from the Sierras, for the east ranges
-have almost no rain, pour glancing white floods toward the lowest land,
-and all beside them lie the campoodies, brown wattled brush heaps,
-looking east.
-
-In the river are mussels, and reeds that have edible white roots, and
-in the soddy meadows tubers of joint grass; all these at their best
-in the spring. On the slope the summer growth affords seeds; up the
-steep the one-leafed pines, an oily nut. That was really all they could
-depend upon, and that only at the mercy of the little gods of frost
-and rain. For the rest it was cunning against cunning, caution against
-skill, against quacking hordes of wild-fowl in the tulares, against
-pronghorn and bighorn and deer. You can guess, however, that all this
-warring of rifles and bowstrings, this influx of overlording whites,
-had made game wilder and hunters fearful of being hunted. You can
-surmise also, for it was a crude time and the land was raw, that the
-women became in turn the game of the conquerors.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-There used to be in the Little Antelope a she dog, stray or outcast,
-that had a litter in some forsaken lair, and ranged and foraged
-for them, slinking savage and afraid, remembering and mistrusting
-humankind, wistful, lean, and sufficient for her young. I have thought
-Seyavi might have had days like that, and have had perfect leave to
-think, since she will not talk of it. Paiutes have the art of reducing
-life to its lowest ebb and yet saving it alive on grasshoppers,
-lizards, and strange herbs; and that time must have left no shift
-untried. It lasted long enough for Seyavi to have evolved the
-philosophy of life which I have set down at the beginning. She had gone
-beyond learning to do for her son, and learned to believe it worth
-while.
-
-In our kind of society, when a woman ceases to alter the fashion of her
-hair, you guess that she has passed the crisis of her experience. If
-she goes on crimping and uncrimping with the changing mode, it is safe
-to suppose she has never come up against anything too big for her. The
-Indian woman gets nearly the same personal note in the pattern of her
-baskets. Not that she does not make all kinds, carriers, water-bottles,
-and cradles,--these are kitchen ware,--but her works of art are all of
-the same piece. Seyavi made flaring, flat-bottomed bowls, cooking pots
-really, when cooking was done by dropping hot stones into water-tight
-food baskets, and for decoration a design in colored bark of the
-procession of plumed crests of the valley quail. In this pattern she
-had made cooking pots in the golden spring of her wedding year, when
-the quail went up two and two to their resting places about the foot
-of Oppapago. In this fashion she made them when, after pillage, it
-was possible to reinstate the housewifely crafts. Quail ran then in
-the Black Rock by hundreds,--so you will still find them in fortunate
-years,--and in the famine time the women cut their long hair to make
-snares when the flocks came morning and evening to the springs.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-Seyavi made baskets for love and sold them for money, in a generation
-that preferred iron pots for utility. Every Indian woman is an
-artist,--sees, feels, creates, but does not philosophize about her
-processes. Seyavi’s bowls are wonders of technical precision, inside
-and out, the palm finds no fault with them, but the subtlest appeal is
-in the sense that warns us of humanness in the way the design spreads
-into the flare of the bowl. There used to be an Indian woman at Olancha
-who made bottle-neck trinket baskets in the rattlesnake pattern, and
-could accommodate the design to the swelling bowl and flat shoulder of
-the basket without sensible disproportion, and so cleverly that you
-might own one a year without thinking how it was done; but Seyavi’s
-baskets had a touch beyond cleverness. The weaver and the warp lived
-next to the earth and were saturated with the same elements. Twice a
-year, in the time of white butterflies and again when young quail ran
-neck and neck in the chaparral, Seyavi cut willows for basketry by
-the creek where it wound toward the river against the sun and sucking
-winds. It never quite reached the river except in far-between times
-of summer flood, but it always tried, and the willows encouraged it
-as much as they could. You nearly always found them a little farther
-down than the trickle of eager water. The Paiute fashion of counting
-time appeals to me more than any other calendar. They have no stamp of
-heathen gods nor great ones, nor any succession of moons as have red
-men of the East and North, but count forward and back by the progress
-of the season; the time of _taboose_, before the trout begin to leap,
-the end of the piñon harvest, about the beginning of deep snows. So
-they get nearer the sense of the season, which runs early or late
-according as the rains are forward or delayed. But whenever Seyavi
-cut willows for baskets was always a golden time, and the soul of the
-weather went into the wood. If you had ever owned one of Seyavi’s
-golden russet cooking bowls with the pattern of plumed quail, you would
-understand all this without saying anything.
-
-Before Seyavi made baskets for the satisfaction of desire,--for that is
-a house-bred theory of art that makes anything more of it,--she danced
-and dressed her hair. In those days, when the spring was at flood and
-the blood pricked to the mating fever, the maids chose their flowers,
-wreathed themselves, and danced in the twilights, young desire crying
-out to young desire. They sang what the heart prompted, what the flower
-expressed, what boded in the mating weather.
-
-“And what flower did you wear, Seyavi?”
-
-“I, ah,--the white flower of twining (clematis), on my body and my
-hair, and so I sang:--
-
-    “I am the white flower of twining,
-    Little white flower by the river,
-    Oh, flower that twines close by the river;
-    Oh, trembling flower!
-    So trembles the maiden heart.”
-
-So sang Seyavi of the campoodie before she made baskets, and in her
-later days laid her arms upon her knees and laughed in them at the
-recollection. But it was not often she would say so much, never
-understanding the keen hunger I had for bits of lore and the “fool
-talk” of her people. She had fed her young son with meadowlarks’
-tongues, to make him quick of speech; but in late years was loath to
-admit it, though she had come through the period of unfaith in the lore
-of the clan with a fine appreciation of its beauty and significance.
-
-“What good will your dead get, Seyavi, of the baskets you burn?” said
-I, coveting them for my own collection.
-
-Thus Seyavi, “As much good as yours of the flowers you strew.”
-
-[Illustration]
-
-Oppapago looks on Waban, and Waban on Coso and the Bitter Lake, and
-the campoodie looks on these three; and more, it sees the beginning
-of winds along the foot of Coso, the gathering of clouds behind the
-high ridges, the spring flush, the soft spread of wild almond bloom
-on the mesa. These first, you understand, are the Paiute’s walls, the
-other his furnishings. Not the wattled hut is his home, but the land,
-the winds, the hill front, the stream. These he cannot duplicate at
-any furbisher’s shop as you who live within doors, who, if your purse
-allows, may have the same home at Sitka and Samarcand. So you see how
-it is that the homesickness of an Indian is often unto death, since he
-gets no relief from it; neither wind nor weed nor sky-line, nor any
-aspect of the hills of a strange land sufficiently like his own. So it
-was when the government reached out for the Paiutes, they gathered into
-the Northern Reservation only such poor tribes as could devise no other
-end of their affairs. Here, all along the river, and south to Shoshone
-Land, live the clans who owned the earth, fallen into the deplorable
-condition of hangers-on. Yet you hear them laughing at the hour when
-they draw in to the campoodie after labor, when there is a smell of
-meat and the steam of the cooking pots goes up against the sun. Then
-the children lie with their toes in the ashes to hear tales; then they
-are merry, and have the joys of repletion and the nearness of their
-kind. They have their hills, and though jostled are sufficiently free
-to get some fortitude for what will come. For now you shall hear of the
-end of the basket maker.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-In her best days Seyavi was most like Deborah, deep bosomed, broad in
-the hips, quick in counsel, slow of speech, esteemed of her people.
-This was that Seyavi who reared a man by her own hand, her own wit,
-and none other. When the townspeople began to take note of her--and it
-was some years after the war before there began to be any towns--she
-was then in the quick maturity of primitive women; but when I knew her
-she seemed already old. Indian women do not often live to great age,
-though they look incredibly steeped in years. They have the wit to win
-sustenance from the raw material of life without intervention, but
-they have not the sleek look of the women whom the social organization
-conspires to nourish. Seyavi had somehow squeezed out of her daily
-round a spiritual ichor that kept the skill in her knotted fingers
-long after the accustomed time, but that also failed. By all counts
-she would have been about sixty years old when it came her turn to sit
-in the dust on the sunny side of the wickiup, with little strength
-left for anything but looking. And in time she paid the toll of the
-smoky huts and became blind. This is a thing so long expected by the
-Paiutes that when it comes they find it neither bitter nor sweet, but
-tolerable because common. There were three other blind women in the
-campoodie, withered fruit on a bough, but they had memory and speech.
-By noon of the sun there were never any left in the campoodie but
-these or some mother of weanlings, and they sat to keep the ashes warm
-upon the hearth. If it were cold, they burrowed in the blankets of the
-hut; if it were warm, they followed the shadow of the wickiup around.
-Stir much out of their places they hardly dared, since one might not
-help another; but they called, in high, old cracked voices, gossip and
-reminder across the ash heaps.
-
-Then, if they have your speech or you theirs, and have an hour to
-spare, there are things to be learned of life not set down in any
-books, folk tales, famine tales, love and long-suffering and desire,
-but no whimpering. Now and then one or another of the blind keepers
-of the camp will come across to where you sit gossiping, tapping her
-way among the kitchen middens, guided by your voice that carries far in
-the clearness and stillness of mesa afternoons. But suppose you find
-Seyavi retired into the privacy of her blanket, you will get nothing
-for that day. There is no other privacy possible in a campoodie. All
-the processes of life are carried on out of doors or behind the thin,
-twig-woven walls of the wickiup, and laughter is the only corrective
-for behavior. Very early the Indian learns to possess his countenance
-in impassivity, to cover his head with his blanket. Something to wrap
-around him is as necessary to the Paiute as to you your closet to pray
-in.
-
-So in her blanket Seyavi, sometime basket maker, sits by the unlit
-hearths of her tribe and digests her life, nourishing her spirit
-against the time of the spirit’s need, for she knows in fact quite as
-much of these matters as you who have a larger hope, though she has
-none but the certainty that having borne herself courageously to this
-end she will not be reborn a coyote.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-THE STREETS OF THE MOUNTAINS
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-All streets of the mountains lead to the citadel; steep or slow they go
-up to the core of the hills. Any trail that goes otherwhere must dip
-and cross, sidle and take chances. Rifts of the hills open into each
-other, and the high meadows are often wide enough to be called valleys
-by courtesy; but one keeps this distinction in mind,--valleys are
-the sunken places of the earth, cañons are scored out by the glacier
-ploughs of God. They have a better name in the Rockies for these
-hill-fenced open glades of pleasantness; they call them parks. Here and
-there in the hill country one comes upon blind gullies fronted by high
-stony barriers. These head also for the heart of the mountains; their
-distinction is that they never get anywhere.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-All mountain streets have streams to thread them, or deep grooves where
-a stream might run. You would do well to avoid that range uncomforted
-by singing floods. You will find it forsaken of most things but beauty
-and madness and death and God. Many such lie east and north away from
-the mid Sierras, and quicken the imagination with the sense of purposes
-not revealed, but the ordinary traveler brings nothing away from them
-but an intolerable thirst.
-
-The river cañons of the Sierras of the Snows are better worth while
-than most Broadways, though the choice of them is like the choice of
-streets, not very well determined by their names. There is always an
-amount of local history to be read in the names of mountain highways
-where one touches the successive waves of occupation or discovery, as
-in the old villages where the neighborhoods are not built but grow.
-Here you have the Spanish Californian in _Cero Gordo_ and piñon; Symmes
-and Shepherd, pioneers both; Tunawai, probably Shoshone; Oak Creek,
-Kearsarge,--easy to fix the date of that christening,--Tinpah, Paiute
-that; Mist Cañon and Paddy Jack’s. The streets of the west Sierras
-sloping toward the San Joaquin are long and winding, but from the east,
-my country, a day’s ride carries one to the lake regions. The next day
-reaches the passes of the high divide, but whether one gets passage
-depends a little on how many have gone that road before, and much on
-one’s own powers. The passes are steep and windy ridges, though not
-the highest. By two and three thousand feet the snow-caps overtop them.
-It is even possible to win through the Sierras without having passed
-above timber-line, but one misses a great exhilaration.
-
-The shape of a new mountain is roughly pyramidal, running out
-into long shark-finned ridges that interfere and merge into other
-thunder-splintered sierras. You get the saw-tooth effect from a
-distance, but the near-by granite bulk glitters with the terrible keen
-polish of old glacial ages. I say terrible; so it seems. When those
-glossy domes swim into the alpenglow, wet after rain, you conceive how
-long and imperturbable are the purposes of God.
-
-Never believe what you are told, that midsummer is the best time to go
-up the streets of the mountain--well--perhaps for the merely idle or
-sportsmanly or scientific; but for seeing and understanding, the best
-time is when you have the longest leave to stay. And here is a hint if
-you would attempt the stateliest approaches; travel light, and as much
-as possible live off the land. Mulligatawny soup and tinned lobster
-will not bring you the favor of the woodlanders.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-Every cañon commends itself for some particular pleasantness; this
-for pines, another for trout, one for pure bleak beauty of granite
-buttresses, one for its far-flung irised falls; and as I say, though
-some are easier going, leads each to the cloud shouldering citadel.
-First, near the cañon mouth you get the low-heading full-branched,
-one-leaf pines. That is the sort of tree to know at sight, for the
-globose, resin-dripping cones have palatable, nourishing kernels, the
-main harvest of the Paiutes. That perhaps accounts for their growing
-accommodatingly below the limit of deep snows, grouped sombrely on
-the valleyward slopes. The real procession of the pines begins in the
-rifts with the long-leafed _Pinus Jeffreyi_, sighing its soul away upon
-the wind. And it ought not to sigh in such good company. Here begins
-the manzanita, adjusting its tortuous stiff stems to the sharp waste
-of boulders, its pale olive leaves twisting edgewise to the sleek,
-ruddy, chestnut stems; begins also the meadowsweet, burnished laurel,
-and the million unregarded trumpets of the coral-red pentstemon. Wild
-life is likely to be busiest about the lower pine borders. One looks in
-hollow trees and hiving rocks for wild honey. The drone of bees, the
-chatter of jays, the hurry and stir of squirrels, is incessant; the
-air is odorous and hot. The roar of the stream fills up the morning
-and evening intervals, and at night the deer feed in the buckthorn
-thickets. It is worth watching the year round in the purlieus of the
-long-leafed pines. One month or another you get sight or trail of most
-roving mountain dwellers as they follow the limit of forbidding snows,
-and more bloom than you can properly appreciate.
-
-Whatever goes up or comes down the streets of the mountains, water
-has the right of way; it takes the lowest ground and the shortest
-passage. Where the rifts are narrow, and some of the Sierra cañons
-are not a stone’s throw from wall to wall, the best trail for foot or
-horse winds considerably above the watercourses; but in a country of
-cone-bearers there is usually a good strip of swardy sod along the
-cañon floor. Pine woods, the short-leafed Balfour and Murryana of the
-high Sierras, are sombre, rooted in the litter of a thousand years,
-hushed, and corrective to the spirit. The trail passes insensibly into
-them from the black pines and a thin belt of firs. You look back as you
-rise, and strain for glimpses of the tawny valley, blue glints of the
-Bitter Lake, and tender cloud films on the farther ranges. For such
-pictures the pine branches make a noble frame. Presently they close in
-wholly; they draw mysteriously near, covering your tracks, giving up
-the trail indifferently, or with a secret grudge. You get a kind of
-impatience with their locked ranks, until you come out lastly on some
-high, windy dome and see what they are about. They troop thickly up the
-open ways, river banks, and brook borders; up open swales of dribbling
-springs; swarm over old moraines; circle the peaty swamps and part
-and meet about clean still lakes; scale the stony gullies; tormented,
-bowed, persisting to the door of the storm chambers, tall priests to
-pray for rain. The spring winds lift clouds of pollen dust, finer than
-frankincense, and trail it out over high altars, staining the snow. No
-doubt they understand this work better than we; in fact they know no
-other. “Come,” say the churches of the valleys, after a season of dry
-years, “let us pray for rain.” They would do better to plant more trees.
-
-It is a pity we have let the gift of lyric improvisation die out.
-Sitting islanded on some gray peak above the encompassing wood, the
-soul is lifted up to sing the Iliad of the pines. They have no voice
-but the wind, and no sound of them rises up to the high places. But
-the waters, the evidences of their power, that go down the steep and
-stony ways, the outlets of ice-bordered pools, the young rivers swaying
-with the force of their running, they sing and shout and trumpet at
-the falls, and the noise of it far outreaches the forest spires. You
-see from these conning towers how they call and find each other in
-the slender gorges; how they fumble in the meadows, needing the sheer
-nearing walls to give them countenance and show the way; and how the
-pine woods are made glad by them.
-
-Nothing else in the streets of the mountains gives such a sense of
-pageantry as the conifers; other trees, if there are any, are home
-dwellers, like the tender fluttered, sisterhood of quaking asp. They
-grow in clumps by spring borders, and all their stems have a permanent
-curve toward the down slope, as you may also see in hillside pines,
-where they have borne the weight of sagging drifts.
-
-Well up from the valley, at the confluence of cañons, are delectable
-summer meadows. Fireweed flames about them against the gray boulders;
-streams are open, go smoothly about the glacier slips and make
-deep bluish pools for trout. Pines raise statelier shafts and give
-themselves room to grow,--gentians, shinleaf, and little grass of
-Parnassus in their golden checkered shadows; the meadow is white with
-violets and all outdoors keeps the clock. For example, when the ripples
-at the ford of the creek raise a clear half tone,--sign that the snow
-water has come down from the heated high ridges,--it is time to light
-the evening fire. When it drops off a note--but you will not know it
-except the Douglas squirrel tells you with his high, fluty chirrup from
-the pines’ aerial gloom--sign that some star watcher has caught the
-first far glint of the nearing sun. Whitney cries it from his vantage
-tower; it flashes from Oppapago to the front of Williamson; LeConte
-speeds it to the westering peaks. The high rills wake and run, the
-birds begin. But down three thousand feet in the cañon, where you stir
-the fire under the cooking pot, it will not be day for an hour. It goes
-on, the play of light across the high places, rosy, purpling, tender,
-glint and glow, thunder and windy flood, like the grave, exulting talk
-of elders above a merry game.
-
-Who shall say what another will find most to his liking in the
-streets of the mountains. As for me, once set above the country of
-the silver firs, I must go on until I find white columbine. Around
-the amphitheatres of the lake regions and above them to the limit of
-perennial drifts they gather flock-wise in splintered rock wastes. The
-crowds of them, the airy spread of sepals, the pale purity of the petal
-spurs, the quivering swing of bloom, obsesses the sense. One must learn
-to spare a little of the pang of inexpressible beauty, not to spend all
-one’s purse in one shop. There is always another year, and another.
-
-Lingering on in the alpine regions until the first full snow, which is
-often before the cessation of bloom, one goes down in good company.
-First snows are soft and clogging and make laborious paths. Then it
-is the roving inhabitants range down to the edge of the wood, below
-the limit of early storms. Early winter and early spring one may have
-sight or track of deer and bear and bighorn, cougar and bobcat, about
-the thickets of buckthorn on open slopes between the black pines. But
-when the ice crust is firm above the twenty foot drifts, they range far
-and forage where they will. Often in midwinter will come, now and then,
-a long fall of soft snow piling three or four feet above the ice crust,
-and work a real hardship for the dwellers of these streets. When such
-a storm portends the weather-wise black-tail will go down across the
-valley and up to the pastures of Waban where no more snow falls than
-suffices to nourish the sparsely growing pines. But the bighorn, the
-wild sheep, able to bear the bitterest storms with no signs of stress,
-cannot cope with the loose shifty snow. Never such a storm goes over
-the mountains that the Indians do not catch them floundering belly
-deep among the lower rifts. I have a pair of horns, inconceivably
-heavy, that were borne as late as a year ago by a very monarch of the
-flock whom death overtook at the mouth of Oak Creek after a week of wet
-snow. He met it as a king should, with no vain effort or trembling, and
-it was wholly kind to take him so with four of his following rather
-than that the night prowlers should find him.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-There is always more life abroad in the winter hills than one looks to
-find, and much more in evidence than in summer weather. Light feet of
-hare that make no print on the forest litter leave a wondrously plain
-track in the snow. We used to look and look at the beginning of winter
-for the birds to come down from the pine lands; looked in the orchard
-and stubble; looked north and south on the mesa for their migratory
-passing, and wondered that they never came. Busy little grosbeaks
-picked about the kitchen doors, and woodpeckers tapped the eves of
-the farm buildings, but we saw hardly any other of the frequenters of
-the summer cañons. After a while when we grew bold to tempt the snow
-borders we found them in the street of the mountains. In the thick
-pine woods where the overlapping boughs hung with snow-wreaths make
-wind-proof shelter tents, in a very community of dwelling, winter the
-bird-folk who get their living from the persisting cones and the larvæ
-harboring bark. Ground inhabiting species seek the dim snow chambers
-of the chaparral. Consider how it must be in a hill-slope overgrown
-with stout-twigged, partly evergreen shrubs, more than man high, and
-as thick as a hedge. Not all the cañon’s sifting of snow can fill the
-intricate spaces of the hill tangles. Here and there an overhanging
-rock, or a stiff arch of buckthorn, makes an opening to communicating
-rooms and runways deep under the snow.
-
-The light filtering through the snow walls is blue and ghostly,
-but serves to show seeds of shrubs and grass, and berries, and the
-wind-built walls are warm against the wind. It seems that live plants,
-especially if they are evergreen and growing, give off heat; the snow
-wall melts earliest from within and hollows to thinness before there is
-a hint of spring in the air. But you think of these things afterward.
-Up in the street it has the effect of being done consciously; the
-buckthorns lean to each other and the drift to them, the little birds
-run in and out of their appointed ways with the greatest cheerfulness.
-They give almost no tokens of distress, and even if the winter tries
-them too much you are not to pity them. You of the house habit can
-hardly understand the sense of the hills. No doubt the labor of
-being comfortable gives you an exaggerated opinion of yourself, an
-exaggerated pain to be set aside. Whether the wild things understand it
-or not they adapt themselves to its processes with the greater ease.
-The business that goes on in the street of the mountain is tremendous,
-world-formative. Here go birds, squirrels, and red deer, children
-crying small wares and playing in the street, but they do not obstruct
-its affairs. Summer is their holiday; “Come now,” says the lord of the
-street, “I have need of a great work and no more playing.”
-
-But they are left borders and breathing-space out of pure kindness.
-They are not pushed out except by the exigencies of the nobler plan
-which they accept with a dignity the rest of us have not yet learned.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-WATER BORDERS
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-I like that name the Indians give to the mountain of Lone Pine, and
-find it pertinent to my subject,--Oppapago, The Weeper. It sits
-eastward and solitary from the lordliest ranks of the Sierras, and
-above a range of little, old, blunt hills, and has a bowed, grave
-aspect as of some woman you might have known, looking out across the
-grassy barrows of her dead. From twin gray lakes under its noble brow
-stream down incessant white and tumbling waters. “Mahala all time cry,”
-said Winnenap´, drawing furrows in his rugged, wrinkled cheeks.
-
-The origin of mountain streams is like the origin of tears, patent to
-the understanding but mysterious to the sense. They are always at it,
-but one so seldom catches them in the act. Here in the valley there is
-no cessation of waters even in the season when the niggard frost gives
-them scant leave to run. They make the most of their midday hour, and
-tinkle all night thinly under the ice. An ear laid to the snow catches
-a muffled hint of their eternal busyness fifteen or twenty feet under
-the cañon drifts, and long before any appreciable spring thaw, the
-sagging edges of the snow bridges mark out the place of their running.
-One who ventures to look for it finds the immediate source of the
-spring freshets--all the hill fronts furrowed with the reek of melting
-drifts, all the gravelly flats in a swirl of waters. But later, in June
-or July, when the camping season begins, there runs the stream away
-full and singing, with no visible reinforcement other than an icy
-trickle from some high, belated clot of snow. Oftenest the stream drops
-bodily from the bleak bowl of some alpine lake; sometimes breaks out of
-a hillside as a spring where the ear can trace it under the rubble of
-loose stones to the neighborhood of some blind pool. But that leaves
-the lakes to be accounted for.
-
-The lake is the eye of the mountain, jade green, placid, unwinking,
-also unfathomable. Whatever goes on under the high and stony brows is
-guessed at. It is always a favorite local tradition that one or another
-of the blind lakes is bottomless. Often they lie in such deep cairns of
-broken boulders that one never gets quite to them, or gets away unhurt.
-One such drops below the plunging slope that the Kearsarge trail winds
-over, perilously, nearing the pass. It lies still and wickedly green in
-its sharplipped cup, and the guides of that region love to tell of the
-packs and pack animals it has swallowed up.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-But the lakes of Oppapago are perhaps not so deep, less green than
-gray, and better befriended. The ousel haunts them, while still hang
-about their coasts the thin undercut drifts that never quite leave
-the high altitudes. In and out of the bluish ice caves he flits and
-sings, and his singing heard from above is sweet and uncanny like the
-Nixie’s chord. One finds butterflies, too, about these high, sharp
-regions which might be called desolate, but will not by me who love
-them. This is above timber-line but not too high for comforting by
-succulent small herbs and golden tufted grass. A granite mountain does
-not crumble with alacrity, but once resolved to soil makes the best of
-it. Every handful of loose gravel not wholly water leached affords
-a plant footing, and even in such unpromising surroundings there is
-a choice of locations. There is never going to be any communism of
-mountain herbage, their affinities are too sure. Full in the runnels
-of snow water on gravelly, open spaces in the shadow of a drift,
-one looks to find buttercups, frozen knee-deep by night, and owning
-no desire but to ripen their fruit above the icy bath. Soppy little
-plants of the portulaca and small, fine ferns shiver under the drip
-of falls and in dribbling crevices. The bleaker the situation, so it
-is near a stream border, the better the cassiope loves it. Yet I have
-not found it on the polished glacier slips, but where the country rock
-cleaves and splinters in the high windy headlands that the wild sheep
-frequents, hordes and hordes of the white bells swing over matted,
-mossy foliage. On Oppapago, which is also called Sheep Mountain, one
-finds not far from the beds of cassiope the ice-worn, stony hollows
-where the bighorns cradle their young. These are above the wolf’s quest
-and the eagle’s wont, and though the heather beds are softer, they are
-neither so dry nor so warm, and here only the stars go by. No other
-animal of any pretensions makes a habitat of the alpine regions. Now
-and then one gets a hint of some small, brown creature, rat or mouse
-kind, that slips secretly among the rocks; no others adapt themselves
-to desertness of aridity or altitude so readily as these ground
-inhabiting, graminivorous species. If there is an open stream the trout
-go up the lake as far as the water breeds food for them, but the ousel
-goes farthest, for pure love of it.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-Since no lake can be at the highest point, it is possible to find
-plant life higher than the water borders; grasses perhaps the highest,
-gilias, royal blue trusses of polymonium, rosy plats of Sierra
-primroses. What one has to get used to in flowers at high altitudes is
-the bleaching of the sun. Hardly do they hold their virgin color for
-a day, and this early fading before their function is performed gives
-them a pitiful appearance not according with their hardihood. The color
-scheme runs along the high ridges from blue to rosy purple, carmine and
-coral red; along the water borders it is chiefly white and yellow where
-the mimulus makes a vivid note, running into red when the two schemes
-meet and mix about the borders of the meadows, at the upper limit of
-the columbine.
-
-Here is the fashion in which a mountain stream gets down from the
-perennial pastures of the snow to its proper level and identity as an
-irrigating ditch. It slips stilly by the glacier scoured rim of an
-ice bordered pool, drops over sheer, broken ledges to another pool,
-gathers itself, plunges headlong on a rocky ripple slope, finds a lake
-again, reinforced, roars downward to a pot-hole, foams and bridles,
-glides a tranquil reach in some still meadow, tumbles into a sharp
-groove between hill flanks, curdles under the stream tangles, and so
-arrives at the open country and steadier going. Meadows, little strips
-of alpine freshness, begin before the timber-line is reached. Here one
-treads on a carpet of dwarf willows, downy catkins of creditable size
-and the greatest economy of foliage and stems. No other plant of high
-altitudes knows its business so well. It hugs the ground, grows roots
-from stem joints where no roots should be, grows a slender leaf or two
-and twice as many erect full catkins that rarely, even in that short
-growing season, fail of fruit. Dipping over banks in the inlets of the
-creeks, the fortunate find the rosy apples of the miniature manzanita,
-barely, but always quite sufficiently, borne above the spongy sod. It
-does not do to be anything but humble in the alpine regions, but not
-fearful. I have pawed about for hours in the chill sward of meadows
-where one might properly expect to get one’s death, and got no harm
-from it, except it might be Oliver Twist’s complaint. One comes soon
-after this to shrubby willows, and where willows are trout may be
-confidently looked for in most Sierra streams. There is no accounting
-for their distribution; though provident anglers have assisted nature
-of late, one still comes upon roaring brown waters where trout might
-very well be, but are not.
-
-The highest limit of conifers--in the middle Sierras, the white bark
-pine--is not along the water border. They come to it about the level
-of the heather, but they have no such affinity for dampness as the
-tamarack pines. Scarcely any bird-note breaks the stillness of the
-timber-line, but chipmunks inhabit here, as may be guessed by the
-gnawed ruddy cones of the pines, and lowering hours the woodchucks come
-down to the water. On a little spit of land running into Windy Lake we
-found one summer the evidence of a tragedy; a pair of sheep’s horns not
-fully grown caught in the crotch of a pine where the living sheep must
-have lodged them. The trunk of the tree had quite closed over them,
-and the skull bones crumbled away from the weathered horn cases. We
-hoped it was not too far out of the running of night prowlers to have
-put a speedy end to the long agony, but we could not be sure. I never
-liked the spit of Windy Lake again.
-
-It seems that all snow nourished plants count nothing so excellent in
-their kind as to be forehanded with their bloom, working secretly to
-that end under the high piled winters. The heathers begin by the lake
-borders, while little sodden drifts still shelter under their branches.
-I have seen the tiniest of them (_Kalmia glauca_) blooming, and with
-well-formed fruit, a foot away from a snowbank from which it could
-hardly have emerged within a week. Somehow the soul of the heather
-has entered into the blood of the English-speaking. “And oh! is that
-heather?” they say; and the most indifferent ends by picking a sprig of
-it in a hushed, wondering way. One must suppose that the root of their
-respective races issued from the glacial borders at about the same
-epoch, and remember their origin.
-
-Among the pines where the slope of the land allows it, the streams
-run into smooth, brown, trout-abounding rills across open flats that
-are in reality filled lake basins. These are the displaying grounds
-of the gentians--blue--blue--eye-blue, perhaps, virtuous and likable
-flowers. One is not surprised to learn that they have tonic properties.
-But if your meadow should be outside the forest reserve, and the sheep
-have been there, you will find little but the shorter, paler _G.
-Newberryii_, and in the matted sods of the little tongues of greenness
-that lick up among the pines along the watercourses, white, scentless,
-nearly stemless, alpine violets.
-
-At about the nine thousand foot level and in the summer there will be
-hosts of rosy-winged dodecatheon, called shooting-stars, outlining
-the crystal runnels in the sod. Single flowers have often a two-inch
-spread of petal, and the full, twelve blossomed heads above the slender
-pedicels have the airy effect of wings.
-
-It is about this level one looks to find the largest lakes with thick
-ranks of pines bearing down on them, often swamped in the summer floods
-and paying the inevitable penalty for such encroachment. Here in wet
-coves of the hills harbors that crowd of bloom that makes the wonder of
-the Sierra cañons.
-
-They drift under the alternate flicker and gloom of the windy rooms
-of pines, in gray rock shelters, and by the ooze of blind springs, and
-their juxtapositions are the best imaginable. Lilies come up out of
-fern beds, columbine swings over meadowsweet, white rein-orchids quake
-in the leaning grass. Open swales, where in wet years may be running
-water, are plantations of false hellebore (_Veratrum Californicum_),
-tall, branched candelabra of greenish bloom above the sessile,
-sheathing, boat-shaped leaves, semi-translucent in the sun. A stately
-plant of the lily family, but why “false?” It is frankly offensive in
-its character, and its young juices deadly as any hellebore that ever
-grew.
-
-Like most mountain herbs it has an uncanny haste to bloom. One hears
-by night, when all the wood is still, the crepitatious rustle of the
-unfolding leaves and the pushing flower-stalk within, that has open
-blossoms before it has fairly uncramped from the sheath. It commends
-itself by a certain exclusiveness of growth, taking enough room and
-never elbowing; for if the flora of the lake region has a fault it is
-that there is too much of it. We have more than three hundred species
-from Kearsarge Cañon alone, and if that does not include them all it is
-because they were already collected otherwhere.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-One expects to find lakes down to about nine thousand feet, leading
-into each other by comparatively open ripple slopes and white cascades.
-Below the lakes are filled basins that are still spongy swamps, or
-substantial meadows, as they get down and down.
-
-Here begin the stream tangles. On the east slopes of the middle Sierras
-the pines, all but an occasional yellow variety, desert the stream
-borders about the level of the lowest lakes, and the birches and
-tree-willows begin. The firs hold on almost to the mesa levels,--there
-are no foothills on this eastern slope,--and whoever has firs misses
-nothing else. It goes without saying that a tree that can afford to
-take fifty years to its first fruiting will repay acquaintance. It
-keeps, too, all that half century, a virginal grace of outline, but
-having once flowered, begins quietly to put away the things of its
-youth. Year by year the lower rounds of boughs are shed, leaving
-no scar; year by year the star-branched minarets approach the sky.
-A fir-tree loves a water border, loves a long wind in a draughty
-cañon, loves to spend itself secretly on the inner finishings of its
-burnished, shapely cones. Broken open in mid-season the petal-shaped
-scales show a crimson satin surface, perfect as a rose.
-
-The birch--the brown-bark western birch characteristic of lower stream
-tangles--is a spoil sport. It grows thickly to choke the stream that
-feeds it; grudges it the sky and space for angler’s rod and fly. The
-willows do better; painted-cup, cypripedium, and the hollow stalks
-of span-broad white umbels, find a footing among their stems. But in
-general the steep plunges, the white swirls, green and tawny pools, the
-gliding hush of waters between the meadows and the mesas afford little
-fishing and few flowers.
-
-One looks for these to begin again when once free of the rifted cañon
-walls; the high note of babble and laughter falls off to the steadier
-mellow tone of a stream that knows its purpose and reflects the sky.
-
-
-
-
-OTHER WATER BORDERS
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-It is the proper destiny of every considerable stream in the west to
-become an irrigating ditch. It would seem the streams are willing. They
-go as far as they can, or dare, toward the tillable lands in their own
-boulder fenced gullies--but how much farther in the man-made waterways.
-It is difficult to come into intimate relations with appropriated
-waters; like very busy people they have no time to reveal themselves.
-One needs to have known an irrigating ditch when it was a brook, and to
-have lived by it, to mark the morning and evening tone of its crooning,
-rising and falling to the excess of snow water; to have watched far
-across the valley, south to the Eclipse and north to the Twisted Dyke,
-the shining wall of the village water gate; to see still blue herons
-stalking the little glinting weirs across the field.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-Perhaps to get into the mood of the waterways one needs to have seen
-old Amos Judson asquat on the headgate with his gun, guarding his
-water-right toward the end of a dry summer. Amos owned the half of
-Tule Creek and the other half pertained to the neighboring Greenfields
-ranch. Years of a “short water crop,” that is, when too little snow
-fell on the high pine ridges, or, falling, melted too early, Amos
-held that it took all the water that came down to make his half, and
-maintained it with a Winchester and a deadly aim. Jesus Montaña, first
-proprietor of Greenfields,--you can see at once that Judson had the
-racial advantage,--contesting the right with him, walked into five of
-Judson’s bullets and his eternal possessions on the same occasion.
-That was the Homeric age of settlement and passed into tradition.
-Twelve years later one of the Clarks, holding Greenfields, not so very
-green by now, shot one of the Judsons. Perhaps he hoped that also might
-become classic, but the jury found for manslaughter. It had the effect
-of discouraging the Greenfields claim, but Amos used to sit on the
-headgate just the same, as quaint and lone a figure as the sandhill
-crane watching for water toads below the Tule drop. Every subsequent
-owner of Greenfields bought it with Amos in full view. The last of
-these was Diedrick. Along in August of that year came a week of low
-water. Judson’s ditch failed and he went out with his rifle to learn
-why. There on the headgate sat Diedrick’s frau with a long-handled
-shovel across her lap and all the water turned into Diedrick’s ditch;
-there she sat knitting through the long sun, and the children brought
-out her dinner. It was all up with Amos; he was too much of a gentleman
-to fight a lady--that was the way he expressed it. She was a very large
-lady, and a long-handled shovel is no mean weapon. The next year Judson
-and Diedrick put in a modern water gauge and took the summer ebb in
-equal inches. Some of the water-right difficulties are more squalid
-than this, some more tragic; but unless you have known them you cannot
-very well know what the water thinks as it slips past the gardens and
-in the long slow sweeps of the canal. You get that sense of brooding
-from the confined and sober floods, not all at once but by degrees,
-as one might become aware of a middle-aged and serious neighbor who
-has had that in his life to make him so. It is the repose of the
-completely accepted instinct.
-
-With the water runs a certain following of thirsty herbs and shrubs.
-The willows go as far as the stream goes, and a bit farther on the
-slightest provocation. They will strike root in the leak of a flume,
-or the dribble of an overfull bank, coaxing the water beyond its
-appointed bounds. Given a new waterway in a barren land, and in three
-years the willows have fringed all its miles of banks; three years more
-and they will touch tops across it. It is perhaps due to the early
-usurpation of the willows that so little else finds growing-room along
-the large canals. The birch beginning far back in the cañon tangles
-is more conservative; it is shy of man haunts and needs to have the
-permanence of its drink assured. It stops far short of the summer
-limit of waters, and I have never known it to take up a position on
-the banks beyond the ploughed lands. There is something almost like
-premeditation in the avoidance of cultivated tracts by certain plants
-of water borders. The clematis, mingling its foliage secretly with its
-host, comes down with the stream tangles to the village fences, skips
-over to corners of little used pasture lands and the plantations that
-spring up about waste water pools; but never ventures a footing in the
-trail of spade or plough; will not be persuaded to grow in any garden
-plot. On the other hand, the horehound, the common European species
-imported with the colonies, hankers after hedgerows and snug little
-borders. It is more widely distributed than many native species, and
-may be always found along the ditches in the village corners, where it
-is not appreciated. The irrigating ditch is an impartial distributer.
-It gathers all the alien weeds that come west in garden and grass seeds
-and affords them harbor in its banks. There one finds the European
-mallow (_Malva rotundifolia_) spreading out to the streets with the
-summer overflow, and every spring a dandelion or two, brought in with
-the blue grass seed, uncurls in the swardy soil. Farther than either
-of these have come the lilies that the Chinese coolies cultivate in
-adjacent mud holes for their foodful bulbs. The _seegoo_ establishes
-itself very readily in swampy borders, and the white blossom spikes
-among the arrow-pointed leaves are quite as acceptable to the eye as
-any native species.
-
-In the neighborhood of towns founded by the Spanish Californians,
-whether this plant is native to the locality or not, one can always
-find aromatic clumps of _yerba buena_, the “good herb” (_Micromeria
-Douglassii_). The virtue of it as a febrifuge was taught to the mission
-fathers by the neophytes, and wise old dames of my acquaintance have
-worked astonishing cures with it and the succulent _yerba mansa_. This
-last is native to wet meadows and distinguished enough to have a family
-all to itself.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-Where the irrigating ditches are shallow and a little neglected, they
-choke quickly with watercress that multiplies about the lowest Sierra
-springs. It is characteristic of the frequenters of water borders near
-man haunts, that they are chiefly of the sorts that are useful to
-man, as if they made their services an excuse for the intrusion. The
-joint-grass of soggy pastures produces edible, nut-flavored tubers,
-called by the Indians _taboose_. The common reed of the ultramontane
-marshes (here _Phragmites vulgaris_), a very stately, whispering reed,
-light and strong for shafts or arrows, affords sweet sap and pith which
-makes a passable sugar.
-
-It seems the secrets of plant powers and influences yield themselves
-most readily to primitive peoples, at least one never hears of the
-knowledge coming from any other source. The Indian never concerns
-himself, as the botanist and the poet, with the plant’s appearances and
-relations, but with what it can do for him. It can do much, but how do
-you suppose he finds it out; what instincts or accidents guide him? How
-does a cat know when to eat catnip? Why do western bred cattle avoid
-loco weed, and strangers eat it and go mad? One might suppose that in a
-time of famine the Paiutes digged wild parsnip in meadow corners and
-died from eating it, and so learned to produce death swiftly and at
-will. But how did they learn, repenting in the last agony, that animal
-fat is the best antidote for its virulence; and who taught them that
-the essence of joint pine (_Ephedra nevadensis_), which looks to have
-no juice in it of any sort, is efficacious in stomachic disorders. But
-they so understand and so use. One believes it to be a sort of instinct
-atrophied by disuse in a complexer civilization. I remember very well
-when I came first upon a wet meadow of _yerba mansa_, not knowing its
-name or use. It _looked_ potent; the cool, shiny leaves, the succulent,
-pink stems and fruity bloom. A little touch, a hint, a word, and I
-should have known what use to put them to. So I felt, unwilling to
-leave it until we had come to an understanding. So a musician might
-have felt in the presence of an instrument known to be within his
-province, but beyond his power. It was with the relieved sense of
-having shaped a long surmise that I watched the Señora Romero make a
-poultice of it for my burned hand.
-
-On, down from the lower lakes to the village weirs, the brown and
-golden disks of _helenum_ have beauty as a sufficient excuse for
-being. The plants anchor out on tiny capes, or mid-stream islets,
-with the nearly sessile radicle leaves submerged. The flowers keep up
-a constant trepidation in time with the hasty water beating at their
-stems, a quivering, instinct with life, that seems always at the point
-of breaking into flight; just as the babble of the watercourses always
-approaches articulation but never quite achieves it. Although of wide
-range the helenum never makes itself common through profusion, and
-may be looked for in the same places from year to year. Another lake
-dweller that comes down to the ploughed lands is the red columbine (_C.
-truncata_). It requires no encouragement other than shade, but grows
-too rank in the summer heats and loses its wildwood grace. A common
-enough orchid in these parts is the false lady’s slipper (_Epipactis
-gigantea_), one that springs up by any water where there is sufficient
-growth of other sorts to give it countenance. It seems to thrive best
-in an atmosphere of suffocation.
-
-The middle Sierras fall off abruptly eastward toward the high valleys.
-Peaks of the fourteen thousand class, belted with sombre swathes of
-pine, rise almost directly from the bench lands with no foothill
-approaches. At the lower edge of the bench or mesa the land falls
-away, often by a fault, to the river hollows, and along the drop one
-looks for springs or intermittent swampy swales. Here the plant world
-resembles a little the lake gardens, modified by altitude and the use
-the town folk put it to for pasture. Here are cress, blue violets,
-potentilla, and, in the damp of the willow fence-rows, white false
-asphodels. I am sure we make too free use of this word _false_ in
-naming plants--false mallow, false lupine, and the like. The asphodel
-is at least no falsifier, but a true lily by all the heaven-set marks,
-though small of flower and run mostly to leaves, and should have a name
-that gives it credit for growing up in such celestial semblance. Native
-to the mesa meadows is a pale iris, gardens of it acres wide, that in
-the spring season of full bloom make an airy fluttering as of azure
-wings. Single flowers are too thin and sketchy of outline to affect the
-imagination, but the full fields have the misty blue of mirage waters
-rolled across desert sand, and quicken the senses to the anticipation
-of things ethereal. A very poet’s flower, I thought; not fit for
-gathering up, and proving a nuisance in the pastures, therefore needing
-to be the more loved. And one day I caught Winnenap´ drawing out from
-mid leaf a fine strong fibre for making snares. The borders of the iris
-fields are pure gold, nearly sessile buttercups and a creeping-stemmed
-composite of a redder hue. I am convinced that English-speaking
-children will always have buttercups. If they do not light upon the
-original companion of little frogs they will take the next best and
-cherish it accordingly. I find five unrelated species loved by that
-name, and as many more and as inappropriately called cowslips.
-
-By every mesa spring one may expect to find a single shrub of the
-buckthorn, called of old time _Cascara sagrada_--the sacred bark. Up
-in the cañons, within the limit of the rains, it seeks rather a stony
-slope, but in the dry valleys is not found away from water borders.
-
-In all the valleys and along the desert edges of the west are
-considerable areas of soil sickly with alkali-collecting pools, black
-and evil-smelling like old blood. Very little grows hereabout but
-thick-leaved pickle weed. Curiously enough, in this stiff mud, along
-roadways where there is frequently a little leakage from canals, grows
-the only western representative of the true heliotropes (_Heliotropium
-curassavicum_). It has flowers of faded white, foliage of faded
-green, resembling the “live-for-ever” of old gardens and graveyards,
-but even less attractive. After so much schooling in the virtues
-of water-seeking plants, one is not surprised to learn that its
-mucilaginous sap has healing powers.
-
-Last and inevitable resort of overflow waters is the tulares, great
-wastes of reeds (_Juncus_) in sickly, slow streams. The reeds, called
-tules, are ghostly pale in winter, in summer deep poisonous-looking
-green, the waters thick and brown; the reed beds breaking into dingy
-pools, clumps of rotting willows, narrow winding water lanes and
-sinking paths. The tules grow inconceivably thick in places, standing
-man-high above the water; cattle, no, not any fish nor fowl can
-penetrate them. Old stalks succumb slowly; the bed soil is quagmire,
-settling with the weight as it fills and fills. Too slowly for
-counting they raise little islands from the bog and reclaim the land.
-The waters pushed out cut deeper channels, gnaw off the edges of the
-solid earth.
-
-The tulares are full of mystery and malaria. That is why we have meant
-to explore them and have never done so. It must be a happy mystery.
-So you would think to hear the redwinged blackbirds proclaim it clear
-March mornings. Flocks of them, and every flock a myriad, shelter in
-the dry, whispering stems. They make little arched runways deep into
-the heart of the tule beds. Miles across the valley one hears the
-clamor of their high, keen flutings in the mating weather.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-Wild fowl, quacking hordes of them, nest in the tulares. Any day’s
-venture will raise from open shallows the great blue heron on his
-hollow wings. Chill evenings the mallard drakes cry continually from
-the glassy pools, the bittern’s hollow boom rolls along the water
-paths. Strange and far-flown fowl drop down against the saffron, autumn
-sky. All day wings beat above it hazy with speed; long flights of
-cranes glimmer in the twilight. By night one wakes to hear the clanging
-geese go over. One wishes for, but gets no nearer speech from those the
-reedy fens have swallowed up. What they do there, how fare, what find,
-is the secret of the tulares.
-
-
-
-
-NURSLINGS OF THE SKY
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-[Illustration]
-
-Choose a hill country for storms. There all the business of the weather
-is carried on above your horizon and loses its terror in familiarity.
-When you come to think about it, the disastrous storms are on the
-levels, sea or sand or plains. There you get only a hint of what is
-about to happen, the fume of the gods rising from their meeting place
-under the rim of the world; and when it breaks upon you there is no
-stay nor shelter. The terrible mewings and mouthings of a Kansas wind
-have the added terror of viewlessness. You are lapped in them like
-uprooted grass; suspect them of a personal grudge. But the storms of
-hill countries have other business. They scoop watercourses, manure
-the pines, twist them to a finer fibre, fit the firs to be masts and
-spars, and, if you keep reasonably out of the track of their affairs,
-do you no harm.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-They have habits to be learned, appointed paths, seasons, and warnings,
-and they leave you in no doubt about their performances. One who builds
-his house on a water scar or the rubble of a steep slope must take
-chances. So they did in Overtown who built in the wash of Argus water,
-and at Kearsarge at the foot of a steep, treeless swale. After twenty
-years Argus water rose in the wash against the frail houses, and the
-piled snows of Kearsarge slid down at a thunder peal over the cabins
-and the camp, but you could conceive that it was the fault of neither
-the water nor the snow.
-
-The first effect of cloud study is a sense of presence and intention
-in storm processes. Weather does not happen. It is the visible
-manifestation of the Spirit moving itself in the void. It gathers
-itself together under the heavens; rains, snows, yearns mightily in
-wind, smiles; and the Weather Bureau, situated advantageously for that
-very business, taps the record on his instruments and going out on the
-streets denies his God, not having gathered the sense of what he has
-seen. Hardly anybody takes account of the fact that John Muir, who
-knows more of mountain storms than any other, is a devout man.
-
-Of the high Sierras choose the neighborhood of the splintered peaks
-about the Kern and King’s river divide for storm study, or the short,
-wide-mouthed cañons opening eastward on high valleys. Days when the
-hollows are steeped in a warm, winey flood the clouds come walking on
-the floor of heaven, flat and pearly gray beneath, rounded and pearly
-white above. They gather flock-wise, moving on the level currents
-that roll about the peaks, lock hands and settle with the cooler air,
-drawing a veil about those places where they do their work. If their
-meeting or parting takes place at sunrise or sunset, as it often
-does, one gets the splendor of the apocalypse. There will be cloud
-pillars miles high, snow-capped, glorified, and preserving an orderly
-perspective before the unbarred door of the sun, or perhaps mere ghosts
-of clouds that dance to some pied piper of an unfelt wind. But be it
-day or night, once they have settled to their work, one sees from the
-valley only the blank wall of their tents stretched along the ranges.
-To get the real effect of a mountain storm you must be inside.
-
-One who goes often into a hill country learns not to say: What if it
-should rain? It always does rain somewhere among the peaks: the unusual
-thing is that one should escape it. You might suppose that if you took
-any account of plant contrivances to save their pollen powder against
-showers. Note how many there are deep-throated and bell-flowered like
-the pentstemons, how many have nodding pedicels as the columbine, how
-many grow in copse shelters and grow there only. There is keen delight
-in the quick showers of summer cañons, with the added comfort, born
-of experience, of knowing that no harm comes of a wetting at high
-altitudes. The day is warm; a white cloud spies over the cañon wall,
-slips up behind the ridge to cross it by some windy pass, obscures your
-sun. Next you hear the rain drum on the broad-leaved hellebore, and
-beat down the mimulus beside the brook. You shelter on the lee of some
-strong pine with shut-winged butterflies and merry, fiddling creatures
-of the wood. Runnels of rain water from the glacier slips swirl through
-the pine needles into rivulets; the streams froth and rise in their
-banks. The sky is white with cloud; the sky is gray with rain; the sky
-is clear. The summer showers leave no wake.
-
-Such as these follow each other day by day for weeks in August weather.
-Sometimes they chill suddenly into wet snow that packs about the
-lake gardens clear to the blossom frills, and melts away harmlessly.
-Sometimes one has the good fortune from a heather-grown headland to
-watch a rain-cloud forming in mid-air. Out over meadow or lake region
-begins a little darkling of the sky,--no cloud, no wind, just a
-smokiness such as spirits materialize from in witch stories.
-
-It rays out and draws to it some floating films from secret cañons.
-Rain begins, “slow dropping veil of thinnest lawn;” a wind comes up and
-drives the formless thing across a meadow, or a dull lake pitted by the
-glancing drops, dissolving as it drives. Such rains relieve like tears.
-
-The same season brings the rains that have work to do, ploughing
-storms that alter the face of things. These come with thunder and
-the play of live fire along the rocks. They come with great winds
-that try the pines for their work upon the seas and strike out the
-unfit. They shake down avalanches of splinters from sky-line pinnacles
-and raise up sudden floods like battle fronts in the cañons against
-towns, trees, and boulders. They would be kind if they could, but
-have more important matters. Such storms, called cloud-bursts by
-the country folk, are not rain, rather the spillings of Thor’s cup,
-jarred by the Thunderer. After such a one the water that comes up in
-the village hydrants miles away is white with forced bubbles from the
-wind-tormented streams.
-
-All that storms do to the face of the earth you may read in the
-geographies, but not what they do to our contemporaries. I remember one
-night of thunderous rain made unendurably mournful by the houseless cry
-of a cougar whose lair, and perhaps his family, had been buried under
-a slide of broken boulders on the slope of Kearsarge. We had heard the
-heavy denotation of the slide about the hour of the alpenglow, a pale
-rosy interval in a darkling air, and judged he must have come from
-hunting to the ruined cliff and paced the night out before it, crying
-a very human woe. I remember, too, in that same season of storms, a
-lake made milky white for days, and crowded out of its bed by clay
-washed into it by a fury of rain, with the trout floating in it belly
-up, stunned by the shock of the sudden flood. But there were trout
-enough for what was left of the lake next year and the beginning of a
-meadow about its upper rim. What taxed me most in the wreck of one of
-my favorite cañons by cloudburst was to see a bobcat mother mouthing
-her drowned kittens in the ruined lair built in the wash, far above
-the limit of accustomed waters, but not far enough for the unexpected.
-After a time you get the point of view of gods about these things to
-save you from being too pitiful.
-
-The great snows that come at the beginning of winter, before there is
-yet any snow except the perpetual high banks, are best worth while to
-watch. These come often before the late bloomers are gone and while
-the migratory birds are still in the piney woods. Down in the valley
-you see little but the flocking of blackbirds in the streets, or the
-low flight of mallards over the tulares, and the gathering of clouds
-behind Williamson. First there is a waiting stillness in the wood; the
-pine-trees creak although there is no wind, the sky glowers, the firs
-rock by the water borders. The noise of the creek rises insistently and
-falls off a full note like a child abashed by sudden silence in the
-room. This changing of the stream-tone following tardily the changes
-of the sun on melting snows is most meaningful of wood notes. After
-it runs a little trumpeter wind to cry the wild creatures to their
-holes. Sometimes the warning hangs in the air for days with increasing
-stillness. Only Clark’s crow and the strident jays make light of it;
-only they can afford to. The cattle get down to the foothills and
-ground inhabiting creatures make fast their doors. It grows chill,
-blind clouds fumble in the cañons; there will be a roll of thunder,
-perhaps, or a flurry of rain, but mostly the snow is born in the air
-with quietness and the sense of strong white pinions softly stirred. It
-increases, is wet and clogging, and makes a white night of midday.
-
-There is seldom any wind with first snows, more often rain, but later,
-when there is already a smooth foot or two over all the slopes, the
-drifts begin. The late snows are fine and dry, mere ice granules at the
-wind’s will. Keen mornings after a storm they are blown out in wreaths
-and banners from the high ridges sifting into the cañons.
-
-Once in a year or so we have a “big snow.” The cloud tents are widened
-out to shut in the valley and an outlying range or two and are drawn
-tight against the sun. Such a storm begins warm, with a dry white mist
-that fills and fills between the ridges, and the air is thick with
-formless groaning. Now for days you get no hint of the neighboring
-ranges until the snows begin to lighten and some shouldering peak
-lifts through a rent. Mornings after the heavy snows are steely blue,
-two-edged with cold, divinely fresh and still, and these are times
-to go up to the pine borders. There you may find floundering in the
-unstable drifts “tainted wethers” of the wild sheep, faint from age and
-hunger; easy prey. Even the deer make slow going in the thick fresh
-snow, and once we found a wolverine going blind and feebly in the white
-glare.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-No tree takes the snow stress with such ease as the silver fir. The
-star-whorled, fan-spread branches droop under the soft wreaths--droop
-and press flatly to the trunk; presently the point of overloading
-is reached, there is a soft sough and muffled dropping, the boughs
-recover, and the weighting goes on until the drifts have reached
-the midmost whorls and covered up the branches. When the snows
-are particularly wet and heavy they spread over the young firs in
-green-ribbed tents wherein harbor winter loving birds.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-All storms of desert hills, except wind storms, are impotent. East and
-east of the Sierras they rise in nearly parallel ranges, desertward,
-and no rain breaks over them, except from some far-strayed cloud
-or roving wind from the California Gulf, and these only in winter.
-In summer the sky travails with thunderings and the flare of sheet
-lightnings to win a few blistering big drops, and once in a lifetime
-the chance of a torrent. But you have not known what force resides in
-the mindless things until you have known a desert wind. One expects it
-at the turn of the two seasons, wet and dry, with electrified tense
-nerves. Along the edge of the mesa where it drops off to the valley,
-dust devils begin to rise white and steady, fanning out at the top
-like the genii out of the Fisherman’s bottle. One supposes the Indians
-might have learned the use of smoke signals from these dust pillars as
-they learn most things direct from the tutelage of the earth. The air
-begins to move fluently, blowing hot and cold between the ranges. Far
-south rises a murk of sand against the sky; it grows, the wind shakes
-itself, and has a smell of earth. The cloud of small dust takes on the
-color of gold and shuts out the neighborhood, the push of the wind is
-unsparing. Only man of all folk is foolish enough to stir abroad in it.
-But being in a house is really much worse; no relief from the dust, and
-a great fear of the creaking timbers. There is no looking ahead in such
-a wind, and the bite of the small sharp sand on exposed skin is keener
-than any insect sting. One might sleep, for the lapping of the wind
-wears one to the point of exhaustion very soon, but there is dread, in
-open sand stretches sometimes justified, of being over blown by the
-drift. It is hot, dry, fretful work, but by going along the ground with
-the wind behind, one may come upon strange things in its tumultuous
-privacy. I like these truces of wind and heat that the desert makes,
-otherwise I do not know how I should come by so many acquaintances with
-furtive folk. I like to see hawks sitting daunted in shallow holes, not
-daring to spread a feather, and doves in a row by the prickle bushes,
-and shut-eyed cattle, turned tail to the wind in a patient doze. I like
-the smother of sand among the dunes, and finding small coiled snakes in
-open places, but I never like to come in a wind upon the silly sheep.
-The wind robs them of what wit they had, and they seem never to have
-learned the self-induced hypnotic stupor with which most wild things
-endure weather stress. I have never heard that the desert winds brought
-harm to any other than the wandering shepherds and their flocks. Once
-below Pastaria Little Pete showed me bones sticking out of the sand
-where a flock of two hundred had been smothered in a bygone wind. In
-many places the four-foot posts of a cattle fence had been buried by
-the wind-blown dunes.
-
-It is enough occupation, when no storm is brewing, to watch the cloud
-currents and the chambers of the sky. From Kearsarge, say, you look
-over Inyo and find pink soft cloud masses asleep on the level desert
-air; south of you hurries a white troop late to some gathering of their
-kind at the back of Oppapago; nosing the foot of Waban, a woolly mist
-creeps south. In the clean, smooth paths of the middle sky and highest
-up in air, drift, unshepherded, small flocks ranging contrarily.
-You will find the proper names of these things in the reports of
-the Weather Bureau--cirrus, cumulus, and the like--and charts that
-will teach by study when to sow and take up crops. It is astonishing
-the trouble men will be at to find out when to plant potatoes, and
-gloze over the eternal meaning of the skies. You have to beat out for
-yourself many mornings on the windly headlands the sense of the fact
-that you get the same rainbow in the cloud drift over Waban and the
-spray of your garden hose. And not necessarily then do you live up to
-it.
-
-
-
-
-THE LITTLE TOWN OF THE GRAPE VINES
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-There are still some places in the west where the quails cry
-“_cuidado_”; where all the speech is soft, all the manners gentle;
-where all the dishes have _chile_ in them, and they make more of the
-Sixteenth of September than they do of the Fourth of July. I mean in
-particular El Pueblo de Las Uvas. Where it lies, how to come at it, you
-will not get from me; rather would I show you the heron’s nest in the
-tulares. It has a peak behind it, glinting above the tamarack pines,
-above a breaker of ruddy hills that have a long slope valley-wards and
-the shoreward steep of waves toward the Sierras.
-
-Below the Town of the Grape Vines, which shortens to Las Uvas
-for common use, the land dips away to the river pastures and the
-tulares. It shrouds under a twilight thicket of vines, under a dome
-of cottonwood-trees, drowsy and murmurous as a hive. Hereabouts are
-some strips of tillage and the headgates that dam up the creek for the
-village weirs; upstream you catch the growl of the arrastra. Wild vines
-that begin among the willows lap over to the orchard rows, take the
-trellis and roof-tree.
-
-There is another town above Las Uvas that merits some attention, a town
-of arches and airy crofts, full of linnets, blackbirds, fruit birds,
-small sharp hawks, and mockingbirds that sing by night. They pour out
-piercing, unendurably sweet cavatinas above the fragrance of bloom and
-musky smell of fruit. Singing is in fact the business of the night
-at Las Uvas as sleeping is for midday. When the moon comes over the
-mountain wall new-washed from the sea, and the shadows lie like lace
-on the stamped floors of the patios, from recess to recess of the vine
-tangle runs the thrum of guitars and the voice of singing.
-
-At Las Uvas they keep up all the good customs brought out of Old Mexico
-or bred in a lotus-eating land; drink, and are merry and look out for
-something to eat afterward; have children, nine or ten to a family,
-have cock-fights, keep the siesta, smoke cigarettes and wait for the
-sun to go down. And always they dance; at dusk on the smooth adobe
-floors, afternoons under the trellises where the earth is damp and has
-a fruity smell. A betrothal, a wedding, or a christening, or the mere
-proximity of a guitar is sufficient occasion; and if the occasion
-lacks, send for the guitar and dance anyway.
-
-All this requires explanation. Antonio Sevadra, drifting this way from
-Old Mexico with the flood that poured into the Tappan district after
-the first notable strike, discovered La Golondrina. It was a generous
-lode and Tony a good fellow; to work it he brought in all the Sevadras,
-even to the twice-removed; all the Castros who were his wife’s
-family, all the Saises, Romeros, and Eschobars,--the relations of his
-relations-in-law. There you have the beginning of a pretty considerable
-town. To these accrued much of the Spanish California float swept out
-of the southwest by eastern enterprise. They slacked away again when
-the price of silver went down, and the ore dwindled in La Golondrina.
-All the hot eddy of mining life swept away from that corner of the
-hills, but there were always those too idle, too poor to move, or too
-easily content with El Pueblo de Las Uvas.
-
-Nobody comes nowadays to the town of the grape vines except, as we say,
-“with the breath of crying,” but of these enough. All the low sills run
-over with small heads. Ah, ah! There is a kind of pride in that if you
-did but know it, to have your baby every year or so as the time sets,
-and keep a full breast. So great a blessing as marriage is easily come
-by. It is told of Ruy Garcia that when he went for his marriage license
-he lacked a dollar of the clerk’s fee, but borrowed it of the sheriff,
-who expected reëlection and exhibited thereby a commendable thrift.
-
-Of what account is it to lack meal or meat when you may have it of
-any neighbor? Besides, there is sometimes a point of honor in these
-things. Jesus Romero, father of ten, had a job sacking ore in the
-Marionette which he gave up of his own accord. “Eh, why?” said Jesus,
-“for my fam’ly.”
-
-“It is so, señora,” he said solemnly, “I go to the Marionette, I work,
-I eat meat--pie--frijoles--good, ver’ good. I come home sad’day nigh’
-I see my fam’ly. I play lil’ game poker with the boys, have lil’ drink
-wine, my money all gone. My family have no money, nothing eat. All
-time I work at mine I eat, good, ver’ good grub. I think sorry for my
-fam’ly. No, no, señora, I no work no more that Marionette, I stay with
-my fam’ly.” The wonder of it is, I think, that the family had the same
-point of view.
-
-Every house in the town of the vines has its garden plot, corn and
-brown beans and a row of peppers reddening in the sun; and in damp
-borders of the irrigating ditches clumps of _yerba santa_, horehound,
-catnip, and spikenard, wholesome herbs and curative, but if no peppers
-then nothing at all. You will have for a holiday dinner, in Las Uvas,
-soup with meat balls and chile in it, chicken with chile, rice with
-chile, fried beans with more chile, enchilada, which is corn cake with
-a sauce of chile and tomatoes, onion, grated cheese, and olives, and
-for a relish chile _tepines_ passed about in a dish, all of which is
-comfortable and corrective to the stomach. You will have wine which
-every man makes for himself, of good body and inimitable bouquet, and
-sweets that are not nearly so nice as they look.
-
-There are two occasions when you may count on that kind of a meal;
-always on the Sixteenth of September, and on the two-yearly visits of
-Father Shannon. It is absurd, of course, that El Pueblo de Las Uvas
-should have an Irish priest, but Black Rock, Minton, Jimville, and
-all that country round do not find it so. Father Shannon visits them
-all, waits by the Red Butte to confess the shepherds who go through
-with their flocks, carries blessing to small and isolated mines, and
-so in the course of a year or so works around to Las Uvas to bury and
-marry and christen. Then all the little graves in the _Campo Santo_
-are brave with tapers, the brown pine headboards blossom like Aaron’s
-rod with paper roses and bright cheap prints of Our Lady of Sorrows.
-Then the Señora Sevadra, who thinks herself elect of heaven for that
-office, gathers up the original sinners, the little Elijias, Lolas,
-Manuelitas, Josés, and Felipés, by dint of adjurations and sweets
-smuggled into small perspiring palms, to fit them for the Sacrament.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-I used to peek in at them, never so softly, in Doña Ina’s living-room;
-Raphael-eyed little imps, going sidewise on their knees to rest them
-from the bare floor, candles lit on the mantel to give a religious air,
-and a great sheaf of wild bloom before the Holy Family. Come Sunday
-they set out the altar in the schoolhouse, with the finedrawn altar
-cloths, the beaten silver candlesticks, and the wax images, chief glory
-of Las Uvas, brought up mule-back from Old Mexico forty years ago. All
-in white the communicants go up two and two in a hushed, sweet awe to
-take the body of their Lord, and Tomaso, who is priest’s boy, tries not
-to look unduly puffed up by his office. After that you have dinner and
-a bottle of wine that ripened on the sunny slope of Escondito. All the
-week Father Shannon has shriven his people, who bring clean conscience
-to the betterment of appetite, and the Father sets them an example.
-Father Shannon is rather big about the middle to accommodate the large
-laugh that lives in him, but a most shrewd searcher of hearts. It is
-reported that one derives comfort from his confessional, and I for my
-part believe it.
-
-The celebration of the Sixteenth, though it comes every year, takes
-as long to prepare for as Holy Communion. The señoritas have each a
-new dress apiece, the señoras a new _rebosa_. The young gentlemen
-have new silver trimmings to their sombreros, unspeakable ties, silk
-handkerchiefs, and new leathers to their spurs. At this time when the
-peppers glow in the gardens and the young quail cry “_cuidado_,”
-“have a care!” you can hear the _plump, plump_ of the _metate_ from
-the alcoves of the vines where comfortable old dames, whose experience
-gives them the touch of art, are pounding out corn for tamales.
-
-School-teachers from abroad have tried before now at Las Uvas to have
-school begin on the first of September, but got nothing else to stir in
-the heads of the little Castros, Garcias, and Romeros but feasts and
-cock-fights until after the Sixteenth. Perhaps you need to be told that
-this is the anniversary of the Republic, when liberty awoke and cried
-in the provinces of Old Mexico. You are aroused at midnight to hear
-them shouting in the streets, “_Vive la Libertad!_” answered from the
-houses and the recesses of the vines, “_Vive la Mexico!_” At sunrise
-shots are fired commemorating the tragedy of unhappy Maximilian, and
-then music, the noblest of national hymns, as the great flag of Old
-Mexico floats up the flag-pole in the bare little plaza of shabby Las
-Uvas. The sun over Pine Mountain greets the eagle of Montezuma before
-it touches the vineyards and the town, and the day begins with a
-great shout. By and by there will be a reading of the Declaration of
-Independence and an address punctured by _vives_; all the town in its
-best dress, and some exhibits of horsemanship that make lathered bits
-and bloodly spurs; also a cock-fight.
-
-[Illustration: BY NIGHT THERE WILL BE DANCING]
-
-By night there will be dancing, and such music! old Santos to play the
-flute, a little lean man with a saintly countenance, young Garcia whose
-guitar has a soul, and Carrasco with the violin. They sit on a high
-platform above the dancers in the candle flare, backed by the red,
-white, and green of Old Mexico, and play fervently such music as you
-will not hear otherwhere.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-At midnight the flag comes down. Count yourself at a loss if you are
-not moved by that performance. Pine Mountain watches whitely overhead,
-shepherd fires glow strongly on the glooming hills. The plaza, the bare
-glistening pole, the dark folk, the bright dresses, are lit ruddily by
-a bonfire. It leaps up to the eagle flag, dies down, the music begins
-softly and aside. They play airs of old longing and exile; slowly out
-of the dark the flag drops down, bellying and falling with the midnight
-draught. Sometimes a hymn is sung, always there are tears. The flag is
-down; Tony Sevadra has received it in his arms. The music strikes a
-barbaric swelling tune, another flag begins a slow ascent,--it takes a
-breath or two to realize that they are both, flag and tune, the Star
-Spangled Banner,--a volley is fired, we are back, if you please, in
-California of America. Every youth who has the blood of patriots in him
-lays ahold on Tony Sevadra’s flag, happiest if he can get a corner of
-it. The music goes before, the folk fall in two and two, singing. They
-sing everything, America, the Marseillaise, for the sake of the French
-shepherds hereabout, the hymn of Cuba, and the Chilian national air to
-comfort two families of that land. The flag goes to Doña Ina’s, with
-the candlesticks and the altar cloths, then Las Uvas eats tamales and
-dances the sun up the slope of Pine Mountain.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-You are not to suppose that they do not keep the Fourth, Washington’s
-Birthday, and Thanksgiving at the town of the grape vines. These make
-excellent occasions for quitting work and dancing, but the Sixteenth
-is the holiday of the heart. On Memorial Day the graves have garlands
-and new pictures of the saints tacked to the headboards. There is
-great virtue in an _Ave_ said in the Camp of the Saints. I like that
-name which the Spanish speaking people give to the garden of the dead,
-_Campo Santo_, as if it might be some bed of healing from which blind
-souls and sinners rise up whole and praising God. Sometimes the speech
-of simple folk hints at truth the understanding does not reach. I am
-persuaded only a complex soul can get any good of a plain religion.
-Your earth-born is a poet and a symbolist. We breed in an environment
-of asphalt pavements a body of people whose creeds are chiefly
-restrictions against other people’s way of life, and have kitchens and
-latrines under the same roof that houses their God. Such as these go
-to church to be edified, but at Las Uvas they go for pure worship and
-to entreat their God. The logical conclusion of the faith that every
-good gift cometh from God is the open hand and the finer courtesy. The
-meal done without buys a candle for the neighbor’s dead child. You do
-foolishly to suppose that the candle does no good.
-
-At Las Uvas every house is a piece of earth--thick walled, whitewashed
-adobe that keeps the even temperature of a cave; every man is an
-accomplished horseman and consequently bow-legged; every family keeps
-dogs, flea-bitten mongrels that loll on the earthen floors. They speak
-a purer Castilian than obtains in like villages of Mexico, and the
-way they count relationship everybody is more or less akin. There is
-not much villainy among them. What incentive to thieving or killing
-can there be when there is little wealth and that to be had for the
-borrowing! If they love too hotly, as we say “take their meat before
-grace,” so do their betters. Eh, what! shall a man be a saint before
-he is dead? And besides, Holy Church takes it out of you one way or
-another before all is done. Come away, you who are obsessed with your
-own importance in the scheme of things, and have got nothing you did
-not sweat for, come away by the brown valleys and full-bosomed hills
-to the even-breathing days, to the kindliness, earthiness, ease of El
-Pueblo de Las Uvas.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-  The Riverside Press
-
-  _Electrotyped and printed by H. O. Houghton & Co.
-  Cambridge, Mass., U. S. A._
-
-
-
-
-Transcriber’s Notes
-
-
-Punctuation, hyphenation, and spelling were made consistent when a
-predominant preference was found in this book; otherwise they were not
-changed.
-
-Simple typographical errors were corrected; occasional unbalanced
-quotation marks retained.
-
-Ambiguous hyphens at the ends of lines were retained.
-
-In the original book, each chapter began with a hemi-title page that
-contained an illustration, and an identical chapter heading, sometimes
-with an illustration, on the next page. In some versions of this eBook,
-the second occurrences of those chapter headings have been omitted.
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-The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Land of Little Rain, by Mary Austin
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-Title: The Land of Little Rain
-
-Author: Mary Austin
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-*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LAND OF LITTLE RAIN ***
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-<div class="figcenter" style="width: 589px; max-height: 600px;">
-<img src="images/cover.jpg" width="589" height="800" alt="cover" />
-</div>
-
-<h1 class="wspace">THE LAND OF LITTLE RAIN</h1>
-
-<div id="if_frontis" class="newpage figcenter" style="width: 360px;"><img src="images/frontis.jpg" width="360" height="548" alt="" /><div class="caption">PETITE PETE (Page 157)</div></div>
-
-<div class="newpage p4">
-<div class="html rm5">
-<div id="if_i_000a-1" class="figrights tm10" style="width: 152px;"><img src="images/i_000a-1.jpg" width="152" height="427" alt="" /></div>
-<div id="if_i_000a-2" class="figrights" style="width: 252px; margin-bottom: 4em;"><img src="images/i_000a-2.jpg" width="252" height="173" alt="" /></div>
-</div>
-
-<div class="bbox lm5">
-
-<p class="center xlarge vspace2 gesperrt wspace">
-THE LAND<br />
-<span class="small">OF</span><br />
-LITTLE RAIN</p>
-
-<p class="p2 center vspace2 wspace"><span class="smaller">BY</span><br />
-<span class="larger">MARY AUSTIN</span></p>
-
-<div id="if_i_000" class="figcenter" style="width: 60px;"><img src="images/i_000.jpg" width="60" height="109" alt="" /></div>
-
-<p class="p2 center wspace vspace smaller">BOSTON AND NEW YORK<br />
-<span class="larger">HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY</span><br />
-<span class="bold">The Riverside Press, Cambridge</span><br />
-1903
-</p>
-</div>
-
-<div id="if_i_000a" class="newpage figcenter epub" style="width: 252px;"><img src="images/i_000a.jpg" width="252" height="600" alt="" /></div>
-</div>
-
-<hr />
-
-<p class="newpage p4 center small vspace">
-COPYRIGHT 1903 BY MARY AUSTIN<br />
-ALL RIGHTS RESERVED<br />
-<br />
-<i>Published October 1903</i>
-</p>
-
-<hr />
-
-<p class="newpage p4 center vspace2 wspace">
-<span class="large">TO EVE</span><br />
-“THE COMFORTRESS OF UNSUCCESS”
-</p>
-
-<hr />
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_vii">vii</a></span></p>
-
-<div class="chapter">
-<h2><a id="PREFACE"></a>PREFACE</h2>
-</div>
-
-<p class="drop-cap i"><span class="smcap1">I</span> confess to a great liking for the
-Indian fashion of name-giving: every
-man known by that phrase which best expresses
-him to whoso names him. Thus
-he may be Mighty-Hunter, or Man-Afraid-of-a-Bear,
-according as he is called by
-friend or enemy, and Scar-Face to those
-who knew him by the eye’s grasp only.
-No other fashion, I think, sets so well with
-the various natures that inhabit in us, and
-if you agree with me you will understand
-why so few names are written here as they
-appear in the geography. For if I love a
-lake known by the name of the man who
-discovered it, which endears itself by reason<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_viii">viii</a></span>
-of the close-locked pines it nourishes about
-its borders, you may look in my account to
-find it so described. But if the Indians
-have been there before me, you shall have
-their name, which is always beautifully fit
-and does not originate in the poor human
-desire for perpetuity.</p>
-
-<p>Nevertheless there are certain peaks, cañons,
-and clear meadow spaces which are
-above all compassing of words, and have a
-certain fame as of the nobly great to whom
-we give no familiar names. Guided by
-these you may reach my country and find
-or not find, according as it lieth in you,
-much that is set down here. And more.
-The earth is no wanton to give up all her
-best to every comer, but keeps a sweet,
-separate intimacy for each. But if you do<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_ix">ix</a></span>
-not find it all as I write, think me not less
-dependable nor yourself less clever. There
-is a sort of pretense allowed in matters of
-the heart, as one should say by way of
-illustration, “I know a man who ...,”
-and so give up his dearest experience without
-betrayal. And I am in no mind to
-direct you to delectable places toward
-which you will hold yourself less tenderly
-than I. So by this fashion of naming I
-keep faith with the land and annex to my
-own estate a very great territory to which
-none has a surer title.</p>
-
-<p>The country where you may have sight
-and touch of that which is written lies
-between the high Sierras south from Yosemite&mdash;east
-and south over a very great
-assemblage of broken ranges beyond Death<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_x">x</a></span>
-Valley, and on illimitably into the Mojave
-Desert. You may come into the borders
-of it from the south by a stage journey that
-has the effect of involving a great lapse of
-time, or from the north by rail, dropping
-out of the overland route at Reno. The
-best of all ways is over the Sierra passes
-by pack and trail, seeing and believing.
-But the real heart and core of the country
-are not to be come at in a month’s vacation.
-One must summer and winter with the land
-and wait its occasions. Pine woods that
-take two and three seasons to the ripening
-of cones, roots that lie by in the sand seven
-years awaiting a growing rain, firs that
-grow fifty years before flowering,&mdash;these
-do not scrape acquaintance. But if ever
-you come beyond the borders as far as the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_xi">xi</a></span>
-town that lies in a hill dimple at the foot
-of Kearsarge, never leave it until you have
-knocked at the door of the brown house
-under the willow-tree at the end of the
-village street, and there you shall have
-such news of the land, of its trails and
-what is astir in them, as one lover of it can
-give to another.</p>
-
-<div class="chapter">
-<h2><a id="NOTE_ON_THE_ILLUSTRATIONS"></a><span class="smaller wspace">NOTE ON THE ILLUSTRATIONS</span></h2>
-</div>
-
-<p>The Publishers feel that they have been peculiarly
-fortunate in securing Mr. E. Boyd Smith
-as the illustrator and interpreter of Mrs. Austin’s
-charming sketches of the “Land of Little Rain.”
-His familiarity with the region and his rare artistic
-skill have enabled him to give the very
-atmosphere of the desert, and graphically to portray
-its life, animal and human. This will be felt
-not only in the full-page compositions, but in the
-delightful marginal sketches, which are not less
-illustrative, although, from their nature, it is impracticable
-to enumerate them in a formal list.</p>
-
-<div class="chapter">
-<h2><a id="CONTENTS"></a>CONTENTS</h2>
-</div>
-
-<table summary="Contents">
-  <tr class="small">
-    <td> </td>
-    <td class="tdr">PAGE</td></tr>
-  <tr>
-    <td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">The Land of Little Rain</span></td>
-    <td class="tdr"><a href="#h_1">1</a></td></tr>
-  <tr>
-    <td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">Water Trails of the Ceriso</span></td>
-    <td class="tdr"><a href="#h_23">23</a></td></tr>
-  <tr>
-    <td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">The Scavengers</span></td>
-    <td class="tdr"><a href="#h_45">45</a></td></tr>
-  <tr>
-    <td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">The Pocket Hunter</span></td>
-    <td class="tdr"><a href="#h_61">61</a></td></tr>
-  <tr>
-    <td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">Shoshone Land</span></td>
-    <td class="tdr"><a href="#h_81">81</a></td></tr>
-  <tr>
-    <td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">Jimville&mdash;A Bret Harte Town</span></td>
-    <td class="tdr"><a href="#h_103">103</a></td></tr>
-  <tr>
-    <td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">My Neighbor’s Field</span></td>
-    <td class="tdr"><a href="#h_123">123</a></td></tr>
-  <tr>
-    <td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">The Mesa Trail</span></td>
-    <td class="tdr"><a href="#h_141">141</a></td></tr>
-  <tr>
-    <td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">The Basket Maker</span></td>
-    <td class="tdr"><a href="#h_161">161</a></td></tr>
-  <tr>
-    <td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">The Streets of the Mountains</span></td>
-    <td class="tdr"><a href="#h_181">181</a></td></tr>
-  <tr>
-    <td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">Water Borders</span></td>
-    <td class="tdr"><a href="#h_203">203</a></td></tr>
-  <tr>
-    <td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">Other Water Borders</span></td>
-    <td class="tdr"><a href="#h_223">223</a></td></tr>
-  <tr>
-    <td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">Nurslings of the Sky</span></td>
-    <td class="tdr"><a href="#h_243">243</a></td></tr>
-  <tr>
-    <td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">The Little Town of the Grape Vines</span></td>
-    <td class="tdr"><a href="#h_263">263</a></td></tr>
-</table>
-
-<hr />
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_1">1</a></span></p>
-
-<div class="chapter">
-<h2 id="h_1">THE LAND OF LITTLE RAIN</h2>
-</div>
-
-<div id="if_i_001" class="figcenter" style="width: 270px;"><img src="images/i_001.jpg" width="270" height="280" alt="" /></div>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_3">3</a></span></p>
-
-<h3>THE LAND OF LITTLE RAIN</h3>
-
-<p class="drop-cap"><span class="smcap1">East</span> away from the Sierras, south
-from Panamint and Amargosa, east
-and south many an uncounted mile, is the
-Country of Lost Borders.</p>
-
-<div class="html rm10">
-<div id="if_i_003-1" class="figrights" style="width: 158px;"><img src="images/i_003-1.jpg" width="158" height="235" alt="" /></div>
-<div id="if_i_003-2" class="figrights" style="width: 537px;"><img src="images/i_003-2.jpg" width="537" height="189" alt="" /></div>
-</div>
-
-<p>Ute, Paiute, Mojave, and Shoshone inhabit
-its frontiers, and as far into the heart
-of it as a man dare go. Not the law, but
-the land sets the limit. Desert is the name
-it wears upon the maps, but the Indian’s
-is the better word. Desert is a loose term
-to indicate land that supports no man;
-whether the land can be bitted and broken
-to that purpose is not proven. Void of life
-it never is, however dry the air and villainous
-the soil.</p>
-
-<div id="if_i_003" class="figcenter epub" style="width: 537px;"><img src="images/i_003.jpg" width="537" height="424" alt="" /></div>
-
-<p>This is the nature of that country.
-There are hills, rounded, blunt, burned,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_4">4</a></span>
-squeezed up out of chaos, chrome and vermilion
-painted, aspiring to the snow-line.
-Between the hills lie high level-looking
-plains full of intolerable sun glare, or narrow
-valleys drowned in a blue haze. The
-hill surface is streaked with ash drift and
-black, unweathered lava flows. After rains
-water accumulates in the hollows of small
-closed valleys, and, evaporating, leaves hard
-dry levels of pure desertness that get the
-local name of dry lakes. Where the mountains
-are steep and the rains heavy, the pool
-is never quite dry, but dark and bitter,
-rimmed about with the efflorescence of alkaline
-deposits. A thin crust of it lies along
-the marsh over the vegetating area, which
-has neither beauty nor freshness. In the
-broad wastes open to the wind the sand
-drifts in hummocks about the stubby shrubs,
-and between them the soil shows saline<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_5">5</a></span>
-traces. The sculpture of the hills here is
-more wind than water work, though the
-quick storms do sometimes scar them past
-many a year’s redeeming. In all the Western
-desert edges there are essays in miniature
-at the famed, terrible Grand Cañon,
-to which, if you keep on long enough in
-this country, you will come at last.</p>
-
-<p>Since this is a hill country one expects
-to find springs, but not to depend upon
-them; for when found they are often brackish
-and unwholesome, or maddening, slow
-dribbles in a thirsty soil. Here you find
-the hot sink of Death Valley, or high rolling
-districts where the air has always a
-tang of frost. Here are the long heavy
-winds and breathless calms on the tilted
-mesas where dust devils dance, whirling up
-into a wide, pale sky. Here you have no
-rain when all the earth cries for it, or quick<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_6">6</a></span>
-downpours called cloud-bursts for violence.
-A land of lost rivers, with little in it to love;
-yet a land that once visited must be come
-back to inevitably. If it were not so there
-would be little told of it.</p>
-
-<p>This is the country of three seasons.
-From June on to November it lies hot,
-still, and unbearable, sick with violent
-unrelieving storms; then on until April,
-chill, quiescent, drinking its scant rain and
-scanter snows; from April to the hot season
-again, blossoming, radiant, and seductive.
-These months are only approximate; later
-or earlier the rain-laden wind may drift up
-the water gate of the Colorado from the
-Gulf, and the land sets its seasons by the
-rain.</p>
-
-<p>The desert floras shame us with their
-cheerful adaptations to the seasonal limitations.
-Their whole duty is to flower and<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_7">7</a></span>
-fruit, and they do it hardly, or with tropical
-luxuriance, as the rain admits. It is
-recorded in the report of the Death Valley
-expedition that after a year of abundant
-rains, on the Colorado desert was found a
-specimen of Amaranthus ten feet high. A
-year later the same species in the same
-place matured in the drought at four
-inches. One hopes the land may breed
-like qualities in her human offspring, not
-tritely to “try,” but to do. Seldom does
-the desert herb attain the full stature of
-the type. Extreme aridity and extreme
-altitude have the same dwarfing effect, so
-that we find in the high Sierras and in
-Death Valley related species in miniature
-that reach a comely growth in mean temperatures.
-Very fertile are the desert plants
-in expedients to prevent evaporation, turning
-their foliage edgewise toward the sun,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_8">8</a></span>
-growing silky hairs, exuding viscid gum.
-The wind, which has a long sweep, harries
-and helps them. It rolls up dunes about
-the stocky stems, encompassing and protective,
-and above the dunes, which may
-be, as with the mesquite, three times as
-high as a man, the blossoming twigs flourish
-and bear fruit.</p>
-
-<p>There are many areas in the desert
-where drinkable water lies within a few
-feet of the surface, indicated by the mesquite
-and the bunch grass (<i xml:lang="la" lang="la">Sporobolus airoides</i>).
-It is this nearness of unimagined
-help that makes the tragedy of desert
-deaths. It is related that the final breakdown
-of that hapless party that gave Death
-Valley its forbidding name occurred in a
-locality where shallow wells would have
-saved them. But how were they to know
-that? Properly equipped it is possible to<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_9">9</a></span>
-go safely across that ghastly sink, yet every
-year it takes its toll of death, and yet men
-find there sun-dried mummies, of whom
-no trace or recollection is preserved. To
-underestimate one’s thirst, to pass a given
-landmark to the right or left, to find a dry
-spring where one looked for running water&mdash;there
-is no help for any of these things.</p>
-
-<p>Along springs and sunken watercourses
-one is surprised to find such water-loving
-plants as grow widely in moist ground, but
-the true desert breeds its own kind, each
-in its particular habitat. The angle of the
-slope, the frontage of a hill, the structure
-of the soil determines the plant. South-looking
-hills are nearly bare, and the lower
-tree-line higher here by a thousand feet.
-Cañons running east and west will have
-one wall naked and one clothed. Around
-dry lakes and marshes the herbage preserves<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_10">10</a></span>
-a set and orderly arrangement. Most
-species have well-defined areas of growth,
-the best index the voiceless land can give
-the traveler of his whereabouts.</p>
-
-<div id="if_i_010" class="figleft lm10" style="width: 110px;"><img src="images/i_010.jpg" width="110" height="100" alt="" /></div>
-
-<p>If you have any doubt about it, know
-that the desert begins with the creosote.
-This immortal shrub spreads down into
-Death Valley and up to the lower timber-line,
-odorous and medicinal as you
-might guess from the name, wandlike, with
-shining fretted foliage. Its vivid green is
-grateful to the eye in a wilderness of gray
-and greenish white shrubs. In the spring
-it exudes a resinous gum which the Indians
-of those parts know how to use with
-pulverized rock for cementing arrow points
-to shafts. Trust Indians not to miss any
-virtues of the plant world!</p>
-
-<div id="if_i_011" class="figright rm15" style="width: 223px;"><img src="images/i_011.jpg" width="223" height="203" alt="" /></div>
-
-<p>Nothing the desert produces expresses
-it better than the unhappy growth of the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_11">11</a></span>
-tree yuccas. Tormented, thin forests of it
-stalk drearily in the high mesas, particularly
-in that triangular slip that fans out
-eastward from the meeting of the Sierras
-and coastwise hills where the first swings
-across the southern end of the San Joaquin
-Valley. The yucca bristles with bayonet-pointed
-leaves, dull green, growing shaggy
-with age, tipped with panicles of fetid,
-greenish bloom. After death, which is
-slow, the ghostly hollow network of its
-woody skeleton, with hardly power to rot,
-makes the moonlight fearful. Before the
-yucca has come to flower, while yet its
-bloom is a creamy cone-shaped bud of the
-size of a small cabbage, full of sugary sap,
-the Indians twist it deftly out of its fence
-of daggers and roast it for their own delectation.
-So it is that in those parts where
-man inhabits one sees young plants of<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_12">12</a></span>
-<i xml:lang="la" lang="la">Yucca arborensis</i> infrequently. Other yuccas,
-cacti, low herbs, a thousand sorts, one
-finds journeying east from the coastwise
-hills. There is neither poverty of soil nor
-species to account for the sparseness of
-desert growth, but simply that each plant
-requires more room. So much earth must
-be preëmpted to extract so much moisture.
-The real struggle for existence, the real
-brain of the plant, is underground; above
-there is room for a rounded perfect growth.
-In Death Valley, reputed the very core of
-desolation, are nearly two hundred identified
-species.</p>
-
-<p>Above the lower tree-line, which is also
-the snow-line, mapped out abruptly by the
-sun, one finds spreading growth of piñon,
-juniper, branched nearly to the ground, lilac
-and sage, and scattering white pines.</p>
-
-<p>There is no special preponderance of<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_13">13</a></span>
-self-fertilized or wind-fertilized plants, but
-everywhere the demand for and evidence
-of insect life. Now where there are seeds
-and insects there will be birds and small
-mammals, and where these are, will come
-the slinking, sharp-toothed kind that prey
-on them. Go as far as you dare in the
-heart of a lonely land, you cannot go so
-far that life and death are not before you.
-Painted lizards slip in and out of rock
-crevices, and pant on the white hot sands.
-Birds, hummingbirds even, nest in the
-cactus scrub; woodpeckers befriend the
-demoniac yuccas; out of the stark, treeless
-waste rings the music of the night-singing
-mockingbird. If it be summer and the
-sun well down, there will be a burrowing
-owl to call. Strange, furry, tricksy things
-dart across the open places, or sit motionless
-in the conning towers of the creosote.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_14">14</a></span>
-The poet may have “named all the birds
-without a gun,” but not the fairy-footed,
-ground-inhabiting, furtive, small folk of the
-rainless regions. They are too many and
-too swift; how many you would not believe
-without seeing the footprint tracings in the
-sand. They are nearly all night workers,
-finding the days too hot and white. In
-mid-desert where there are no cattle, there
-are no birds of carrion, but if you go far
-in that direction the chances are that you
-will find yourself shadowed by their tilted
-wings. Nothing so large as a man can
-move unspied upon in that country, and
-they know well how the land deals with
-strangers. There are hints to be had here
-of the way in which a land forces new habits
-on its dwellers. The quick increase of
-suns at the end of spring sometimes overtakes
-birds in their nesting and effects a<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_15">15</a></span>
-reversal of the ordinary manner of incubation.
-It becomes necessary to keep eggs
-cool rather than warm. One hot, stifling
-spring in the Little Antelope I had occasion
-to pass and repass frequently the nest
-of a pair of meadowlarks, located unhappily
-in the shelter of a very slender weed.
-I never caught them sitting except near
-night, but at midday they stood, or drooped
-above it, half fainting with pitifully parted
-bills, between their treasure and the sun.
-Sometimes both of them together with
-wings spread and half lifted continued a
-spot of shade in a temperature that constrained
-me at last in a fellow feeling to
-spare them a bit of canvas for permanent
-shelter. There was a fence in that country
-shutting in a cattle range, and along its
-fifteen miles of posts one could be sure
-of finding a bird or two in every strip of<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_16">16</a></span>
-shadow; sometimes the sparrow and the
-hawk, with wings trailed and beaks parted,
-drooping in the white truce of noon.</p>
-
-<div id="if_i_015" class="figcenter epub" style="width: 247px;"><img src="images/i_015.jpg" width="247" height="600" alt="" /></div>
-<div class="html rm10">
-<div id="if_i_015-1" class="figrights" style="width: 152px;"><img src="images/i_015-1.jpg" width="152" height="427" alt="" /></div>
-<div id="if_i_015-2" class="figrights" style="width: 252px;"><img src="images/i_015-2.jpg" width="252" height="173" alt="" /></div>
-</div>
-
-<p>If one is inclined to wonder at first how
-so many dwellers came to be in the loneliest
-land that ever came out of God’s
-hands, what they do there and why stay,
-one does not wonder so much after having
-lived there. None other than this long
-brown land lays such a hold on the affections.
-The rainbow hills, the tender bluish
-mists, the luminous radiance of the
-spring, have the lotus charm. They trick
-the sense of time, so that once inhabiting
-there you always mean to go away without
-quite realizing that you have not done it.
-Men who have lived there, miners and cattle-men,
-will tell you this, not so fluently,
-but emphatically, cursing the land and going
-back to it. For one thing there is the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_17">17</a></span>
-divinest, cleanest air to be breathed anywhere
-in God’s world. Some day the
-world will understand that, and the little
-oases on the windy tops of hills will harbor
-for healing its ailing, house-weary
-broods. There is promise there of great
-wealth in ores and earths, which is no
-wealth by reason of being so far removed
-from water and workable conditions, but
-men are bewitched by it and tempted to
-try the impossible.</p>
-
-<p>You should hear Salty Williams tell how
-he used to drive eighteen and twenty-mule
-teams from the borax marsh to Mojave,
-ninety miles, with the trail wagon full of
-water barrels. Hot days the mules would
-go so mad for drink that the clank of the
-water bucket set them into an uproar of
-hideous, maimed noises, and a tangle of
-harness chains, while Salty would sit on<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_18">18</a></span>
-the high seat with the sun glare heavy in
-his eyes, dealing out curses of pacification
-in a level, uninterested voice until the
-clamor fell off from sheer exhaustion.
-There was a line of shallow graves along
-that road; they used to count on dropping
-a man or two of every new gang of coolies
-brought out in the hot season. But when
-he lost his swamper, smitten without warning
-at the noon halt, Salty quit his job; he
-said it was “too durn hot.” The swamper
-he buried by the way with stones upon him
-to keep the coyotes from digging him up,
-and seven years later I read the penciled
-lines on the pine headboard, still bright
-and unweathered.</p>
-
-<p>But before that, driving up on the
-Mojave stage, I met Salty again crossing
-Indian Wells, his face from the high seat,
-tanned and ruddy as a harvest moon, looming<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_19">19</a></span>
-through the golden dust above his eighteen
-mules. The land had called him.</p>
-
-<p>The palpable sense of mystery in the
-desert air breeds fables, chiefly of lost treasure.
-Somewhere within its stark borders,
-if one believes report, is a hill strewn with
-nuggets; one seamed with virgin silver;
-an old clayey water-bed where Indians
-scooped up earth to make cooking pots
-and shaped them reeking with grains of
-pure gold. Old miners drifting about the
-desert edges, weathered into the semblance
-of the tawny hills, will tell you tales like
-these convincingly. After a little sojourn
-in that land you will believe them on their
-own account. It is a question whether it
-is not better to be bitten by the little horned
-snake of the desert that goes sidewise and
-strikes without coiling, than by the tradition
-of a lost mine.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_20">20</a></span>
-And yet&mdash;and yet&mdash;is it not perhaps
-to satisfy expectation that one falls into the
-tragic key in writing of desertness? The
-more you wish of it the more you get, and
-in the mean time lose much of pleasantness.
-In that country which begins at the foot of
-the east slope of the Sierras and spreads
-out by less and less lofty hill ranges toward
-the Great Basin, it is possible to live with
-great zest, to have red blood and delicate
-joys, to pass and repass about one’s daily
-performance an area that would make an
-Atlantic seaboard State, and that with no
-peril, and, according to our way of thought,
-no particular difficulty. At any rate, it was
-not people who went into the desert merely
-to write it up who invented the fabled
-Hassaympa, of whose waters, if any drink,
-they can no more see fact as naked fact,
-but all radiant with the color of romance.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_22">21</a></span>
-I, who must have drunk of it in my twice
-seven years’ wanderings, am assured that it
-is worth while.</p>
-
-<p>For all the toll the desert takes of a man
-it gives compensations, deep breaths, deep
-sleep, and the communion of the stars. It
-comes upon one with new force in the
-pauses of the night that the Chaldeans
-were a desert-bred people. It is hard to
-escape the sense of mastery as the stars
-move in the wide clear heavens to risings
-and settings unobscured. They look large
-and near and palpitant; as if they moved
-on some stately service not needful to declare.
-Wheeling to their stations in the
-sky, they make the poor world-fret of no
-account. Of no account you who lie out
-there watching, nor the lean coyote that
-stands off in the scrub from you and howls
-and howls.</p>
-
-<div id="if_i_021" class="figright rm5" style="width: 296px;"><img src="images/i_021.jpg" width="296" height="202" alt="" /></div>
-
-<hr />
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_23">23</a></span></p>
-
-<div class="chapter">
-<h2 id="h_23">WATER TRAILS OF THE CERISO</h2>
-</div>
-
-<div id="if_i_023" class="figcenter" style="width: 224px;"><img src="images/i_023.jpg" width="224" height="363" alt="" /></div>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_25">25</a></span></p>
-
-<h3>WATER TRAILS OF THE CERISO</h3>
-
-<p class="drop-cap b"><span class="smcap1">By</span> the end of the dry season the water
-trails of the Ceriso are worn to a white
-ribbon in the leaning grass, spread out faint
-and fan wise toward the homes of gopher
-and ground rat and squirrel. But however
-faint to man-sight, they are sufficiently
-plain to the furred and feathered folk who
-travel them. Getting down to the eye level
-of rat and squirrel kind, one perceives what
-might easily be wide and winding roads to
-us if they occurred in thick plantations of
-trees three times the height of a man. It
-needs but a slender thread of barrenness to
-make a mouse trail in the forest of the sod.
-To the little people the water trails are as
-country roads, with scents as signboards.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_26">26</a></span>
-It seems that man-height is the least
-fortunate of all heights from which to study
-trails. It is better to go up the front of
-some tall hill, say the spur of Black Mountain,
-looking back and down across the
-hollow of the Ceriso. Strange how long
-the soil keeps the impression of any continuous
-treading, even after grass has overgrown
-it. Twenty years since, a brief heyday
-of mining at Black Mountain made a
-stage road across the Ceriso, yet the parallel
-lines that are the wheel traces show
-from the height dark and well defined.
-Afoot in the Ceriso one looks in vain for
-any sign of it. So all the paths that wild
-creatures use going down to the Lone Tree
-Spring are mapped out whitely from this
-level, which is also the level of the hawks.</p>
-
-<p>There is little water in the Ceriso at the
-best of times, and that little brackish and<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_27">27</a></span>
-smelling vilely, but by a lone juniper where
-the rim of the Ceriso breaks away to the
-lower country, there is a perpetual rill of
-fresh sweet drink in the midst of lush grass
-and watercress. In the dry season there
-is no water else for a man’s long journey
-of a day. East to the foot of Black Mountain,
-and north and south without counting,
-are the burrows of small rodents, rat
-and squirrel kind. Under the sage are
-the shallow forms of the jackrabbits, and in
-the dry banks of washes, and among the
-strewn fragments of black rock, lairs of
-bobcat, fox, and coyote.</p>
-
-<p>The coyote is your true water-witch, one
-who snuffs and paws, snuffs and paws
-again at the smallest spot of moisture-scented
-earth until he has freed the blind
-water from the soil. Many water-holes
-are no more than this detected by the lean<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_28">28</a></span>
-hobo of the hills in localities where not
-even an Indian would look for it.</p>
-
-<p>It is the opinion of many wise and busy
-people that the hill-folk pass the ten-month
-interval between the end and renewal of
-winter rains, with no drink; but your true
-idler, with days and nights to spend beside
-the water trails, will not subscribe to it.
-The trails begin, as I said, very far back in
-the Ceriso, faintly, and converge in one
-span broad, white, hard-trodden way in the
-gully of the spring. And why trails if
-there are no travelers in that direction?</p>
-
-<p>I have yet to find the land not scarred
-by the thin, far roadways of rabbits and
-what not of furry folks that run in them.
-Venture to look for some seldom-touched
-water-hole, and so long as the trails run
-with your general direction make sure you
-are right, but if they begin to cross yours<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_29">29</a></span>
-at never so slight an angle, to converge
-toward a point left or right of your objective,
-no matter what the maps say, or your
-memory, trust them; they <em>know</em>.</p>
-
-<p>It is very still in the Ceriso by day, so
-that were it not for the evidence of those
-white beaten ways, it might be the desert
-it looks. The sun is hot in the dry season,
-and the days are filled with the glare of it.
-Now and again some unseen coyote signals
-his pack in a long-drawn, dolorous whine
-that comes from no determinate point, but
-nothing stirs much before mid-afternoon.
-It is a sign when there begin to be hawks
-skimming above the sage that the little
-people are going about their business.</p>
-
-<p>We have fallen on a very careless usage,
-speaking of wild creatures as if they were
-bound by some such limitation as hampers
-clockwork. When we say of one and another,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_30">30</a></span>
-they are night prowlers, it is perhaps
-true only as the things they feed upon are
-more easily come by in the dark, and they
-know well how to adjust themselves to conditions
-wherein food is more plentiful by
-day. And their accustomed performance
-is very much a matter of keen eye, keener
-scent, quick ear, and a better memory of
-sights and sounds than man dares boast.
-Watch a coyote come out of his lair and
-cast about in his mind where he will go
-for his daily killing. You cannot very well
-tell what decides him, but very easily that
-he has decided. He trots or breaks into
-short gallops, with very perceptible pauses
-to look up and about at landmarks, alters
-his tack a little, looking forward and back
-to steer his proper course. I am persuaded
-that the coyotes in my valley, which is narrow
-and beset with steep, sharp hills, in<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_31">31</a></span>
-long passages steer by the pinnacles of the
-sky-line, going with head cocked to one
-side to keep to the left or right of such and
-such a promontory.</p>
-
-<div id="if_i_033" class="figright rm12" style="width: 159px;"><img src="images/i_033.jpg" width="159" height="600" alt="" /></div>
-
-<p>I have trailed a coyote often, going across
-country, perhaps to where some slant-winged
-scavenger hanging in the air signaled
-prospect of a dinner, and found his
-track such as a man, a very intelligent man
-accustomed to a hill country, and a little
-cautious, would make to the same point.
-Here a detour to avoid a stretch of too
-little cover, there a pause on the rim of a
-gully to pick the better way,&mdash;and it is usually
-the best way,&mdash;and making his point
-with the greatest economy of effort. Since
-the time of Seyavi the deer have shifted
-their feeding ground across the valley at
-the beginning of deep snows, by way of the
-Black Rock, fording the river at Charley’s<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_32">32</a></span>
-Butte, and making straight for the mouth
-of the cañon that is the easiest going to the
-winter pastures on Waban. So they still
-cross, though whatever trail they had has
-been long broken by ploughed ground; but
-from the mouth of Tinpah Creek, where the
-deer come out of the Sierras, it is easily seen
-that the creek, the point of Black Rock,
-and Charley’s Butte are in line with the
-wide bulk of shade that is the foot of Waban
-Pass. And along with this the deer
-have learned that Charley’s Butte is almost
-the only possible ford, and all the shortest
-crossing of the valley. It seems that the
-wild creatures have learned all that is important
-to their way of life except the
-changes of the moon. I have seen some
-prowling fox or coyote, surprised by its
-sudden rising from behind the mountain
-wall, slink in its increasing glow, watch it<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_33">33</a></span>
-furtively from the cover of near-by brush,
-unprepared and half uncertain of its identity
-until it rode clear of the peaks, and finally
-make off with all the air of one caught napping
-by an ancient joke. The moon in its
-wanderings must be a sort of exasperation
-to cunning beasts, likely to spoil by untimely
-risings some fore-planned mischief.</p>
-
-<p>But to take the trail again; the coyotes
-that are astir in the Ceriso of late afternoons,
-harrying the rabbits from their
-shallow forms, and the hawks that sweep
-and swing above them, are not there from
-any mechanical promptings of instinct,
-but because they know of old experience
-that the small fry are about to take to seed
-gathering and the water trails. The rabbits
-begin it, taking the trail with long, light
-leaps, one eye and ear cocked to the hills
-from whence a coyote might descend upon<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_34">34</a></span>
-them at any moment. Rabbits are a foolish
-people. They do not fight except with
-their own kind, nor use their paws except
-for feet, and appear to have no reason for
-existence but to furnish meals for meat-eaters.
-In flight they seem to rebound from
-the earth of their own elasticity, but keep
-a sober pace going to the spring. It is the
-young watercress that tempts them and the
-pleasures of society, for they seldom drink.
-Even in localities where there are flowing
-streams they seem to prefer the moisture
-that collects on herbage, and after rains
-may be seen rising on their haunches to
-drink delicately the clear drops caught in
-the tops of the young sage. But drink
-they must, as I have often seen them mornings
-and evenings at the rill that goes by
-my door. Wait long enough at the Lone
-Tree Spring and sooner or later they will<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_35">35</a></span>
-all come in. But here their matings are
-accomplished, and though they are fearful
-of so little as a cloud shadow or blown leaf,
-they contrive to have some playful hours.
-At the spring the bobcat drops down upon
-them from the black rock, and the red fox
-picks them up returning in the dark. By
-day the hawk and eagle overshadow them,
-and the coyote has all times and seasons
-for his own.</p>
-
-<div id="if_i_037" class="figright rm10" style="width: 218px;"><img src="images/i_037.jpg" width="218" height="247" alt="" /></div>
-
-<p>Cattle, when there are any in the Ceriso,
-drink morning and evening, spending the
-night on the warm last lighted slopes of
-neighboring hills, stirring with the peep o’
-day. In these half wild spotted steers the
-habits of an earlier lineage persist. It must
-be long since they have made beds for themselves,
-but before lying down they turn
-themselves round and round as dogs do.
-They choose bare and stony ground, exposed<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_36">36</a></span>
-fronts of westward facing hills, and
-lie down in companies. Usually by the end
-of the summer the cattle have been driven
-or gone of their own choosing to the mountain
-meadows. One year a maverick yearling,
-strayed or overlooked by the vaqueros,
-kept on until the season’s end, and so betrayed
-another visitor to the spring that
-else I might have missed. On a certain
-morning the half-eaten carcass lay at the
-foot of the black rock, and in moist earth
-by the rill of the spring, the foot-pads of a
-cougar, puma, mountain lion, or whatever
-the beast is rightly called. The kill must
-have been made early in the evening, for it
-appeared that the cougar had been twice to
-the spring; and since the meat-eater drinks
-little until he has eaten, he must have fed
-and drunk, and after an interval of lying
-up in the black rock, had eaten and drunk<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_37">37</a></span>
-again. There was no knowing how far he
-had come, but if he came again the second
-night he found that the coyotes had left him
-very little of his kill.</p>
-
-<div id="if_i_038" class="figcenter epub" style="width: 511px;"><img src="images/i_038.jpg" width="511" height="380" alt="" /></div>
-<div class="html rm5">
-<div id="if_i_038-1" class="figrights" style="width: 80px;"><img src="images/i_038-1.jpg" width="80" height="182" alt="" /></div>
-<div id="if_i_038-2" class="figrights" style="width: 511px;"><img src="images/i_038-2.jpg" width="511" height="198" alt="" /></div>
-</div>
-
-<p>Nobody ventures to say how infrequently
-and at what hour the small fry visit the
-spring. There are such numbers of them
-that if each came once between the last of
-spring and the first of winter rains, there
-would still be water trails. I have seen
-badgers drinking about the hour when the
-light takes on the yellow tinge it has from
-coming slantwise through the hills. They
-find out shallow places, and are loath to wet
-their feet. Rats and chipmunks have been
-observed visiting the spring as late as nine
-o’clock mornings. The larger spermophiles
-that live near the spring and keep awake to
-work all day, come and go at no particular
-hour, drinking sparingly. At long intervals<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_38">38</a></span>
-on half-lighted days, meadow and field
-mice steal delicately along the trail. These
-visitors are all too small to be watched
-carefully at night, but for evidence of their
-frequent coming there are the trails that
-may be traced miles out among the crisping
-grasses. On rare nights, in the places
-where no grass grows between the shrubs,
-and the sand silvers whitely to the moon,
-one sees them whisking to and fro on innumerable
-errands of seed gathering, but
-the chief witnesses of their presence near
-the spring are the elf owls. Those burrow-haunting,
-speckled fluffs of greediness
-begin a twilight flitting toward the spring,
-feeding as they go on grasshoppers, lizards,
-and small, swift creatures, diving into burrows
-to catch field mice asleep, battling
-with chipmunks at their own doors, and
-getting down in great numbers toward the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_39">39</a></span>
-lone juniper. Now owls do not love water
-greatly on its own account. Not to my
-knowledge have I caught one drinking or
-bathing, though on night wanderings across
-the mesa they flit up from under the horse’s
-feet along stream borders. Their presence
-near the spring in great numbers would
-indicate the presence of the things they
-feed upon. All night the rustle and soft
-hooting keeps on in the neighborhood of
-the spring, with seldom small shrieks of
-mortal agony. It is clear day before they
-have all gotten back to their particular
-hummocks, and if one follows cautiously,
-not to frighten them into some near-by
-burrow, it is possible to trail them far up
-the slope.</p>
-
-<div id="if_i_039" class="figleft lm12" style="width: 162px;"><img src="images/i_039.jpg" width="162" height="270" alt="" /></div>
-
-<p>The crested quail that troop in the
-Ceriso are the happiest frequenters of the
-water trails. There is no furtiveness about<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_40">40</a></span>
-their morning drink. About the time the
-burrowers and all that feed upon them are
-addressing themselves to sleep, great flocks
-pour down the trails with that peculiar
-melting motion of moving quail, twittering,
-shoving, and shouldering. They splatter
-into the shallows, drink daintily, shake
-out small showers over their perfect coats,
-and melt away again into the scrub, preening
-and pranking, with soft contented
-noises.</p>
-
-<div id="if_i_041" class="figright rm12 tm8" style="width: 157px;"><img src="images/i_041.jpg" width="157" height="71" alt="" /></div>
-
-<p>After the quail, sparrows and ground-inhabiting
-birds bathe with the utmost
-frankness and a great deal of splutter; and
-here in the heart of noon hawks resort, sitting
-panting, with wings aslant, and a truce
-to all hostilities because of the heat. One
-summer there came a road-runner up from
-the lower valley, peeking and prying, and
-he had never any patience with the water<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_41">41</a></span>
-baths of the sparrows. His own ablutions
-were performed in the clean, hopeful dust
-of the chaparral; and whenever he happened
-on their morning splatterings, he
-would depress his glossy crest, slant his
-shining tail to the level of his body, until
-he looked most like some bright venomous
-snake, daunting them with shrill abuse and
-feint of battle. Then suddenly he would
-go tilting and balancing down the gully in
-fine disdain, only to return in a day or two
-to make sure the foolish bodies were still
-at it.</p>
-
-<div id="if_i_042" class="figcenter" style="width: 172px;"><img src="images/i_042.jpg" width="172" height="98" alt="" /><div class="caption">Fig. 1.</div></div>
-
-<p>Out on the Ceriso about five miles, and
-wholly out of sight of it, near where the
-immemorial foot trail goes up from Saline
-Flat toward Black Mountain, is a water
-sign worth turning out of the trail to see.
-It is a laid circle of stones large enough
-not to be disturbed by any ordinary hap,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_42">42</a></span>
-with an opening flanked by two parallel
-rows of similar stones, between which were
-an arrow placed, touching the opposite rim
-of the circle, thus (Fig. 1), it would point
-as the crow flies to the spring. It is the
-old, indubitable water mark of the Shoshones.
-One still finds it in the desert
-ranges in Salt Wells and Mesquite valleys,
-and along the slopes of Waban. On the
-other side of Ceriso, where the black rock
-begins, about a mile from the spring, is the
-work of an older, forgotten people. The
-rock hereabout is all volcanic, fracturing
-with a crystalline whitish surface, but weathered<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_43">43</a></span>
-outside to furnace blackness. Around
-the spring, where must have been a gathering
-place of the tribes, it is scored over
-with strange pictures and symbols that
-have no meaning to the Indians of the present
-day; but out where the rock begins,
-there is carved into the white heart of it a
-pointing arrow over the symbol for distance
-and a circle full of wavy lines (Fig.
-2) reading thus: “In this direction three
-[units of measurement unknown] is a
-spring of sweet water; look for it.”</p>
-
-<div id="if_i_043" class="figcenter" style="width: 213px;"><img src="images/i_043.jpg" width="213" height="122" alt="" /><div class="caption">Fig. 2.</div></div>
-
-<hr />
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_45">45</a></span></p>
-
-<div class="chapter">
-<h2 id="h_45">THE SCAVENGERS</h2>
-</div>
-
-<div id="if_i_045" class="figcenter" style="width: 225px;"><img src="images/i_045.jpg" width="225" height="120" alt="" /></div>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_47">47</a></span></p>
-
-<div id="if_i_047" class="figcenter epub" style="width: 550px;"><img src="images/i_047.jpg" width="550" height="207" alt="" /></div>
-
-<h3>THE SCAVENGERS</h3>
-
-<p class="drop-cap"><span class="smcap1">Fifty</span>-seven buzzards, one on each
-of fifty-seven fence posts at the rancho
-El Tejon, on a mirage-breeding September
-morning, sat solemnly while the white
-tilted travelers’ vans lumbered down the
-Canada de los Uvas. After three hours
-they had only clapped their wings, or exchanged
-posts. The season’s end in the
-vast dim valley of the San Joaquin is palpitatingly
-hot, and the air breathes like
-cotton wool. Through it all the buzzards
-sit on the fences and low hummocks, with
-wings spread fanwise for air. There is no
-end to them, and they smell to heaven.
-Their heads droop, and all their communication
-is a rare, horrid croak.</p>
-
-<div class="html rm10">
-<div id="if_i_047-1" class="figrights" style="width: 550px;"><img src="images/i_047-1.jpg" width="550" height="76" alt="" /></div>
-<div id="if_i_047-2" class="figrights" style="width: 227px;"><img src="images/i_047-2.jpg" width="227" height="131" alt="" /></div>
-</div>
-
-<p>The increase of wild creatures is in proportion<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_48">48</a></span>
-to the things they feed upon: the
-more carrion the more buzzards. The end
-of the third successive dry year bred them
-beyond belief. The first year quail mated
-sparingly; the second year the wild oats
-matured no seed; the third, cattle died in
-their tracks with their heads towards the
-stopped watercourses. And that year the
-scavengers were as black as the plague all
-across the mesa and up the treeless, tumbled
-hills. On clear days they betook themselves
-to the upper air, where they hung
-motionless for hours. That year there
-were vultures among them, distinguished
-by the white patches under the wings. All
-their offensiveness notwithstanding, they
-have a stately flight. They must also have
-what pass for good qualities among themselves,
-for they are social, not to say clannish.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_49">49</a></span></p>
-
-<div id="if_i_049" class="figcenter epub" style="width: 236px;"><img src="images/i_049.jpg" width="236" height="521" alt="" /></div>
-<div class="html rm10">
-<div id="if_i_049-1" class="figrights" style="width: 189px;"><img src="images/i_049-1.jpg" width="189" height="350" alt="" /></div>
-<div id="if_i_049-2" class="figrights" style="width: 236px;"><img src="images/i_049-2.jpg" width="236" height="171" alt="" /></div>
-</div>
-
-<p>It is a very squalid tragedy,&mdash;that of
-the dying brutes and the scavenger birds.
-Death by starvation is slow. The heavy-headed,
-rack-boned cattle totter in the fruitless
-trails; they stand for long, patient
-intervals; they lie down and do not rise.
-There is fear in their eyes when they are
-first stricken, but afterward only intolerable
-weariness. I suppose the dumb
-creatures know nearly as much of death
-as do their betters, who have only the more
-imagination. Their even-breathing submission
-after the first agony is their tribute
-to its inevitableness. It needs a nice
-discrimination to say which of the basket-ribbed
-cattle is likest to afford the next
-meal, but the scavengers make few mistakes.
-One stoops to the quarry and the
-flock follows.</p>
-
-<p>Cattle once down may be days in dying.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_50">50</a></span>
-They stretch out their necks along the
-ground, and roll up their slow eyes at longer
-intervals. The buzzards have all the time,
-and no beak is dropped or talon struck until
-the breath is wholly passed. It is doubtless
-the economy of nature to have the
-scavengers by to clean up the carrion, but
-a wolf at the throat would be a shorter
-agony than the long stalking and sometime
-perchings of these loathsome watchers.
-Suppose now it were a man in this long-drawn,
-hungrily spied upon distress!
-When Timmie O’Shea was lost on Armogossa
-Flats for three days without water,
-Long Tom Basset found him, not by any
-trail, but by making straight away for the
-points where he saw buzzards stooping.
-He could hear the beat of their wings,
-Tom said, and trod on their shadows, but
-O’Shea was past recalling what he thought<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_51">51</a></span>
-about things after the second day. My
-friend Ewan told me, among other things,
-when he came back from San Juan Hill,
-that not all the carnage of battle turned
-his bowels as the sight of slant black wings
-rising flockwise before the burial squad.</p>
-
-<div id="if_i_050" class="figcenter" style="width: 353px;"><img src="images/i_050.jpg" width="353" height="522" alt="" /><div class="caption">LOST FOR THREE DAYS IN THE DESERT</div></div>
-
-<p>There are three kinds of noises buzzards
-make,&mdash;it is impossible to call them notes,&mdash;raucous
-and elemental. There is a short
-croak of alarm, and the same syllable in a
-modified tone to serve all the purposes of
-ordinary conversation. The old birds make
-a kind of throaty chuckling to their young,
-but if they have any love song I have not
-heard it. The young yawp in the nest a
-little, with more breath than noise. It is
-seldom one finds a buzzard’s nest, seldom
-that grown-ups find a nest of any sort; it
-is only children to whom these things happen
-by right. But by making a business<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_52">52</a></span>
-of it one may come upon them in wide,
-quiet cañons, or on the lookouts of lonely,
-table-topped mountains, three or four together,
-in the tops of stubby trees or on
-rotten cliffs well open to the sky.</p>
-
-<p>It is probable that the buzzard is gregarious,
-but it seems unlikely from the small
-number of young noted at any time that
-every female incubates each year. The
-young birds are easily distinguished by
-their size when feeding, and high up in air
-by the worn primaries of the older birds.
-It is when the young go out of the nest
-on their first foraging that the parents,
-full of a crass and simple pride, make their
-indescribable chucklings of gobbling, gluttonous
-delight. The little ones would be
-amusing as they tug and tussle, if one
-could forget what it is they feed upon.</p>
-
-<p>One never comes any nearer to the vulture’s<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_53">53</a></span>
-nest or nestlings than hearsay. They
-keep to the southerly Sierras, and are bold
-enough, it seems, to do killing on their own
-account when no carrion is at hand. They
-dog the shepherd from camp to camp, the
-hunter home from the hill, and will even
-carry away offal from under his hand.</p>
-
-<p>The vulture merits respect for his bigness
-and for his bandit airs, but he is a
-sombre bird, with none of the buzzard’s
-frank satisfaction in his offensiveness.</p>
-
-<div id="if_i_053" class="figright rm12" style="width: 178px;"><img src="images/i_053.jpg" width="178" height="425" alt="" /></div>
-
-<p>The least objectionable of the inland
-scavengers is the raven, frequenter of the
-desert ranges, the same called locally “carrion
-crow.” He is handsomer and has such
-an air. He is nice in his habits and is
-said to have likable traits. A tame one in
-a Shoshone camp was the butt of much
-sport and enjoyed it. He could all but
-talk and was another with the children,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_54">54</a></span>
-but an arrant thief. The raven will eat
-most things that come his way,&mdash;eggs and
-young of ground-nesting birds, seeds even,
-lizards and grasshoppers, which he catches
-cleverly; and whatever he is about, let a
-coyote trot never so softly by, the raven
-flaps up and after; for whatever the coyote
-can pull down or nose out is meat also
-for the carrion crow.</p>
-
-<p>And never a coyote comes out of his
-lair for killing, in the country of the carrion
-crows, but looks up first to see where
-they may be gathering. It is a sufficient
-occupation for a windy morning, on the
-lineless, level mesa, to watch the pair of
-them eying each other furtively, with a
-tolerable assumption of unconcern, but no
-doubt with a certain amount of good understanding
-about it. Once at Red Rock,
-in a year of green pasture, which is a bad<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_55">55</a></span>
-time for the scavengers, we saw two buzzards,
-five ravens, and a coyote feeding
-on the same carrion, and only the coyote
-seemed ashamed of the company.</p>
-
-<p>Probably we never fully credit the interdependence
-of wild creatures, and their
-cognizance of the affairs of their own kind.
-When the five coyotes that range the Tejon
-from Pasteria to Tunawai planned a
-relay race to bring down an antelope
-strayed from the band, beside myself to
-watch, an eagle swung down from Mt.
-Pinos, buzzards materialized out of invisible
-ether, and hawks came trooping like
-small boys to a street fight. Rabbits sat
-up in the chaparral and cocked their ears,
-feeling themselves quite safe for the once
-as the hunt swung near them. Nothing
-happens in the deep wood that the blue
-jays are not all agog to tell. The hawk<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_56">56</a></span>
-follows the badger, the coyote the carrion
-crow, and from their aerial stations the
-buzzards watch each other. What would
-be worth knowing is how much of their
-neighbor’s affairs the new generations
-learn for themselves, and how much they
-are taught of their elders.</p>
-
-<div id="if_i_059" class="figright rm10" style="width: 128px;"><img src="images/i_059.jpg" width="128" height="600" alt="" /></div>
-
-<p>So wide is the range of the scavengers
-that it is never safe to say, eyewitness to
-the contrary, that there are few or many in
-such a place. Where the carrion is, there
-will the buzzards be gathered together, and
-in three days’ journey you will not sight
-another one. The way up from Mojave to
-Red Butte is all desertness, affording no
-pasture and scarcely a rill of water. In a
-year of little rain in the south, flocks and
-herds were driven to the number of thousands
-along this road to the perennial pastures
-of the high ranges. It is a long, slow<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_57">57</a></span>
-trail, ankle deep in bitter dust that gets
-up in the slow wind and moves along the
-backs of the crawling cattle. In the worst
-of times one in three will pine and fall out
-by the way. In the defiles of Red Rock,
-the sheep piled up a stinking lane; it was
-the sun smiting by day. To these shambles
-came buzzards, vultures, and coyotes
-from all the country round, so that on the
-Tejon, the Ceriso, and the Little Antelope
-there were not scavengers enough to keep
-the country clean. All that summer the
-dead mummified in the open or dropped
-slowly back to earth in the quagmires of
-the bitter springs. Meanwhile from Red
-Rock to Coyote Holes, and from Coyote
-Holes to Haiwai the scavengers gorged
-and gorged.</p>
-
-<p>The coyote is not a scavenger by choice,
-preferring his own kill, but being on the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_58">58</a></span>
-whole a lazy dog, is apt to fall into carrion
-eating because it is easier. The red fox
-and bobcat, a little pressed by hunger, will
-eat of any other animal’s kill, but will not
-ordinarily touch what dies of itself, and are
-exceedingly shy of food that has been manhandled.</p>
-
-<p>Very clean and handsome, quite belying
-his relationship in appearance, is
-Clark’s crow, that scavenger and plunderer
-of mountain camps. It is permissible to
-call him by his common name, “Camp
-Robber:” he has earned it. Not content
-with refuse, he pecks open meal sacks,
-filches whole potatoes, is a gormand for
-bacon, drills holes in packing cases, and is
-daunted by nothing short of tin. All the
-while he does not neglect to vituperate
-the chipmunks and sparrows that whisk
-off crumbs of comfort from under the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_59">59</a></span>
-camper’s feet. The Camp Robber’s gray
-coat, black and white barred wings, and
-slender bill, with certain tricks of perching,
-accuse him of attempts to pass himself off
-among woodpeckers; but his behavior is
-all crow. He frequents the higher pine
-belts, and has a noisy strident call like a
-jay’s, and how clean he and the frisk-tailed
-chipmunks keep the camp! No crumb or
-paring or bit of eggshell goes amiss.</p>
-
-<div id="if_i_060" class="figcenter epub" style="width: 253px;"><img src="images/i_060.jpg" width="253" height="539" alt="" /></div>
-<div class="html lm5">
-<div id="if_i_060-1" class="figlefts" style="width: 253px;"><img src="images/i_060-1.jpg" width="253" height="17" alt="" /></div>
-<div id="if_i_060-2" class="figlefts" style="width: 81px;"><img src="images/i_060-2.jpg" width="81" height="357" alt="" /></div>
-<div id="if_i_060-3" class="figlefts" style="width: 253px;"><img src="images/i_060-3.jpg" width="253" height="165" alt="" /></div>
-</div>
-
-<p class="p2">High as the camp may be, so it is not
-above timber-line, it is not too high for
-the coyote, the bobcat, or the wolf. It is
-the complaint of the ordinary camper that
-the woods are too still, depleted of wild
-life. But what dead body of wild thing, or
-neglected game untouched by its kind, do
-you find? And put out offal away from
-camp over night, and look next day at the
-foot tracks where it lay.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_60">60</a></span>
-Man is a great blunderer going about
-in the woods, and there is no other except
-the bear makes so much noise. Being so
-well warned beforehand, it is a very stupid
-animal, or a very bold one, that cannot
-keep safely hid. The cunningest hunter is
-hunted in turn, and what he leaves of his
-kill is meat for some other. That is the
-economy of nature, but with it all there is
-not sufficient account taken of the works
-of man. There is no scavenger that eats
-tin cans, and no wild thing leaves a like
-disfigurement on the forest floor.</p>
-
-<hr />
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_61">61</a></span></p>
-
-<div class="chapter">
-<h2 id="h_61">THE POCKET HUNTER</h2>
-</div>
-
-<div id="if_i_061" class="figcenter" style="width: 214px;"><img src="images/i_061.jpg" width="214" height="340" alt="" /></div>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_63">63</a></span></p>
-
-<h3>THE POCKET HUNTER</h3>
-
-<p class="drop-cap i"><span class="smcap1">I remember</span> very well when I first
-met him. Walking in the evening glow
-to spy the marriages of the white gilias, I
-sniffed the unmistakable odor of burning
-sage. It is a smell that carries far and indicates
-usually the nearness of a campoodie,
-but on the level mesa nothing taller showed
-than Diana’s sage. Over the tops of it, beginning
-to dusk under a young white moon,
-trailed a wavering ghost of smoke, and at
-the end of it I came upon the Pocket
-Hunter making a dry camp in the friendly
-scrub. He sat tailorwise in the sand, with
-his coffee-pot on the coals, his supper ready
-to hand in the frying-pan, and himself in a
-mood for talk. His pack burros in hobbles
-strayed off to hunt for a wetter mouthful<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_64">64</a></span>
-than the sage afforded, and gave him no
-concern.</p>
-
-<div id="if_i_065" class="figright rm10" style="width: 84px;"><img src="images/i_065.jpg" width="84" height="215" alt="" /></div>
-
-<p>We came upon him often after that,
-threading the windy passes, or by water-holes
-in the desert hills, and got to know
-much of his way of life. He was a small,
-bowed man, with a face and manner and
-speech of no character at all, as if he had
-that faculty of small hunted things of taking
-on the protective color of his surroundings.
-His clothes were of no fashion that
-I could remember, except that they bore
-liberal markings of pot black, and he had
-a curious fashion of going about with his
-mouth open, which gave him a vacant look
-until you came near enough to perceive
-him busy about an endless hummed, wordless
-tune. He traveled far and took a long
-time to it, but the simplicity of his kitchen
-arrangements was elemental. A pot for<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_65">65</a></span>
-beans, a coffee-pot, a frying-pan, a tin to
-mix bread in&mdash;he fed the burros in this
-when there was need&mdash;with these he had
-been half round our western world and
-back. He explained to me very early in our
-acquaintance what was good to take to
-the hills for food: nothing sticky, for that
-“dirtied the pots;” nothing with “juice”
-to it, for that would not pack to advantage;
-and nothing likely to ferment. He used no
-gun, but he would set snares by the water-holes
-for quail and doves, and in the trout
-country he carried a line. Burros he kept,
-one or two according to his pack, for this
-chief excellence, that they would eat potato
-parings and firewood. He had owned a
-horse in the foothill country, but when he
-came to the desert with no forage but mesquite,
-he found himself under the necessity
-of picking the beans from the briers,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_66">66</a></span>
-a labor that drove him to the use of pack
-animals to whom thorns were a relish.</p>
-
-<p>I suppose no man becomes a pocket
-hunter by first intention. He must be born
-with the faculty, and along comes the occasion,
-like the tap on the test tube that induces
-crystallization. My friend had been
-several things of no moment until he struck
-a thousand-dollar pocket in the Lee District
-and came into his vocation. A pocket, you
-must know, is a small body of rich ore occurring
-by itself, or in a vein of poorer stuff.
-Nearly every mineral ledge contains such,
-if only one has the luck to hit upon them
-without too much labor. The sensible
-thing for a man to do who has found a good
-pocket is to buy himself into business and
-keep away from the hills. The logical thing
-is to set out looking for another one. My
-friend the Pocket Hunter had been looking<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_67">67</a></span>
-twenty years. His working outfit was a
-shovel, a pick, a gold pan which he kept
-cleaner than his plate, and a pocket magnifier.
-When he came to a watercourse
-he would pan out the gravel of its bed for
-“colors,” and under the glass determine if
-they had come from far or near, and so spying
-he would work up the stream until he
-found where the drift of the gold-bearing
-outcrop fanned out into the creek; then
-up the side of the cañon till he came to
-the proper vein. I think he said the best
-indication of small pockets was an iron
-stain, but I could never get the run of
-miner’s talk enough to feel instructed for
-pocket hunting. He had another method
-in the waterless hills, where he would work
-in and out of blind gullies and all windings
-of the manifold strata that appeared not
-to have cooled since they had been heaved<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_68">68</a></span>
-up. His itinerary began with the east
-slope of the Sierras of the Snows, where
-that range swings across to meet the coast
-hills, and all up that slope to the Truckee
-River country, where the long cold forbade
-his progress north. Then he worked back
-down one or another of the nearly parallel
-ranges that lie out desertward, and so down
-to the sink of the Mojave River, burrowing
-to oblivion in the sand,&mdash;a big mysterious
-land, a lonely, inhospitable land, beautiful,
-terrible. But he came to no harm in it; the
-land tolerated him as it might a gopher or
-a badger. Of all its inhabitants it has the
-least concern for man.</p>
-
-<div id="if_i_069" class="figcenter epub" style="width: 528px;"><img src="images/i_069.jpg" width="528" height="295" alt="" /></div>
-<div class="html rm5">
-<div id="if_i_069-1" class="figrights" style="width: 175px;"><img src="images/i_069-1.jpg" width="175" height="123" alt="" /></div>
-<div id="if_i_069-2" class="figrights" style="width: 528px;"><img src="images/i_069-2.jpg" width="528" height="172" alt="" /></div>
-</div>
-
-<p>There are many strange sorts of humans
-bred in a mining country, each sort despising
-the queernesses of the other, but of them
-all I found the Pocket Hunter most acceptable
-for his clean, companionable talk.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_69">69</a></span>
-There was more color to his reminiscences
-than the faded sandy old miners “kyoteing,”
-that is, tunneling like a coyote (kyote
-in the vernacular) in the core of a lonesome
-hill. Such a one has found, perhaps, a body
-of tolerable ore in a poor lead,&mdash;remember
-that I can never be depended on to get the
-terms right,&mdash;and followed it into the heart
-of country rock to no profit, hoping, burrowing,
-and hoping. These men go harmlessly
-mad in time, believing themselves
-just behind the wall of fortune&mdash;most likable
-and simple men, for whom it is well
-to do any kindly thing that occurs to you
-except lend them money. I have known
-“grub stakers” too, those persuasive sinners
-to whom you make allowances of flour
-and pork and coffee in consideration of the
-ledges they are about to find; but none of
-these proved so much worth while as the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_70">70</a></span>
-Pocket Hunter. He wanted nothing of
-you and maintained a cheerful preference
-for his own way of life. It was an excellent
-way if you had the constitution for it. The
-Pocket Hunter had gotten to that point
-where he knew no bad weather, and all
-places were equally happy so long as they
-were out of doors. I do not know just
-how long it takes to become saturated with
-the elements so that one takes no account
-of them. Myself can never get past the
-glow and exhilaration of a storm, the wrestle
-of long dust-heavy winds, the play of live
-thunder on the rocks, nor past the keen
-fret of fatigue when the storm outlasts
-physical endurance. But prospectors and
-Indians get a kind of a weather shell that
-remains on the body until death.</p>
-
-<p>The Pocket Hunter had seen destruction
-by the violence of nature and the violence<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_71">71</a></span>
-of men, and felt himself in the grip of an
-All-wisdom that killed men or spared them
-as seemed for their good; but of death by
-sickness he knew nothing except that he
-believed he should never suffer it. He had
-been in Grape-vine Cañon the year of storms
-that changed the whole front of the mountain.
-All day he had come down under
-the wing of the storm, hoping to win past it,
-but finding it traveling with him until night.
-It kept on after that, he supposed, a steady
-downpour, but could not with certainty
-say, being securely deep in sleep. But the
-weather instinct does not sleep. In the
-night the heavens behind the hill dissolved
-in rain, and the roar of the storm was borne
-in and mixed with his dreaming, so that it
-moved him, still asleep, to get up and out
-of the path of it. What finally woke him
-was the crash of pine logs as they went down<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_72">72</a></span>
-before the unbridled flood, and the swirl of
-foam that lashed him where he clung in the
-tangle of scrub while the wall of water went
-by. It went on against the cabin of Bill
-Gerry and laid Bill stripped and broken on
-a sand bar at the mouth of the Grape-vine,
-seven miles away. There, when the sun
-was up and the wrath of the rain spent, the
-Pocket Hunter found and buried him; but
-he never laid his own escape at any door
-but the unintelligible favor of the Powers.</p>
-
-<p>The journeyings of the Pocket Hunter
-led him often into that mysterious country
-beyond Hot Creek where a hidden force
-works mischief, mole-like, under the crust
-of the earth. Whatever agency is at work
-in that neighborhood, and it is popularly
-supposed to be the devil, it changes means
-and direction without time or season. It
-creeps up whole hillsides with insidious<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_73">73</a></span>
-heat, unguessed until one notes the pine
-woods dying at the top, and having scorched
-out a good block of timber returns to steam
-and spout in caked, forgotten crevices of
-years before. It will break up sometimes
-blue-hot and bubbling, in the midst of a
-clear creek, or make a sucking, scalding
-quicksand at the ford. These outbreaks
-had the kind of morbid interest for the
-Pocket Hunter that a house of unsavory
-reputation has in a respectable neighborhood,
-but I always found the accounts he
-brought me more interesting than his
-explanations, which were compounded of
-fag ends of miner’s talk and superstition.
-He was a perfect gossip of the woods, this
-Pocket Hunter, and when I could get him
-away from “leads” and “strikes” and
-“contacts,” full of fascinating small talk
-about the ebb and flood of creeks, the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_74">74</a></span>
-piñon crop on Black Mountain, and the
-wolves of Mesquite Valley. I suppose he
-never knew how much he depended for
-the necessary sense of home and companionship
-on the beasts and trees, meeting
-and finding them in their wonted places,&mdash;the
-bear that used to come down Pine
-Creek in the spring, pawing out trout
-from the shelters of sod banks, the juniper
-at Lone Tree Spring, and the quail at
-Paddy Jack’s.</p>
-
-<p>There is a place on Waban, south of
-White Mountain, where flat, wind-tilted
-cedars make low tents and coves of shade
-and shelter, where the wild sheep winter
-in the snow. Woodcutters and prospectors
-had brought me word of that, but the
-Pocket Hunter was accessory to the fact.
-About the opening of winter, when one
-looks for sudden big storms, he had attempted<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_75">75</a></span>
-a crossing by the nearest path,
-beginning the ascent at noon. It grew
-cold, the snow came on thick and blinding,
-and wiped out the trail in a white
-smudge; the storm drift blew in and cut
-off landmarks, the early dark obscured
-the rising drifts. According to the Pocket
-Hunter’s account, he knew where he was,
-but couldn’t exactly say. Three days before
-he had been in the west arm of Death
-Valley on a short water allowance, ankle deep
-in shifty sand; now he was on the
-rise of Waban, knee-deep in sodden snow,
-and in both cases he did the only allowable
-thing&mdash;he walked on. That is the
-only thing to do in a snowstorm in any
-case. It might have been the creature
-instinct, which in his way of life had room
-to grow, that led him to the cedar shelter;
-at any rate he found it about four hours<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_76">76</a></span>
-after dark, and heard the heavy breathing
-of the flock. He said that if he thought at
-all at this juncture he must have thought
-that he had stumbled on a storm-belated
-shepherd with his silly sheep; but in fact
-he took no note of anything but the warmth
-of packed fleeces, and snuggled in between
-them dead with sleep. If the flock
-stirred in the night he stirred drowsily to
-keep close and let the storm go by. That
-was all until morning woke him shining
-on a white world. Then the very soul of
-him shook to see the wild sheep of God
-stand up about him, nodding their great
-horns beneath the cedar roof, looking out
-on the wonder of the snow. They had
-moved a little away from him with the
-coming of the light, but paid him no more
-heed. The light broadened and the white
-pavilions of the snow swam in the heavenly<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_77">77</a></span>
-blueness of the sea from which
-they rose. The cloud drift scattered and
-broke billowing in the cañons. The leader
-stamped lightly on the litter to put the
-flock in motion, suddenly they took the
-drifts in those long light leaps that are
-nearest to flight, down and away on the
-slopes of Waban. Think of that to happen
-to a Pocket Hunter! But though he
-had fallen on many a wished-for hap, he
-was curiously inapt at getting the truth
-about beasts in general. He believed in
-the venom of toads, and charms for snake
-bites, and&mdash;for this I could never forgive
-him&mdash;had all the miner’s prejudices against
-my friend the coyote. Thief, sneak, and
-son of a thief were the friendliest words
-he had for this little gray dog of the wilderness.</p>
-
-<p>Of course with so much seeking he came<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_78">78</a></span>
-occasionally upon pockets of more or less
-value, otherwise he could not have kept up
-his way of life; but he had as much luck
-in missing great ledges as in finding small
-ones. He had been all over the Tonopah
-country, and brought away float without
-happening upon anything that gave promise
-of what that district was to become in
-a few years. He claimed to have chipped
-bits off the very outcrop of the California
-Rand, without finding it worth while to
-bring away, but none of these things put
-him out of countenance.</p>
-
-<div id="if_i_079" class="figright rm12" style="width: 177px;"><img src="images/i_079.jpg" width="177" height="398" alt="" /></div>
-
-<p>It was once in roving weather, when
-we found him shifting pack on a steep
-trail, that I observed certain of his belongings
-done up in green canvas bags,
-the veritable “green bag” of English novels.
-It seemed so incongruous a reminder
-in this untenanted West that I dropped<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_79">79</a></span>
-down beside the trail overlooking the vast
-dim valley, to hear about the green canvas.
-He had gotten it, he said, in London years
-before, and that was the first I had known
-of his having been abroad. It was after
-one of his “big strikes” that he had made
-the Grand Tour, and had brought nothing
-away from it but the green canvas bags,
-which he conceived would fit his needs,
-and an ambition. This last was nothing
-less than to strike it rich and set himself
-up among the eminently bourgeois of London.
-It seemed that the situation of the
-wealthy English middle class, with just
-enough gentility above to aspire to, and
-sufficient smaller fry to bully and patronize,
-appealed to his imagination, though of
-course he did not put it so crudely as that.</p>
-
-<div class="html lm10">
-<div id="if_i_080-1" class="figlefts tm-9" style="width: 116px;"><img src="images/i_080-1.jpg" width="116" height="371" alt="" /></div>
-<div id="if_i_080-2" class="figlefts" style="width: 408px;"><img src="images/i_080-2.jpg" width="408" height="229" alt="" /></div>
-</div>
-
-<p>It was no news to me then, two or three
-years after, to learn that he had taken ten<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_80">80</a></span>
-thousand dollars from an abandoned claim,
-just the sort of luck to have pleased him,
-and gone to London to spend it. The
-land seemed not to miss him any more
-than it had minded him, but I missed him
-and could not forget the trick of expecting
-him in least likely situations. Therefore
-it was with a pricking sense of the familiar
-that I followed a twilight trail of smoke, a
-year or two later, to the swale of a dripping
-spring, and came upon a man by the
-fire with a coffee-pot and frying-pan. I
-was not surprised to find it was the Pocket
-Hunter. No man can be stronger than
-his destiny.</p>
-
-<div id="if_i_080" class="figcenter epub" style="width: 408px;"><img src="images/i_080.jpg" width="408" height="600" alt="" /></div>
-
-<hr />
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_81">81</a></span></p>
-
-<div class="chapter">
-<h2 id="h_81">SHOSHONE LAND</h2>
-</div>
-
-<div id="if_i_081" class="figcenter" style="width: 197px;"><img src="images/i_081.jpg" width="197" height="273" alt="" /></div>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_83">83</a></span></p>
-
-<h3>SHOSHONE LAND</h3>
-
-<p class="drop-cap"><span class="smcap1">It</span> is true I have been in Shoshone Land,
-but before that, long before, I had seen it
-through the eyes of <span class="locked">Winnenap´</span> in a rosy
-mist of reminiscence, and must always see
-it with a sense of intimacy in the light that
-never was. Sitting on the golden slope at
-the campoodie, looking across the Bitter
-Lake to the purple tops of Mutarango, the
-medicine-man drew up its happy places
-one by one, like little blessed islands in a
-sea of talk. For he was born a Shoshone,
-was Winnenap´; and though his name, his
-wife, his children, and his tribal relations
-were of the Paiutes, his thoughts turned
-homesickly toward Shoshone Land. Once
-a Shoshone always a Shoshone. Winnenap´
-lived gingerly among the Paiutes and<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_84">84</a></span>
-in his heart despised them. But he could
-speak a tolerable English when he would,
-and he always would if it were of Shoshone
-Land.</p>
-
-<div id="if_i_083" class="figright rm12" style="width: 160px;"><img src="images/i_083.jpg" width="160" height="172" alt="" /></div>
-
-<p>He had come into the keeping of the
-Paiutes as a hostage for the long peace
-which the authority of the whites made
-interminable, and, though there was now
-no order in the tribe, nor any power that
-could have lawfully restrained him, kept
-on in the old usage, to save his honor and
-the word of his vanished kin. He had
-seen his children’s children in the borders
-of the Paiutes, but loved best his own
-miles of sand and rainbow-painted hills.
-Professedly he had not seen them since
-the beginning of his hostage; but every
-year about the end of the rains and before
-the strength of the sun had come upon us
-from the south, the medicine-man went<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_85">85</a></span>
-apart on the mountains to gather herbs,
-and when he came again I knew by the
-new fortitude of his countenance and the
-new color of his reminiscences that he had
-been alone and unspied upon in Shoshone
-Land.</p>
-
-<p>To reach that country from the campoodie,
-one goes south and south, within
-hearing of the lip-lip-lapping of the great
-tideless lake, and south by east over a
-high rolling district, miles and miles of
-sage and nothing else. So one comes to
-the country of the painted hills,&mdash;old red
-cones of craters, wasteful beds of mineral
-earths, hot, acrid springs, and steam jets
-issuing from a leprous soil. After the
-hills the black rock, after the craters the
-spewed lava, ash strewn, of incredible
-thickness, and full of sharp, winding rifts.
-There are picture writings carved deep in<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_86">86</a></span>
-the face of the cliffs to mark the way for
-those who do not know it. On the very
-edge of the black rock the earth falls away
-in a wide sweeping hollow, which is Shoshone
-Land.</p>
-
-<p>South the land rises in very blue hills,
-blue because thickly wooded with ceanothus
-and manzanita, the haunt of deer and
-the border of the Shoshones. Eastward
-the land goes very far by broken ranges,
-narrow valleys of pure desertness, and
-huge mesas uplifted to the sky-line, east
-and east, and no man knows the end of it.</p>
-
-<p>It is the country of the bighorn, the
-wapiti, and the wolf, nesting place of buzzards,
-land of cloud-nourished trees and
-wild things that live without drink. Above
-all, it is the land of the creosote and the
-mesquite. The mesquite is God’s best
-thought in all this desertness. It grows<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_87">87</a></span>
-in the open, is thorny, stocky, close grown,
-and iron-rooted. Long winds move in the
-draughty valleys, blown sand fills and fills
-about the lower branches, piling pyramidal
-dunes, from the top of which the mesquite
-twigs flourish greenly. Fifteen or twenty
-feet under the drift, where it seems no rain
-could penetrate, the main trunk grows,
-attaining often a yard’s thickness, resistant
-as oak. In Shoshone Land one digs
-for large timber; that is in the southerly,
-sandy exposures. Higher on the table-topped
-ranges low trees of juniper and
-piñon stand each apart, rounded and
-spreading heaps of greenness. Between
-them, but each to itself in smooth clear
-spaces, tufts of tall feathered grass.</p>
-
-<p>This is the sense of the desert hills, that
-there is room enough and time enough.
-Trees grow to consummate domes; every<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_88">88</a></span>
-plant has its perfect work. Noxious weeds
-such as come up thickly in crowded fields
-do not flourish in the free spaces. Live
-long enough with an Indian, and he or
-the wild things will show you a use for
-everything that grows in these borders.</p>
-
-<p>The manner of the country makes the
-usage of life there, and the land will not
-be lived in except in its own fashion. The
-Shoshones live like their trees, with great
-spaces between, and in pairs and in family
-groups they set up wattled huts by the infrequent
-springs. More wickiups than two
-make a very great number. Their shelters
-are lightly built, for they travel much and
-far, following where deer feed and seeds
-ripen, but they are not more lonely than
-other creatures that inhabit there.</p>
-
-<p>The year’s round is somewhat in this
-fashion. After the piñon harvest the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_89">89</a></span>
-clans foregather on a warm southward
-slope for the annual adjustment of tribal
-difficulties and the medicine dance, for
-marriage and mourning and vengeance,
-and the exchange of serviceable information;
-if, for example, the deer have shifted
-their feeding ground, if the wild sheep
-have come back to Waban, or certain
-springs run full or dry. Here the Shoshones
-winter flockwise, weaving baskets
-and hunting big game driven down from
-the country of the deep snow. And this
-brief intercourse is all the use they have of
-their kind, for now there are no wars, and
-many of their ancient crafts have fallen
-into disuse. The solitariness of the life
-breeds in the men, as in the plants, a certain
-well-roundedness and sufficiency to its
-own ends. Any Shoshone family has in
-itself the man-seed, power to multiply and<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_90">90</a></span>
-replenish, potentialities for food and clothing
-and shelter, for healing and beautifying.</p>
-
-<p>When the rain is over and gone they
-are stirred by the instinct of those that
-journeyed eastward from Eden, and go up
-each with his mate and young brood, like
-birds to old nesting places. The beginning
-of spring in Shoshone Land&mdash;oh
-the soft wonder of it!&mdash;is a mistiness as
-of incense smoke, a veil of greenness over
-the whitish stubby shrubs, a web of color
-on the silver sanded soil. No counting
-covers the multitude of rayed blossoms
-that break suddenly underfoot in the brief
-season of the winter rains, with silky furred
-or prickly viscid foliage, or no foliage at all.
-They are morning and evening bloomers
-chiefly, and strong seeders. Years of scant
-rains they lie shut and safe in the winnowed<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_91">91</a></span>
-sands, so that some species appear
-to be extinct. Years of long storms they
-break so thickly into bloom that no horse
-treads without crushing them. These
-years the gullies of the hills are rank with
-fern and a great tangle of climbing vines.</p>
-
-<p>Just as the mesa twilights have their
-vocal note in the love call of the burrowing
-owl, so the desert spring is voiced by
-the mourning doves. Welcome and sweet
-they sound in the smoky mornings before
-breeding time, and where they frequent in
-any great numbers water is confidently
-looked for. Still by the springs one finds
-the cunning brush shelters from which the
-Shoshones shot arrows at them when the
-doves came to drink.</p>
-
-<p>Now as to these same Shoshones there
-are some who claim that they have no right
-to the name, which belongs to a more northerly<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_92">92</a></span>
-tribe; but that is the word they will be
-called by, and there is no greater offense
-than to call an Indian out of his name.
-According to their traditions and all proper
-evidence, they were a great people occupying
-far north and east of their present
-bounds, driven thence by the Paiutes. Between
-the two tribes is the residuum of old
-hostilities.</p>
-
-<p>Winnenap´, whose memory ran to the
-time when the boundary of the Paiute country
-was a dead-line to Shoshones, told me
-once how himself and another lad, in an
-unforgotten spring, discovered a nesting
-place of buzzards a bit of a way beyond the
-borders. And they two burned to rob those
-nests. Oh, for no purpose at all except as
-boys rob nests immemorially, for the fun
-of it, to have and handle and show to other
-lads as an exceeding treasure, and afterwards<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_93">93</a></span>
-discard. So, not quite meaning to,
-but breathless with daring, they crept up a
-gully, across a sage brush flat and through
-a waste of boulders, to the rugged pines
-where their sharp eyes had made out the
-buzzards settling.</p>
-
-<p>The medicine-man told me, always with
-a quaking relish at this point, that while
-they, grown bold by success, were still in
-the tree, they sighted a Paiute hunting
-party crossing between them and their
-own land. That was mid-morning, and all
-day on into the dark the boys crept and
-crawled and slid, from boulder to bush,
-and bush to boulder, in cactus scrub and
-on naked sand, always in a sweat of fear,
-until the dust caked in the nostrils and
-the breath sobbed in the body, around
-and away many a mile until they came to
-their own land again. And all the time<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_94">94</a></span>
-Winnenap´ carried those buzzard’s eggs in
-the slack of his single buckskin garment!
-Young Shoshones are like young quail,
-knowing without teaching about feeding
-and hiding, and learning what civilized children
-never learn, to be still and to keep on
-being still, at the first hint of danger or
-strangeness.</p>
-
-<p>As for food, that appears to be chiefly a
-matter of being willing. Desert Indians all
-eat chuck-wallas, big black and white lizards
-that have delicate white flesh savored
-like chicken. Both the Shoshones and the
-coyotes are fond of the flesh of <i xml:lang="la" lang="la">Gopherus
-agassizii</i>, the turtle that by feeding on
-buds, going without drink, and burrowing
-in the sand through the winter, contrives
-to live a known period of twenty-five years.
-It seems that most seeds are foodful in the
-arid regions, most berries edible, and many<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_95">95</a></span>
-shrubs good for firewood with the sap in
-them. The mesquite bean, whether the
-screw or straight pod, pounded to a meal,
-boiled to a kind of mush, and dried in
-cakes, sulphur-colored and needing an axe
-to cut it, is an excellent food for long journeys.
-Fermented in water with wild honey
-and the honeycomb, it makes a pleasant,
-mildly intoxicating drink.</p>
-
-<div id="if_i_095" class="figcenter rm5" style="width: 292px;"><img src="images/i_095.jpg" width="292" height="238" alt="" /></div>
-
-<p>Next to spring, the best time to visit
-Shoshone Land is when the deer-star hangs
-low and white like a torch over the morning
-hills. Go up past Winnedumah and
-down Saline and up again to the rim of
-Mesquite Valley. Take no tent, but if you
-will, have an Indian build you a wickiup,
-willows planted in a circle, drawn over to
-an arch, and bound cunningly with withes,
-all the leaves on, and chinks to count the
-stars through. But there was never any<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_96">96</a></span>
-but Winnenap´ who could tell and make
-it worth telling about Shoshone Land.</p>
-
-<p>And Winnenap´ will not any more. He
-died, as do most medicine-men of the
-Paiutes.</p>
-
-<p>Where the lot falls when the campoodie
-chooses a medicine-man there it rests. It
-is an honor a man seldom seeks but must
-wear, an honor with a condition. When
-three patients die under his ministrations,
-the medicine-man must yield his life and
-his office. Wounds do not count; broken
-bones and bullet holes the Indian can
-understand, but measles, pneumonia, and
-smallpox are witchcraft. Winnenap´ was
-medicine-man for fifteen years. Besides
-considerable skill in healing herbs, he used
-his prerogatives cunningly. It is permitted
-the medicine-man to decline the case
-when the patient has had treatment from<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_97">97</a></span>
-any other, say the white doctor, whom
-many of the younger generation consult.
-Or, if before having seen the patient, he
-can definitely refer his disorder to some
-supernatural cause wholly out of the medicine-man’s
-jurisdiction, say to the spite of
-an evil spirit going about in the form of
-a coyote, and states the case convincingly,
-he may avoid the penalty. But this must
-not be pushed too far. All else failing, he
-can hide. Winnenap´ did this the time of
-the measles epidemic. Returning from his
-yearly herb gathering, he heard of it at
-Black Rock, and turning aside, he was not
-to be found, nor did he return to his own
-place until the disease had spent itself,
-and half the children of the campoodie
-were in their shallow graves with beads
-sprinkled over them.</p>
-
-<p>It is possible the tale of Winnenap´’s<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_98">98</a></span>
-patients had not been strictly kept. There
-had not been a medicine-man killed in
-the valley for twelve years, and for that the
-perpetrators had been severely punished
-by the whites. The winter of the Big
-Snow an epidemic of pneumonia carried
-off the Indians with scarcely a warning;
-from the lake northward to the lava flats
-they died in the sweat-houses, and under
-the hands of the medicine-men. Even the
-drugs of the white physician had no power.</p>
-
-<div id="if_i_098" class="figcenter" style="width: 355px;"><img src="images/i_098.jpg" width="355" height="545" alt="" /><div class="caption">ARRIVAL OF THE EXECUTIONERS</div></div>
-
-<p>After two weeks of this plague the Paiutes
-drew to council to consider the remissness
-of their medicine-men. They
-were sore with grief and afraid for themselves;
-as a result of the council, one in
-every campoodie was sentenced to the ancient
-penalty. But schooling and native
-shrewdness had raised up in the younger
-men an unfaith in old usages, so judgment<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_99">99</a></span>
-halted between sentence and execution.
-At Three Pines the government teacher
-brought out influential whites to threaten
-and cajole the stubborn tribes. At Tunawai
-the conservatives sent into Nevada for
-that pacific old humbug, Johnson Sides,
-most notable of Paiute orators, to harangue
-his people. Citizens of the towns turned
-out with food and comforts, and so after a
-season the trouble passed.</p>
-
-<p>But here at Maverick there was no
-school, no oratory, and no alleviation.
-One third of the campoodie died, and the
-rest killed the medicine-men. Winnenap´
-expected it, and for days walked and sat a
-little apart from his family that he might
-meet it as became a Shoshone, no doubt
-suffering the agony of dread deferred.
-When finally three men came and sat at
-his fire without greeting he knew his time.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_100">100</a></span>
-He turned a little from them, dropped his
-chin upon his knees, and looked out over
-Shoshone Land, breathing evenly. The
-women went into the wickiup and covered
-their heads with their blankets.</p>
-
-<p>So much has the Indian lost of savageness
-by merely desisting from killing, that
-the executioners braved themselves to their
-work by drinking and a show of quarrelsomeness.
-In the end a sharp hatchet-stroke
-discharged the duty of the campoodie.
-Afterward his women buried him,
-and a warm wind coming out of the south,
-the force of the disease was broken, and
-even they acquiesced in the wisdom of
-the tribe. That summer they told me all
-except the names of the Three.</p>
-
-<p>Since it appears that we make our own
-heaven here, no doubt we shall have a
-hand in the heaven of hereafter; and I<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_101">101</a></span>
-know what Winnenap´’s will be like:
-worth going to if one has leave to live in
-it according to his liking. It will be tawny
-gold underfoot, walled up with jacinth and
-jasper, ribbed with chalcedony, and yet no
-hymn-book heaven, but the free air and
-free spaces of Shoshone Land.</p>
-
-<div id="if_i_101" class="figright rm5" style="width: 293px;"><img src="images/i_101.jpg" width="293" height="154" alt="" /></div>
-
-<hr />
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_103">103</a></span></p>
-
-<div class="chapter">
-<h2 id="h_103">JIMVILLE<br />
-
-<span class="subhead">A BRET HARTE TOWN</span></h2>
-</div>
-
-<div id="if_i_103" class="figcenter" style="width: 158px;"><img src="images/i_103.jpg" width="158" height="157" alt="" /></div>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_105">105</a></span></p>
-
-<h3 class="vspace">JIMVILLE<br />
-<span class="subhead">A BRET HARTE TOWN</span></h3>
-
-<p class="drop-cap"><span class="smcap1">When</span> Mr. Harte found himself with
-a fresh palette and his particular
-local color fading from the West, he did
-what he considered the only safe thing, and
-carried his young impression away to be
-worked out untroubled by any newer fact.
-He should have gone to Jimville. There he
-would have found cast up on the ore-ribbed
-hills the bleached timbers of more tales, and
-better ones.</p>
-
-<p>You could not think of Jimville as anything
-more than a survival, like the herb-eating,
-bony-cased old tortoise that pokes
-cheerfully about those borders some thousands
-of years beyond his proper epoch.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_106">106</a></span>
-Not that Jimville is old, but it has an atmosphere
-favorable to the type of a half
-century back, if not “forty-niners,” of that
-breed. It is said of Jimville that getting
-away from it is such a piece of work that it
-encourages permanence in the population;
-the fact is that most have been drawn there
-by some real likeness or liking. Not however
-that I would deny the difficulty of getting
-into or out of that cove of reminder, I
-who have made the journey so many times
-at great pains of a poor body. Any way
-you go at it, Jimville is about three days
-from anywhere in particular. North or
-south, after the railroad there is a stage
-journey of such interminable monotony as
-induces forgetfulness of all previous states
-of existence.</p>
-
-<p>The road to Jimville is the happy hunting
-ground of old stage-coaches bought<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_107">107</a></span>
-up from superseded routes the West over,
-rocking, lumbering, wide vehicles far gone
-in the odor of romance, coaches that Vasquez
-has held up, from whose high seats
-express messengers have shot or been shot
-as their luck held. This is to comfort you
-when the driver stops to rummage for wire
-to mend a failing bolt. There is enough
-of this sort of thing to quite prepare you
-to believe what the driver insists, namely,
-that all that country and Jimville are held
-together by wire.</p>
-
-<div id="if_i_107" class="figright rm15" style="width: 217px;"><img src="images/i_107.jpg" width="217" height="566" alt="" /></div>
-
-<p>First on the way to Jimville you cross a
-lonely open land, with a hint in the sky of
-things going on under the horizon, a palpitant,
-white, hot land where the wheels
-gird at the sand and the midday heaven
-shuts it in breathlessly like a tent. So in
-still weather; and when the wind blows
-there is occupation enough for the passengers,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_108">108</a></span>
-shifting seats to hold down the windward
-side of the wagging coach. This is
-a mere trifle. The Jimville stage is built
-for five passengers, but when you have
-seven, with four trunks, several parcels,
-three sacks of grain, the mail and express,
-you begin to understand that proverb
-about the road which has been reported
-to you. In time you learn to engage the
-high seat beside the driver, where you
-get good air and the best company. Beyond
-the desert rise the lava flats, scoriæ
-strewn; sharp-cutting walls of narrow cañons;
-league-wide, frozen puddles of black
-rock, intolerable and forbidding. Beyond
-the lava the mouths that spewed it out,
-ragged-lipped, ruined craters shouldering
-to the cloud-line, mostly of red earth, as
-red as a red heifer. These have some
-comforting of shrubs and grass. You get<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_109">109</a></span>
-the very spirit of the meaning of that
-country when you see Little Pete feeding
-his sheep in the red, choked maw of an old
-vent,&mdash;a kind of silly pastoral gentleness
-that glozes over an elemental violence.
-Beyond the craters rise worn, auriferous
-hills of a quiet sort, tumbled together; a
-valley full of mists; whitish green scrub;
-and bright, small, panting lizards; then
-Jimville.</p>
-
-<p>The town looks to have spilled out of
-Squaw Gulch, and that, in fact, is the sequence
-of its growth. It began around
-the Bully Boy and Theresa group of mines
-midway up Squaw Gulch, spreading down
-to the smelter at the mouth of the ravine.
-The freight wagons dumped their loads as
-near to the mill as the slope allowed, and
-Jimville grew in between. Above the
-Gulch begins a pine wood with sparsely<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_110">110</a></span>
-grown thickets of lilac, azalea, and odorous
-blossoming shrubs.</p>
-
-<p>Squaw Gulch is a very sharp, steep,
-ragged-walled ravine, and that part of Jimville
-which is built in it has only one
-street,&mdash;in summer paved with bone-white
-cobbles, in the wet months a frothy
-yellow flood. All between the ore dumps
-and solitary small cabins, pieced out with
-tin cans and packing cases, run footpaths
-drawing down to the Silver Dollar saloon.
-When Jimville was having the time of its
-life the Silver Dollar had those same coins
-let into the bar top for a border, but the
-proprietor pried them out when the glory
-departed. There are three hundred inhabitants
-in Jimville and four bars, though
-you are not to argue anything from that.</p>
-
-<p>Hear now how Jimville came by its
-name. Jim Calkins discovered the Bully<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_111">111</a></span>
-Boy, Jim Baker located the Theresa.
-When Jim Jenkins opened an eating-house
-in his tent he chalked up on the
-flap, “Best meals in Jimville, $1.00,” and
-the name stuck.</p>
-
-<div id="if_i_112" class="figleft lm10" style="width: 149px;"><img src="images/i_112.jpg" width="149" height="244" alt="" /></div>
-
-<p>There was more human interest in the
-origin of Squaw Gulch, though it tickled
-no humor. It was Dimmick’s squaw from
-Aurora way. If Dimmick had been anything
-except New Englander he would
-have called her a mahala, but that would
-not have bettered his behavior. Dimmick
-made a strike, went East, and the squaw
-who had been to him as his wife took to
-drink. That was the bald way of stating
-it in the Aurora country. The milk of
-human kindness, like some wine, must not
-be uncorked too much in speech lest it
-lose savor. This is what they did. The
-woman would have returned to her own<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_112">112</a></span>
-people, being far gone with child, but the
-drink worked her bane. By the river of
-this ravine her pains overtook her. There
-Jim Calkins, prospecting, found her dying
-with a three days’ babe nozzling at her
-breast. Jim heartened her for the end,
-buried her, and walked back to Poso,
-eighteen miles, the child poking in the
-folds of his denim shirt with small mewing
-noises, and won support for it from the
-rough-handed folks of that place. Then
-he came back to Squaw Gulch, so named
-from that day, and discovered the Bully
-Boy. Jim humbly regarded this piece of
-luck as interposed for his reward, and I
-for one believed him. If it had been in
-mediæval times you would have had a
-legend or a ballad. Bret Harte would
-have given you a tale. You see in me a
-mere recorder, for I know what is best for<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_113">113</a></span>
-you; you shall blow out this bubble from
-your own breath.</p>
-
-<p>You could never get into any proper relation
-to Jimville unless you could slough
-off and swallow your acquired prejudices
-as a lizard does his skin. Once wanting
-some womanly attentions, the stage-driver
-assured me I might have them at the Nine-Mile
-House from the lady barkeeper. The
-phrase tickled all my after-dinner-coffee
-sense of humor into an anticipation of
-Poker Flat. The stage-driver proved himself
-really right, though you are not to suppose
-from this that Jimville had no conventions
-and no caste. They work out these
-things in the personal equation largely.
-Almost every latitude of behavior is allowed
-a good fellow, one no liar, a free
-spender, and a backer of his friends’ quarrels.
-You are respected in as much<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_114">114</a></span>
-ground as you can shoot over, in as many
-pretensions as you can make good.</p>
-
-<div id="if_i_114" class="figleft lm10" style="width: 102px;"><img src="images/i_114.jpg" width="102" height="257" alt="" /></div>
-
-<p>That probably explains Mr. Fanshawe,
-the gentlemanly faro dealer of those parts,
-built for the rôle of Oakhurst, going white-shirted
-and frock-coated in a community
-of overalls; and persuading you that whatever
-shifts and tricks of the game were
-laid to his deal, he could not practice them
-on a person of your penetration. But he
-does. By his own account and the evidence
-of his manners he had been bred
-for a clergyman, and he certainly has gifts
-for the part. You find him always in possession
-of your point of view, and with
-an evident though not obtrusive desire to
-stand well with you. For an account of
-his killings, for his way with women and
-the way of women with him, I refer you
-to Brown of Calaveras and some others of<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_115">115</a></span>
-that stripe. His improprieties had a certain
-sanction of long standing not accorded
-to the gay ladies who wore Mr. Fanshawe’s
-favors. There were perhaps too many of
-them. On the whole, the point of the
-moral distinctions of Jimville appears to
-be a point of honor, with an absence
-of humorous appreciation that strangers
-mistake for dullness. At Jimville they
-see behavior as history and judge it by
-facts, untroubled by invention and the dramatic
-sense. You glimpse a crude equity
-in their dealings with Wilkins, who had
-shot a man at Lone Tree, fairly, in an
-open quarrel. Rumor of it reached Jimville
-before Wilkins rested there in flight.
-I saw Wilkins, all Jimville saw him; in
-fact, he came into the Silver Dollar when
-we were holding a church fair and bought
-a pink silk pincushion. I have often<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_116">116</a></span>
-wondered what became of it. Some of us
-shook hands with him, not because we did
-not know, but because we had not been
-officially notified, and there were those
-present who knew how it was themselves.
-When the sheriff arrived Wilkins had
-moved on, and Jimville organized a posse
-and brought him back, because the sheriff
-was a Jimville man and we had to stand
-by him.</p>
-
-<p>I said we had the church fair at the
-Silver Dollar. We had most things there,
-dances, town meetings, and the kinetoscope
-exhibition of the Passion Play. The
-Silver Dollar had been built when the
-borders of Jimville spread from Minton to
-the red hill the Defiance twisted through.
-“Side-Winder” Smith scrubbed the floor
-for us and moved the bar to the back room.
-The fair was designed for the support of<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_117">117</a></span>
-the circuit rider who preached to the few
-that would hear, and buried us all in turn.
-He was the symbol of Jimville’s respectability,
-although he was of a sect that held
-dancing among the cardinal sins. The
-management took no chances on offending
-the minister; at 11.30 they tendered him
-the receipts of the evening in the chairman’s
-hat, as a delicate intimation that the
-fair was closed. The company filed out of
-the front door and around to the back.
-Then the dance began formally with no
-feelings hurt. These were the sort of courtesies,
-common enough in Jimville, that
-brought tears of delicate inner laughter.</p>
-
-<p>There were others besides Mr. Fanshawe
-who had walked out of Mr. Harte’s demesne
-to Jimville and wore names that smacked
-of the soil,&mdash;“Alkali Bill,” “Pike” Wilson,
-“Three Finger,” and “Mono Jim;”<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_118">118</a></span>
-fierce, shy, profane, sun-dried derelicts of
-the windy hills, who each owned, or had
-owned, a mine and was wishful to own one
-again. They laid up on the worn benches
-of the Silver Dollar or the Same Old Luck
-like beached vessels, and their talk ran on
-endlessly of “strike” and “contact” and
-“mother lode,” and worked around to
-fights and hold-ups, villainy, haunts, and
-the hoodoo of the Minietta, told austerely
-without imagination.</p>
-
-<p>Do not suppose I am going to repeat it
-all; you who want these things written up
-from the point of view of people who do
-not do them every day would get no savor
-in their speech.</p>
-
-<p>Says Three Finger, relating the history
-of the Mariposa, “I took it off’n Tom
-Beatty, cheap, after his brother Bill was
-shot.”</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_119">119</a></span>
-Says Jim Jenkins, “What was the matter
-of him?”</p>
-
-<p>“Who? Bill? Abe Johnson shot him;
-he was fooling around Johnson’s wife, an’
-Tom sold me the mine dirt cheap.”</p>
-
-<p>“Why didn’t he work it himself?”</p>
-
-<p>“Him? Oh, he was laying for Abe and
-calculated to have to leave the country
-pretty quick.”</p>
-
-<p>“Huh!” says Jim Jenkins, and the tale
-flows smoothly on.</p>
-
-<p>Yearly the spring fret floats the loose
-population of Jimville out into the desolate
-waste hot lands, guiding by the peaks and
-a few rarely touched water-holes, always,
-always with the golden hope. They develop
-prospects and grow rich, develop others
-and grow poor but never embittered.
-Say the hills, It is all one, there is gold
-enough, time enough, and men enough to<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_120">120</a></span>
-come after you. And at Jimville they
-understand the language of the hills.</p>
-
-<p>Jimville does not know a great deal about
-the crust of the earth, it prefers a “hunch.”
-That is an intimation from the gods that
-if you go over a brown back of the hills, by
-a dripping spring, up Coso way, you will
-find what is worth while. I have never
-heard that the failure of any particular
-hunch disproved the principle. Somehow
-the rawness of the land favors the sense
-of personal relation to the supernatural.
-There is not much intervention of crops,
-cities, clothes, and manners between you
-and the organizing forces to cut off communication.
-All this begets in Jimville a
-state that passes explanation unless you will
-accept an explanation that passes belief.
-Along with killing and drunkenness, coveting
-of women, charity, simplicity, there is<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_121">121</a></span>
-a certain indifference, blankness, emptiness
-if you will, of all vaporings, no bubbling of
-the pot,&mdash;it wants the German to coin a
-word for that,&mdash;no bread-envy, no brother-fervor.
-Western writers have not sensed
-it yet; they smack the savor of lawlessness
-too much upon their tongues, but you have
-these to witness it is not mean-spiritedness.
-It is pure Greek in that it represents the
-courage to sheer off what is not worth while.
-Beyond that it endures without sniveling,
-renounces without self-pity, fears no death,
-rates itself not too great in the scheme of
-things; so do beasts, so did St. Jerome in
-the desert, so also in the elder day did gods.
-Life, its performance, cessation, is no new
-thing to gape and wonder at.</p>
-
-<p>Here you have the repose of the perfectly
-accepted instinct which includes passion
-and death in its perquisites. I suppose<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_122">122</a></span>
-that the end of all our hammering and
-yawping will be something like the point
-of view of Jimville. The only difference
-will be in the decorations.</p>
-
-<hr />
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_123">123</a></span></p>
-
-<div class="chapter">
-<h2 id="h_123">MY NEIGHBOR’S FIELD</h2>
-</div>
-
-<div id="if_i_123" class="figcenter" style="width: 241px;"><img src="images/i_123.jpg" width="241" height="293" alt="" /></div>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_125">125</a></span></p>
-
-<h3>MY NEIGHBOR’S FIELD</h3>
-
-<p class="drop-cap"><span class="smcap1">It</span> is one of those places God must have
-meant for a field from all time, lying
-very level at the foot of the slope that
-crowds up against Kearsarge, falling slightly
-toward the town. North and south it
-is fenced by low old glacial ridges, boulder
-strewn and untenable. Eastward it butts
-on orchard closes and the village gardens,
-brimming over into them by wild brier and
-creeping grass. The village street, with its
-double row of unlike houses, breaks off abruptly
-at the edge of the field in a footpath
-that goes up the streamside, beyond
-it, to the source of waters.</p>
-
-<p>The field is not greatly esteemed of the
-town, not being put to the plough nor affording
-firewood, but breeding all manner<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_126">126</a></span>
-of wild seeds that go down in the irrigating
-ditches to come up as weeds in the gardens
-and grass plots. But when I had no
-more than seen it in the charm of its spring
-smiling, I knew I should have no peace
-until I had bought ground and built me a
-house beside it, with a little wicket to go
-in and out at all hours, as afterward came
-about.</p>
-
-<p>Edswick, Roeder, Connor, and Ruffin
-owned the field before it fell to my neighbor.
-But before that the Paiutes, mesne
-lords of the soil, made a campoodie by the
-rill of Pine Creek; and after, contesting the
-soil with them, cattle-men, who found its
-foodful pastures greatly to their advantage;
-and bands of blethering flocks shepherded
-by wild, hairy men of little speech, who attested
-their rights to the feeding ground
-with their long staves upon each other’s<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_127">127</a></span>
-skulls. Edswick homesteaded the field
-about the time the wild tide of mining life
-was roaring and rioting up Kearsarge, and
-where the village now stands built a stone
-hut, with loopholes to make good his claim
-against cattle-men or Indians. But Edswick
-died and Roeder became master of the
-field. Roeder owned cattle on a thousand
-hills, and made it a recruiting ground for
-his bellowing herds before beginning the
-long drive to market across a shifty desert.
-He kept the field fifteen years, and afterward
-falling into difficulties, put it out as
-security against certain sums. Connor,
-who held the securities, was cleverer than
-Roeder and not so busy. The money fell
-due the winter of the Big Snow, when all
-the trails were forty feet under drifts, and
-Roeder was away in San Francisco selling
-his cattle. At the set time Connor took<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_128">128</a></span>
-the law by the forelock and was adjudged
-possession of the field. Eighteen days
-later Roeder arrived on snowshoes, both
-feet frozen, and the money in his pack.
-In the long suit at law ensuing, the field
-fell to Ruffin, that clever one-armed lawyer
-with the tongue to wile a bird out of the
-bush, Connor’s counsel, and was sold by
-him to my neighbor, whom from envying
-his possession I call Naboth.</p>
-
-<div id="if_i_128" class="figleft lm12" style="width: 166px;"><img src="images/i_128.jpg" width="166" height="456" alt="" /></div>
-
-<p>Curiously, all this human occupancy of
-greed and mischief left no mark on the
-field, but the Indians did, and the unthinking
-sheep. Round its corners children
-pick up chipped arrow points of obsidian,
-scattered through it are kitchen middens
-and pits of old sweat-houses. By the
-south corner, where the campoodie stood,
-is a single shrub of “hoopee” (<i xml:lang="la" lang="la">Lycium Andersonii</i>),
-maintaining itself hardly among<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_129">129</a></span>
-alien shrubs, and near by, three low rakish
-trees of hackberry, so far from home that
-no prying of mine has been able to find another
-in any cañon east or west. But the
-berries of both were food for the Paiutes,
-eagerly sought and traded for as far south
-as Shoshone Land. By the fork of the
-creek where the shepherds camp is a single
-clump of mesquite of the variety called
-“screw bean.” The seed must have shaken
-there from some sheep’s coat, for this is
-not the habitat of mesquite, and except for
-other single shrubs at sheep camps, none
-grows freely for a hundred and fifty miles
-south or east.</p>
-
-<p>Naboth has put a fence about the best
-of the field, but neither the Indians nor
-the shepherds can quite forego it. They
-make camp and build their wattled huts
-about the borders of it, and no doubt they<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_130">130</a></span>
-have some sense of home in its familiar
-aspect.</p>
-
-<p>As I have said, it is a low-lying field,
-between the mesa and the town, with no
-hillocks in it, but a gentle swale where
-the waste water of the creek goes down to
-certain farms, and the hackberry-trees, of
-which the tallest might be three times the
-height of a man, are the tallest things in
-it. A mile up from the water gate that
-turns the creek into supply pipes for the
-town, begins a row of long-leaved pines,
-threading the watercourse to the foot of
-Kearsarge. These are the pines that puzzle
-the local botanist, not easily determined,
-and unrelated to other conifers of the Sierra
-slope; the same pines of which the
-Indians relate a legend mixed of brotherliness
-and the retribution of God. Once
-the pines possessed the field, as the worn<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_131">131</a></span>
-stumps of them along the streamside show,
-and it would seem their secret purpose
-to regain their old footing. Now and
-then some seedling escapes the devastating
-sheep a rod or two down-stream. Since I
-came to live by the field one of these has
-tiptoed above the gully of the creek, beckoning
-the procession from the hills, as if
-in fact they would make back toward that
-skyward-pointing finger of granite on the
-opposite range, from which, according to
-the legend, when they were bad Indians
-and it a great chief, they ran away. This
-year the summer floods brought the round,
-brown, fruitful cones to my very door, and
-I look, if I live long enough, to see them
-come up greenly in my neighbor’s field.</p>
-
-<p>It is interesting to watch this retaking
-of old ground by the wild plants, banished
-by human use. Since Naboth drew his<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_132">132</a></span>
-fence about the field and restricted it to a
-few wild-eyed steers, halting between the
-hills and the shambles, many old habitués
-of the field have come back to their haunts.
-The willow and brown birch, long ago cut
-off by the Indians for wattles, have come
-back to the streamside, slender and virginal
-in their spring greenness, and leaving
-long stretches of the brown water open to
-the sky. In stony places where no grass
-grows, wild olives sprawl; close-twigged,
-blue-gray patches in winter, more translucent
-greenish gold in spring than any
-aureole. Along with willow and birch and
-brier, the clematis, that shyest plant of
-water borders, slips down season by season
-to within a hundred yards of the village
-street. Convinced after three years that
-it would come no nearer, we spent time
-fruitlessly pulling up roots to plant in the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_133">133</a></span>
-garden. All this while, when no coaxing
-or care prevailed upon any transplanted
-slip to grow, one was coming up silently
-outside the fence near the wicket, coiling
-so secretly in the rabbit-brush that its presence
-was never suspected until it flowered
-delicately along its twining length. The
-horehound comes through the fence and
-under it, shouldering the pickets off the
-railings; the brier rose mines under the
-horehound; and no care, though I own I
-am not a close weeder, keeps the small
-pale moons of the primrose from rising to
-the night moth under my apple-trees. The
-first summer in the new place, a clump of
-cypripediums came up by the irrigating
-ditch at the bottom of the lawn. But the
-clematis will not come inside, nor the wild
-almond.</p>
-
-<p>I have forgotten to find out, though I<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_134">134</a></span>
-meant to, whether the wild almond grew
-in that country where Moses kept the
-flocks of his father-in-law, but if so one can
-account for the burning bush. It comes
-upon one with a flame-burst as of revelation;
-little hard red buds on leafless twigs,
-swelling unnoticeably, then one, two, or
-three strong suns, and from tip to tip one
-soft fiery glow, whispering with bees as a
-singing flame. A twig of finger size will
-be furred to the thickness of one’s wrist
-by pink five-petaled bloom, so close that
-only the blunt-faced wild bees find their
-way in it. In this latitude late frosts cut
-off the hope of fruit too often for the wild
-almond to multiply greatly, but the spiny,
-tap-rooted shrubs are resistant to most
-plant evils.</p>
-
-<p>It is not easy always to be attentive to
-the maturing of wild fruit. Plants are so<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_135">135</a></span>
-unobtrusive in their material processes, and
-always at the significant moment some
-other bloom has reached its perfect hour.
-One can never fix the precise moment
-when the rosy tint the field has from the
-wild almond passes into the inspiring blue
-of lupines. One notices here and there a
-spike of bloom, and a day later the whole
-field royal and ruffling lightly to the wind.
-Part of the charm of the lupine is the continual
-stir of its plumes to airs not suspected
-otherwhere. Go and stand by any
-crown of bloom and the tall stalks do but
-rock a little as for drowsiness, but look off
-across the field, and on the stillest days
-there is always a trepidation in the purple
-patches.</p>
-
-<p>From midsummer until frost the prevailing
-note of the field is clear gold, passing
-into the rusty tone of bigelovia going<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_136">136</a></span>
-into a decline, a succession of color
-schemes more admirably managed than
-the transformation scene at the theatre.
-Under my window a colony of cleome
-made a soft web of bloom that drew me
-every morning for a long still time; and
-one day I discovered that I was looking
-into a rare fretwork of fawn and straw colored
-twigs from which both bloom and
-leaf had gone, and I could not say if it had
-been for a matter of weeks or days. The
-time to plant cucumbers and set out cabbages
-may be set down in the almanac,
-but never seed-time nor blossom in Naboth’s
-field.</p>
-
-<div id="if_i_136" class="figleft lm10" style="width: 123px;"><img src="images/i_136.jpg" width="123" height="472" alt="" /></div>
-
-<p>Certain winged and mailed denizens of
-the field seem to reach their heyday along
-with the plants they most affect. In June
-the leaning towers of the white milkweed
-are jeweled over with red and gold beetles,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_137">137</a></span>
-climbing dizzily. This is that milkweed
-from whose stems the Indians flayed fibre
-to make snares for small game, but what
-use the beetles put it to except for a displaying
-ground for their gay coats, I could
-never discover. The white butterfly crop
-comes on with the bigelovia bloom, and on
-warm mornings makes an airy twinkling
-all across the field. In September young
-linnets grow out of the rabbit-brush in the
-night. All the nests discoverable in the
-neighboring orchards will not account for
-the numbers of them. Somewhere, by the
-same secret process by which the field
-matures a million more seeds than it
-needs, it is maturing red-hooded linnets
-for their devouring. All the purlieus of
-bigelovia and artemisia are noisy with
-them for a month. Suddenly as they come
-as suddenly go the fly-by-nights, that pitch<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_138">138</a></span>
-and toss on dusky barred wings above the
-field of summer twilights. Never one of
-these nighthawks will you see after linnet
-time, though the hurtle of their wings
-makes a pleasant sound across the dusk in
-their season.</p>
-
-<p>For two summers a great red-tailed
-hawk has visited the field every afternoon
-between three and four o’clock, swooping
-and soaring with the airs of a gentleman
-adventurer. What he finds there is chiefly
-conjectured, so secretive are the little people
-of Naboth’s field. Only when leaves
-fall and the light is low and slant, one sees
-the long clean flanks of the jackrabbits,
-leaping like small deer, and of late afternoons
-little cotton-tails scamper in the
-runways. But the most one sees of the
-burrowers, gophers, and mice is the fresh
-earthwork of their newly opened doors, or<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_139">139</a></span>
-the pitiful small shreds the butcher-bird
-hangs on spiny shrubs.</p>
-
-<div class="html rm10">
-<div id="if_i_139-1" class="figrights tm1" style="width: 115px;"><img src="images/i_139-1.jpg" width="115" height="153" alt="" /></div>
-<div id="if_i_139-2" class="figrights" style="width: 366px;"><img src="images/i_139-2.jpg" width="366" height="97" alt="" /></div>
-</div>
-
-<p>It is a still field, this of my neighbor’s,
-though so busy, and admirably compounded
-for variety and pleasantness,&mdash;a
-little sand, a little loam, a grassy plot, a
-stony rise or two, a full brown stream, a
-little touch of humanness, a footpath trodden
-out by moccasins. Naboth expects to
-make town lots of it and his fortune in
-one and the same day; but when I take
-the trail to talk with old Seyavi at the
-campoodie, it occurs to me that though
-the field may serve a good turn in those
-days it will hardly be happier. No, certainly
-not happier.</p>
-
-<div id="if_i_139" class="figcenter epub" style="width: 366px;"><img src="images/i_139.jpg" width="366" height="250" alt="" /></div>
-
-<hr />
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_141">141</a></span></p>
-
-<div class="chapter">
-<h2 id="h_141">THE MESA TRAIL</h2>
-</div>
-
-<div id="if_i_141" class="figcenter" style="width: 234px;"><img src="images/i_141.jpg" width="234" height="224" alt="" /></div>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_143">143</a></span></p>
-
-<h3>THE MESA TRAIL</h3>
-
-<p class="drop-cap"><span class="smcap1">The</span> mesa trail begins in the campoodie
-at the corner of Naboth’s field,
-though one may drop into it from the wood
-road toward the cañon, or from any of the
-cattle paths that go up along the streamside;
-a clean, pale, smooth-trodden way
-between spiny shrubs, comfortably wide
-for a horse or an Indian. It begins, I say,
-at the campoodie, and goes on toward the
-twilight hills and the borders of Shoshone
-Land. It strikes diagonally across the foot
-of the hill-slope from the field until it
-reaches the larkspur level, and holds south
-along the front of Oppapago, having the
-high ranges to the right and the foothills
-and the great Bitter Lake below it on the
-left. The mesa holds very level here, cut<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_144">144</a></span>
-across at intervals by the deep washes of
-dwindling streams, and its treeless spaces
-uncramp the soul.</p>
-
-<div id="if_i_144" class="figcenter" style="width: 424px;"><img src="images/i_144.jpg" width="424" height="203" alt="" /></div>
-
-<div id="if_i_145" class="figright rm12" style="width: 176px;"><img src="images/i_145.jpg" width="176" height="522" alt="" /></div>
-
-<p>Mesa trails were meant to be traveled
-on horseback, at the jigging coyote trot
-that only western-bred horses learn successfully.
-A foot-pace carries one too
-slowly past the units in a decorative
-scheme that is on a scale with the country
-round for bigness. It takes days’ journeys
-to give a note of variety to the
-country of the social shrubs. These chiefly
-clothe the benches and eastern foot-slopes
-of the Sierras,&mdash;great spreads of artemisia,
-<i xml:lang="la" lang="la">coleogyne</i>, and spinosa, suffering no other
-woody stemmed thing in their purlieus;
-this by election apparently, with no elbowing;
-and the several shrubs have each
-their clientèle of flowering herbs. It would
-be worth knowing how much the devastating<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_145">145</a></span>
-sheep have had to do with driving the
-tender plants to the shelter of the prickle bushes.
-It might have begun earlier, in
-the time Seyavi of the campoodie tells of,
-when antelope ran on the mesa like sheep
-for numbers, but scarcely any foot-high
-herb rears itself except from the midst of
-some stout twigged shrub; larkspur in the
-<i xml:lang="la" lang="la">coleogyne</i>, and for every spinosa the purpling
-coils of phacelia. In the shrub shelter,
-in the season, flock the little stemless
-things whose blossom time is as short as a
-marriage song. The larkspurs make the
-best showing, being tall and sweet, swaying
-a little above the shrubbery, scattering
-pollen dust which Navajo brides gather to
-fill their marriage baskets. This were an
-easier task than to find two of them of a
-shade. Larkspurs in the botany are blue,
-but if you were to slip rein to the stub of<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_146">146</a></span>
-some black sage and set about proving it
-you would be still at it by the hour when
-the white gilias set their pale disks to the
-westering sun. This is the gilia the children
-call “evening snow,” and it is no use
-trying to improve on children’s names for
-wild flowers.</p>
-
-<div id="if_i_146" class="figcenter epub" style="width: 222px;"><img src="images/i_146.jpg" width="222" height="250" alt="" /></div>
-<div class="html lm10">
-<div id="if_i_146-1" class="figlefts" style="width: 222px;"><img src="images/i_146-1.jpg" width="222" height="83" alt="" /></div>
-<div id="if_i_146-2" class="figlefts" style="width: 144px;"><img src="images/i_146-2.jpg" width="144" height="167" alt="" /></div>
-</div>
-
-<p class="p4">From the height of a horse you look
-down to clean spaces in a shifty yellow
-soil, bare to the eye as a newly sanded
-floor. Then as soon as ever the hill shadows
-begin to swell out from the sidelong
-ranges, come little flakes of whiteness fluttering
-at the edge of the sand. By dusk
-there are tiny drifts in the lee of every
-strong shrub, rosy-tipped corollas as riotous
-in the sliding mesa wind as if they
-were real flakes shaken out of a cloud, not
-sprung from the ground on wiry three-inch
-stems. They keep awake all night,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_147">147</a></span>
-and all the air is heavy and musky sweet
-because of them.</p>
-
-<p>Farther south on the trail there will be
-poppies meeting ankle deep, and singly,
-peacock-painted bubbles of calochortus
-blown out at the tops of tall stems. But
-before the season is in tune for the gayer
-blossoms the best display of color is in the
-lupin wash. There is always a lupin wash
-somewhere on a mesa trail,&mdash;a broad, shallow,
-cobble-paved sink of vanished waters,
-where the hummocks of <i xml:lang="la" lang="la">Lupinus ornatus</i>
-run a delicate gamut from silvery green of
-spring to silvery white of winter foliage.
-They look in fullest leaf, except for color,
-most like the huddled huts of the campoodie,
-and the largest of them might be a
-man’s length in diameter. In their season,
-which is after the gilias are at their best,
-and before the larkspurs are ripe for pollen<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_148">148</a></span>
-gathering, every terminal whorl of the
-lupin sends up its blossom stalk, not holding
-any constant blue, but paling and
-purpling to guide the friendly bee to virginal
-honey sips, or away from the perfected
-and depleted flower. The length of
-the blossom stalk conforms to the rounded
-contour of the plant, and of these there
-will be a million moving indescribably in
-the airy current that flows down the swale
-of the wash.</p>
-
-<div id="if_i_149" class="figright rm10" style="width: 149px;"><img src="images/i_149.jpg" width="149" height="95" alt="" /></div>
-
-<p>There is always a little wind on the
-mesa, a sliding current of cooler air going
-down the face of the mountain of its own
-momentum, but not to disturb the silence
-of great space. Passing the wide mouths of
-cañons, one gets the effect of whatever is
-doing in them, openly or behind a screen of
-cloud,&mdash;thunder of falls, wind in the pine
-leaves, or rush and roar of rain. The rumor<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_149">149</a></span>
-of tumult grows and dies in passing, as
-from open doors gaping on a village street,
-but does not impinge on the effect of solitariness.
-In quiet weather mesa days have
-no parallel for stillness, but the night silence
-breaks into certain mellow or poignant
-notes. Late afternoons the burrowing owls
-may be seen blinking at the doors of their
-hummocks with perhaps four or five elfish
-nestlings arow, and by twilight begin a
-soft <em>whoo-oo-ing</em>, rounder, sweeter, more incessant
-in mating time. It is not possible
-to disassociate the call of the burrowing
-owl from the late slant light of the mesa.
-If the fine vibrations which are the golden-violet
-glow of spring twilights were to
-tremble into sound, it would be just that
-mellow double note breaking along the
-blossom-tops. While the glow holds one
-sees the thistle-down flights and pouncings<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_150">150</a></span>
-after prey, and on into the dark hears their
-soft <em>pus-ssh!</em> clearing out of the trail ahead.
-Maybe the pin-point shriek of field mouse
-or kangaroo rat that pricks the wakeful
-pauses of the night is extorted by these
-mellow-voiced plunderers, though it is just
-as like to be the work of the red fox on his
-twenty-mile constitutional.</p>
-
-<div id="if_i_151" class="figcenter epub" style="width: 507px;"><img src="images/i_151.jpg" width="507" height="229" alt="" /></div>
-<div class="html rm5">
-<div id="if_i_151-1" class="figrights" style="width: 189px;"><img src="images/i_151-1.jpg" width="189" height="101" alt="" /></div>
-<div id="if_i_151-2" class="figrights" style="width: 507px;"><img src="images/i_151-2.jpg" width="507" height="128" alt="" /></div>
-</div>
-
-<p>Both the red fox and the coyote are free
-of the night hours, and both killers for the
-pure love of slaughter. The fox is no great
-talker, but the coyote goes garrulously
-through the dark in twenty keys at once,
-gossip, warning, and abuse. They are light
-treaders, the split-feet, so that the solitary
-camper sees their eyes about him in the
-dark sometimes, and hears the soft intake
-of breath when no leaf has stirred and no
-twig snapped underfoot. The coyote is
-your real lord of the mesa, and so he makes<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_151">151</a></span>
-sure you are armed with no long black instrument
-to spit your teeth into his vitals at
-a thousand yards, is both bold and curious.
-Not so bold, however, as the badger and
-not so much of a curmudgeon. This shortlegged
-meat-eater loves half lights and
-lowering days, has no friends, no enemies,
-and disowns his offspring. Very likely if
-he knew how hawk and crow dog him for
-dinners, he would resent it. But the badger
-is not very well contrived for looking up
-or far to either side. Dull afternoons he
-may be met nosing a trail hot-foot to the
-home of ground rat or squirrel, and is with
-difficulty persuaded to give the right of
-way. The badger is a pot-hunter and no
-sportsman. Once at the hill, he dives for
-the central chamber, his sharp-clawed,
-splayey feet splashing up the sand like a
-bather in the surf. He is a swift trailer,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_152">152</a></span>
-but not so swift or secretive but some small
-sailing hawk or lazy crow, perhaps one or
-two of each, has spied upon him and come
-drifting down the wind to the killing.</p>
-
-<p>No burrower is so unwise as not to have
-several exits from his dwelling under protecting
-shrubs. When the badger goes
-down, as many of the furry people as are
-not caught napping come up by the back
-doors, and the hawks make short work of
-them. I suspect that the crows get nothing
-but the gratification of curiosity and
-the pickings of some secret store of seeds
-unearthed by the badger. Once the excavation
-begins they walk about expectantly,
-but the little gray hawks beat slow
-circles about the doors of exit, and are
-wiser in their generation, though they do
-not look it.</p>
-
-<p>There are always solitary hawks sailing<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_153">153</a></span>
-above the mesa, and where some blue tower
-of silence lifts out of the neighboring range,
-an eagle hanging dizzily, and always buzzards
-high up in the thin, translucent air
-making a merry-go-round. Between the
-coyote and the birds of carrion the mesa is
-kept clear of miserable dead.</p>
-
-<p>The wind, too, is a besom over the treeless
-spaces, whisking new sand over the litter
-of the scant-leaved shrubs, and the little
-doorways of the burrowers are as trim as
-city fronts. It takes man to leave unsightly
-scars on the face of the earth. Here on
-the mesa the abandoned campoodies of the
-Paiutes are spots of desolation long after
-the wattles of the huts have warped in the
-brush heaps. The campoodies are near
-the watercourses, but never in the swale
-of the stream. The Paiute seeks rising
-ground, depending on air and sun for purification<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_154">154</a></span>
-of his dwelling, and when it becomes
-wholly untenable, moves.</p>
-
-<p>A campoodie at noontime, when there
-is no smoke rising and no stir of life, resembles
-nothing so much as a collection
-of prodigious wasps’ nests. The huts are
-squat and brown and chimneyless, facing
-east, and the inhabitants have the faculty
-of quail for making themselves scarce in
-the underbrush at the approach of strangers.
-But they are really not often at
-home during midday, only the blind and
-incompetent left to keep the camp. These
-are working hours, and all across the mesa
-one sees the women whisking seeds of <i xml:lang="es" lang="es">chia</i>
-into their spoon-shaped baskets, these emptied
-again into the huge conical carriers,
-supported on the shoulders by a leather
-band about the forehead.</p>
-
-<p>Mornings and late afternoons one meets<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_155">155</a></span>
-the men singly and afoot on unguessable errands,
-or riding shaggy, browbeaten ponies,
-with game slung across the saddle-bows.
-This might be deer or even antelope, rabbits,
-or, very far south towards Shoshone
-Land, lizards.</p>
-
-<p>There are myriads of lizards on the mesa,
-little gray darts, or larger salmon-sided ones
-that may be found swallowing their skins in
-the safety of a prickle-bush in early spring.
-Now and then a palm’s breadth of the trail
-gathers itself together and scurries off with
-a little rustle under the brush, to resolve
-itself into sand again. This is pure witchcraft.
-If you succeed in catching it in
-transit, it loses its power and becomes a
-flat, horned, toad-like creature, horrid looking
-and harmless, of the color of the soil;
-and the curio dealer will give you two bits
-for it, to stuff.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_156">156</a></span></p>
-
-<div id="if_i_156" class="figleft lm10" style="width: 146px;"><img src="images/i_156.jpg" width="146" height="165" alt="" /></div>
-
-<p>Men have their season on the mesa as
-much as plants and four-footed things, and
-one is not like to meet them out of their
-time. For example, at the time of <i xml:lang="es" lang="es">rodeos</i>,
-which is perhaps April, one meets free riding
-vaqueros who need no trails and can
-find cattle where to the layman no cattle
-exist. As early as February bands of sheep
-work up from the south to the high Sierra
-pastures. It appears that shepherds
-have not changed more than sheep in the
-process of time. The shy hairy men who
-herd the tractile flocks might be, except
-for some added clothing, the very brethren
-of David. Of necessity they are hardy,
-simple livers, superstitious, fearful, given to
-seeing visions, and almost without speech.
-It needs the bustle of shearings and copious
-libations of sour, weak wine to restore
-the human faculty. Petite Pete, who<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_157">157</a></span>
-works a circuit up from the Ceriso to Red
-Butte and around by way of Salt Flats,
-passes year by year on the mesa trail,
-his thick hairy chest thrown open to all
-weathers, twirling his long staff, and dealing
-brotherly with his dogs, who are possibly
-as intelligent, certainly handsomer.</p>
-
-<p>A flock’s journey is seven miles, ten if
-pasture fails, in a windless blur of dust,
-feeding as it goes, and resting at noons.
-Such hours Pete weaves a little screen of
-twigs between his head and the sun&mdash;the
-rest of him is as impervious as one of his
-own sheep&mdash;and sleeps while his dogs
-have the flocks upon their consciences. At
-night, wherever he may be, there Pete
-camps, and fortunate the trail-weary traveler
-who falls in with him. When the
-fire kindles and savory meat seethes in the
-pot, when there is a drowsy blether from<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_158">158</a></span>
-the flock, and far down the mesa the twilight
-twinkle of shepherd fires, when there
-is a hint of blossom underfoot and a heavenly
-whiteness on the hills, one harks back
-without effort to Judæa and the Nativity.
-But one feels by day anything but good
-will to note the shorn shrubs and cropped
-blossom-tops. So many seasons’ effort, so
-many suns and rains to make a pound of
-wool! And then there is the loss of
-ground-inhabiting birds that must fail from
-the mesa when few herbs ripen seed.</p>
-
-<p>Out West, the west of the mesas and
-the unpatented hills, there is more sky
-than any place in the world. It does not
-sit flatly on the rim of earth, but begins
-somewhere out in the space in which the
-earth is poised, hollows more, and is full
-of clean winey winds. There are some
-odors, too, that get into the blood. There<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_159">159</a></span>
-is the spring smell of sage that is the
-warning that sap is beginning to work in
-a soil that looks to have none of the juices
-of life in it; it is the sort of smell that
-sets one thinking what a long furrow the
-plough would turn up here, the sort of
-smell that is the beginning of new leafage,
-is best at the plant’s best, and leaves a pungent
-trail where wild cattle crop. There is
-the smell of sage at sundown, burning sage
-from campoodies and sheep camps, that
-travels on the thin blue wraiths of smoke;
-the kind of smell that gets into the hair
-and garments, is not much liked except
-upon long acquaintance, and every Paiute
-and shepherd smells of it indubitably.
-There is the palpable smell of the bitter
-dust that comes up from the alkali flats at
-the end of the dry seasons, and the smell
-of rain from the wide-mouthed cañons.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_160">160</a></span>
-And last the smell of the salt grass country,
-which is the beginning of other things
-that are the end of the mesa trail.</p>
-
-<hr />
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_161">161</a></span></p>
-
-<div class="chapter">
-<h2 id="h_161">THE BASKET MAKER</h2>
-</div>
-
-<div id="if_i_161" class="figcenter" style="width: 232px;"><img src="images/i_161.jpg" width="232" height="219" alt="" /></div>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_163">163</a></span></p>
-
-<h3>THE BASKET MAKER</h3>
-
-<p class="drop-cap a"><span class="smcap1">A man</span>,” says Seyavi of the campoodie,
-“must have a woman, but a woman
-who has a child will do very well.”</p>
-
-<p>That was perhaps why, when she lost
-her mate in the dying struggle of his race,
-she never took another, but set her wit to
-fend for herself and her young son. No
-doubt she was often put to it in the beginning
-to find food for them both. The
-Paiutes had made their last stand at the
-border of the Bitter Lake; battle-driven
-they died in its waters, and the land filled
-with cattle-men and adventurers for gold:
-this while Seyavi and the boy lay up in
-the caverns of the Black Rock and ate tule
-roots and fresh-water clams that they dug
-out of the slough bottoms with their toes.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_164">164</a></span>
-In the interim, while the tribes swallowed
-their defeat, and before the rumor of war
-died out, they must have come very near
-to the bare core of things. That was the
-time Seyavi learned the sufficiency of
-mother wit, and how much more easily one
-can do without a man than might at first
-be supposed.</p>
-
-<p>To understand the fashion of any life,
-one must know the land it is lived in and
-the procession of the year. This valley is
-a narrow one, a mere trough between hills,
-a draught for storms, hardly a crow’s flight
-from the sharp Sierras of the Snows to the
-curled, red and ochre, uncomforted, bare
-ribs of Waban. Midway of the groove runs
-a burrowing, dull river, nearly a hundred
-miles from where it cuts the lava flats of
-the north to its widening in a thick, tideless
-pool of a lake. Hereabouts the ranges<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_165">165</a></span>
-have no foothills, but rise up steeply from
-the bench lands above the river. Down
-from the Sierras, for the east ranges have
-almost no rain, pour glancing white floods
-toward the lowest land, and all beside them
-lie the campoodies, brown wattled brush
-heaps, looking east.</p>
-
-<p>In the river are mussels, and reeds that
-have edible white roots, and in the soddy
-meadows tubers of joint grass; all these at
-their best in the spring. On the slope the
-summer growth affords seeds; up the steep
-the one-leafed pines, an oily nut. That
-was really all they could depend upon, and
-that only at the mercy of the little gods of
-frost and rain. For the rest it was cunning
-against cunning, caution against skill,
-against quacking hordes of wild-fowl in the
-tulares, against pronghorn and bighorn and
-deer. You can guess, however, that all<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_166">166</a></span>
-this warring of rifles and bowstrings, this
-influx of overlording whites, had made
-game wilder and hunters fearful of being
-hunted. You can surmise also, for it was
-a crude time and the land was raw, that the
-women became in turn the game of the
-conquerors.</p>
-
-<div id="if_i_166" class="figleft lm10" style="width: 110px;"><img src="images/i_166.jpg" width="110" height="229" alt="" /></div>
-
-<p>There used to be in the Little Antelope
-a she dog, stray or outcast, that had a litter
-in some forsaken lair, and ranged and
-foraged for them, slinking savage and
-afraid, remembering and mistrusting humankind,
-wistful, lean, and sufficient for
-her young. I have thought Seyavi might
-have had days like that, and have had perfect
-leave to think, since she will not talk
-of it. Paiutes have the art of reducing
-life to its lowest ebb and yet saving it alive
-on grasshoppers, lizards, and strange herbs;
-and that time must have left no shift untried.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_167">167</a></span>
-It lasted long enough for Seyavi to
-have evolved the philosophy of life which
-I have set down at the beginning. She
-had gone beyond learning to do for her son,
-and learned to believe it worth while.</p>
-
-<p>In our kind of society, when a woman
-ceases to alter the fashion of her hair, you
-guess that she has passed the crisis of her
-experience. If she goes on crimping and
-uncrimping with the changing mode, it is
-safe to suppose she has never come up
-against anything too big for her. The Indian
-woman gets nearly the same personal
-note in the pattern of her baskets. Not
-that she does not make all kinds, carriers,
-water-bottles, and cradles,&mdash;these are
-kitchen ware,&mdash;but her works of art are
-all of the same piece. Seyavi made flaring,
-flat-bottomed bowls, cooking pots really,
-when cooking was done by dropping hot<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_168">168</a></span>
-stones into water-tight food baskets, and
-for decoration a design in colored bark of
-the procession of plumed crests of the valley
-quail. In this pattern she had made cooking
-pots in the golden spring of her wedding
-year, when the quail went up two and
-two to their resting places about the foot
-of Oppapago. In this fashion she made
-them when, after pillage, it was possible to
-reinstate the housewifely crafts. Quail ran
-then in the Black Rock by hundreds,&mdash;so
-you will still find them in fortunate
-years,&mdash;and in the famine time the women
-cut their long hair to make snares when
-the flocks came morning and evening to
-the springs.</p>
-
-<div id="if_i_169" class="figright rm10" style="width: 119px;"><img src="images/i_169.jpg" width="119" height="96" alt="" /></div>
-
-<p>Seyavi made baskets for love and sold
-them for money, in a generation that preferred
-iron pots for utility. Every Indian
-woman is an artist,&mdash;sees, feels, creates,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_169">169</a></span>
-but does not philosophize about her processes.
-Seyavi’s bowls are wonders of
-technical precision, inside and out, the
-palm finds no fault with them, but the
-subtlest appeal is in the sense that warns
-us of humanness in the way the design
-spreads into the flare of the bowl. There
-used to be an Indian woman at Olancha
-who made bottle-neck trinket baskets in
-the rattlesnake pattern, and could accommodate
-the design to the swelling bowl and
-flat shoulder of the basket without sensible
-disproportion, and so cleverly that you
-might own one a year without thinking how
-it was done; but Seyavi’s baskets had a
-touch beyond cleverness. The weaver and
-the warp lived next to the earth and were
-saturated with the same elements. Twice
-a year, in the time of white butterflies and
-again when young quail ran neck and neck<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_170">170</a></span>
-in the chaparral, Seyavi cut willows for
-basketry by the creek where it wound toward
-the river against the sun and sucking
-winds. It never quite reached the river
-except in far-between times of summer
-flood, but it always tried, and the willows
-encouraged it as much as they could. You
-nearly always found them a little farther
-down than the trickle of eager water. The
-Paiute fashion of counting time appeals
-to me more than any other calendar. They
-have no stamp of heathen gods nor great
-ones, nor any succession of moons as have
-red men of the East and North, but count
-forward and back by the progress of the
-season; the time of <i xml:lang="es" lang="es">taboose</i>, before the trout
-begin to leap, the end of the piñon harvest,
-about the beginning of deep snows. So
-they get nearer the sense of the season,
-which runs early or late according as the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_171">171</a></span>
-rains are forward or delayed. But whenever
-Seyavi cut willows for baskets was always
-a golden time, and the soul of the
-weather went into the wood. If you had
-ever owned one of Seyavi’s golden russet
-cooking bowls with the pattern of plumed
-quail, you would understand all this without
-saying anything.</p>
-
-<p>Before Seyavi made baskets for the satisfaction
-of desire,&mdash;for that is a house-bred
-theory of art that makes anything more of
-it,&mdash;she danced and dressed her hair. In
-those days, when the spring was at flood
-and the blood pricked to the mating fever,
-the maids chose their flowers, wreathed
-themselves, and danced in the twilights,
-young desire crying out to young desire.
-They sang what the heart prompted, what
-the flower expressed, what boded in the
-mating weather.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_172">172</a></span>
-“And what flower did you wear, Seyavi?”</p>
-
-<p>“I, ah,&mdash;the white flower of twining
-(clematis), on my body and my hair, and so
-I <span class="locked">sang:&mdash;</span></p>
-
-<div class="poem-container">
-<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
-<span class="iq">“I am the white flower of twining,<br /></span>
-<span class="i0">Little white flower by the river,<br /></span>
-<span class="i0">Oh, flower that twines close by the river;<br /></span>
-<span class="i0">Oh, trembling flower!<br /></span>
-<span class="i0">So trembles the maiden heart.”<br /></span>
-</div></div>
-</div>
-
-<p class="in0">So sang Seyavi of the campoodie before
-she made baskets, and in her later days
-laid her arms upon her knees and laughed
-in them at the recollection. But it was
-not often she would say so much, never
-understanding the keen hunger I had for
-bits of lore and the “fool talk” of her people.
-She had fed her young son with
-meadowlarks’ tongues, to make him quick
-of speech; but in late years was loath to<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_173">173</a></span>
-admit it, though she had come through
-the period of unfaith in the lore of the clan
-with a fine appreciation of its beauty and
-significance.</p>
-
-<p>“What good will your dead get, Seyavi,
-of the baskets you burn?” said I, coveting
-them for my own collection.</p>
-
-<p>Thus Seyavi, “As much good as yours
-of the flowers you strew.”</p>
-
-<div id="if_i_174" class="figleft lm10" style="width: 129px;"><img src="images/i_174.jpg" width="129" height="251" alt="" /></div>
-
-<p>Oppapago looks on Waban, and Waban
-on Coso and the Bitter Lake, and the campoodie
-looks on these three; and more,
-it sees the beginning of winds along the
-foot of Coso, the gathering of clouds behind
-the high ridges, the spring flush, the
-soft spread of wild almond bloom on the
-mesa. These first, you understand, are
-the Paiute’s walls, the other his furnishings.
-Not the wattled hut is his home, but the
-land, the winds, the hill front, the stream.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_174">174</a></span>
-These he cannot duplicate at any furbisher’s
-shop as you who live within doors,
-who, if your purse allows, may have the
-same home at Sitka and Samarcand. So
-you see how it is that the homesickness
-of an Indian is often unto death, since he
-gets no relief from it; neither wind nor
-weed nor sky-line, nor any aspect of the
-hills of a strange land sufficiently like his
-own. So it was when the government
-reached out for the Paiutes, they gathered
-into the Northern Reservation only such
-poor tribes as could devise no other end of
-their affairs. Here, all along the river, and
-south to Shoshone Land, live the clans who
-owned the earth, fallen into the deplorable
-condition of hangers-on. Yet you hear
-them laughing at the hour when they
-draw in to the campoodie after labor,
-when there is a smell of meat and the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_175">175</a></span>
-steam of the cooking pots goes up against
-the sun. Then the children lie with their
-toes in the ashes to hear tales; then they
-are merry, and have the joys of repletion
-and the nearness of their kind. They have
-their hills, and though jostled are sufficiently
-free to get some fortitude for what
-will come. For now you shall hear of the
-end of the basket maker.</p>
-
-<div id="if_i_175" class="figright rm10" style="width: 286px;"><img src="images/i_175.jpg" width="286" height="282" alt="" /></div>
-
-<p>In her best days Seyavi was most like
-Deborah, deep bosomed, broad in the hips,
-quick in counsel, slow of speech, esteemed
-of her people. This was that Seyavi who
-reared a man by her own hand, her own
-wit, and none other. When the townspeople
-began to take note of her&mdash;and it
-was some years after the war before there
-began to be any towns&mdash;she was then in
-the quick maturity of primitive women; but
-when I knew her she seemed already old.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_176">176</a></span>
-Indian women do not often live to great
-age, though they look incredibly steeped
-in years. They have the wit to win sustenance
-from the raw material of life without
-intervention, but they have not the
-sleek look of the women whom the social
-organization conspires to nourish. Seyavi
-had somehow squeezed out of her daily
-round a spiritual ichor that kept the skill
-in her knotted fingers long after the accustomed
-time, but that also failed. By
-all counts she would have been about
-sixty years old when it came her turn to
-sit in the dust on the sunny side of the
-wickiup, with little strength left for anything
-but looking. And in time she paid
-the toll of the smoky huts and became
-blind. This is a thing so long expected
-by the Paiutes that when it comes they
-find it neither bitter nor sweet, but tolerable<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_177">177</a></span>
-because common. There were three
-other blind women in the campoodie, withered
-fruit on a bough, but they had memory
-and speech. By noon of the sun there
-were never any left in the campoodie but
-these or some mother of weanlings, and
-they sat to keep the ashes warm upon the
-hearth. If it were cold, they burrowed in
-the blankets of the hut; if it were warm,
-they followed the shadow of the wickiup
-around. Stir much out of their places
-they hardly dared, since one might not
-help another; but they called, in high, old
-cracked voices, gossip and reminder across
-the ash heaps.</p>
-
-<p>Then, if they have your speech or you
-theirs, and have an hour to spare, there
-are things to be learned of life not set
-down in any books, folk tales, famine tales,
-love and long-suffering and desire, but no<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_178">178</a></span>
-whimpering. Now and then one or another
-of the blind keepers of the camp will
-come across to where you sit gossiping,
-tapping her way among the kitchen middens,
-guided by your voice that carries far
-in the clearness and stillness of mesa afternoons.
-But suppose you find Seyavi retired
-into the privacy of her blanket, you
-will get nothing for that day. There is
-no other privacy possible in a campoodie.
-All the processes of life are carried on out
-of doors or behind the thin, twig-woven
-walls of the wickiup, and laughter is the
-only corrective for behavior. Very early
-the Indian learns to possess his countenance
-in impassivity, to cover his head with
-his blanket. Something to wrap around
-him is as necessary to the Paiute as to
-you your closet to pray in.</p>
-
-<p>So in her blanket Seyavi, sometime<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_179">179</a></span>
-basket maker, sits by the unlit hearths of
-her tribe and digests her life, nourishing
-her spirit against the time of the spirit’s
-need, for she knows in fact quite as much
-of these matters as you who have a larger
-hope, though she has none but the certainty
-that having borne herself courageously
-to this end she will not be reborn
-a coyote.</p>
-
-<div id="if_i_179" class="figright rm5" style="width: 133px;"><img src="images/i_179.jpg" width="133" height="126" alt="" /></div>
-
-<hr />
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_181">181</a></span></p>
-
-<div class="chapter">
-<h2 id="h_181">THE STREETS OF THE MOUNTAINS</h2>
-</div>
-
-<div id="if_i_181" class="figcenter" style="width: 258px;"><img src="images/i_181.jpg" width="258" height="151" alt="" /></div>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_183">183</a></span></p>
-
-<h3>THE STREETS OF THE MOUNTAINS</h3>
-
-<p class="drop-cap al"><span class="smcap1">All</span> streets of the mountains lead to
-the citadel; steep or slow they go
-up to the core of the hills. Any trail that
-goes otherwhere must dip and cross, sidle
-and take chances. Rifts of the hills open
-into each other, and the high meadows
-are often wide enough to be called valleys
-by courtesy; but one keeps this distinction
-in mind,&mdash;valleys are the sunken places
-of the earth, cañons are scored out by
-the glacier ploughs of God. They have a
-better name in the Rockies for these hill-fenced
-open glades of pleasantness; they
-call them parks. Here and there in the
-hill country one comes upon blind gullies
-fronted by high stony barriers. These<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_184">184</a></span>
-head also for the heart of the mountains;
-their distinction is that they never get anywhere.</p>
-
-<div id="if_i_183" class="figcenter epub" style="width: 331px;"><img src="images/i_183.jpg" width="331" height="600" alt="" /></div>
-<div class="html rm10">
-<div id="if_i_183-1" class="figrights" style="width: 151px;"><img src="images/i_183-1.jpg" width="151" height="447" alt="" /></div>
-<div id="if_i_183-2" class="figrights" style="width: 331px;"><img src="images/i_183-2.jpg" width="331" height="153" alt="" /></div>
-</div>
-
-<p>All mountain streets have streams to
-thread them, or deep grooves where a
-stream might run. You would do well to
-avoid that range uncomforted by singing
-floods. You will find it forsaken of most
-things but beauty and madness and death
-and God. Many such lie east and north
-away from the mid Sierras, and quicken
-the imagination with the sense of purposes
-not revealed, but the ordinary traveler
-brings nothing away from them but
-an intolerable thirst.</p>
-
-<p>The river cañons of the Sierras of the
-Snows are better worth while than most
-Broadways, though the choice of them is
-like the choice of streets, not very well determined
-by their names. There is always<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_185">185</a></span>
-an amount of local history to be read in
-the names of mountain highways where
-one touches the successive waves of occupation
-or discovery, as in the old villages
-where the neighborhoods are not built
-but grow. Here you have the Spanish
-Californian in <i xml:lang="es" lang="es">Cero Gordo</i> and piñon;
-Symmes and Shepherd, pioneers both;
-Tunawai, probably Shoshone; Oak Creek,
-Kearsarge,&mdash;easy to fix the date of that
-christening,&mdash;Tinpah, Paiute that; Mist
-Cañon and Paddy Jack’s. The streets of
-the west Sierras sloping toward the San
-Joaquin are long and winding, but from
-the east, my country, a day’s ride carries
-one to the lake regions. The next day
-reaches the passes of the high divide, but
-whether one gets passage depends a little
-on how many have gone that road before,
-and much on one’s own powers. The<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_186">186</a></span>
-passes are steep and windy ridges, though
-not the highest. By two and three thousand
-feet the snow-caps overtop them. It
-is even possible to win through the Sierras
-without having passed above timber-line,
-but one misses a great exhilaration.</p>
-
-<p>The shape of a new mountain is roughly
-pyramidal, running out into long shark-finned
-ridges that interfere and merge into
-other thunder-splintered sierras. You get
-the saw-tooth effect from a distance, but
-the near-by granite bulk glitters with the
-terrible keen polish of old glacial ages. I
-say terrible; so it seems. When those
-glossy domes swim into the alpenglow,
-wet after rain, you conceive how long and
-imperturbable are the purposes of God.</p>
-
-<p>Never believe what you are told, that
-midsummer is the best time to go up the
-streets of the mountain&mdash;well&mdash;perhaps<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_187">187</a></span>
-for the merely idle or sportsmanly or scientific;
-but for seeing and understanding,
-the best time is when you have the longest
-leave to stay. And here is a hint if you
-would attempt the stateliest approaches;
-travel light, and as much as possible live
-off the land. Mulligatawny soup and
-tinned lobster will not bring you the favor
-of the woodlanders.</p>
-
-<div id="if_i_188" class="figleft lm10" style="width: 276px;"><img src="images/i_188.jpg" width="276" height="180" alt="" /></div>
-
-<p>Every cañon commends itself for some
-particular pleasantness; this for pines, another
-for trout, one for pure bleak beauty
-of granite buttresses, one for its far-flung
-irised falls; and as I say, though some are
-easier going, leads each to the cloud shouldering
-citadel. First, near the cañon mouth
-you get the low-heading full-branched,
-one-leaf pines. That is the sort of tree
-to know at sight, for the globose, resin-dripping
-cones have palatable, nourishing<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_188">188</a></span>
-kernels, the main harvest of the Paiutes.
-That perhaps accounts for their growing
-accommodatingly below the limit of deep
-snows, grouped sombrely on the valleyward
-slopes. The real procession of the
-pines begins in the rifts with the long-leafed
-<i xml:lang="la" lang="la">Pinus Jeffreyi</i>, sighing its soul away
-upon the wind. And it ought not to sigh
-in such good company. Here begins the
-manzanita, adjusting its tortuous stiff stems
-to the sharp waste of boulders, its pale olive
-leaves twisting edgewise to the sleek, ruddy,
-chestnut stems; begins also the meadowsweet,
-burnished laurel, and the million
-unregarded trumpets of the coral-red pentstemon.
-Wild life is likely to be busiest
-about the lower pine borders. One looks
-in hollow trees and hiving rocks for wild
-honey. The drone of bees, the chatter of
-jays, the hurry and stir of squirrels, is incessant;<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_189">189</a></span>
-the air is odorous and hot. The
-roar of the stream fills up the morning
-and evening intervals, and at night the
-deer feed in the buckthorn thickets. It
-is worth watching the year round in the
-purlieus of the long-leafed pines. One
-month or another you get sight or trail of
-most roving mountain dwellers as they follow
-the limit of forbidding snows, and more
-bloom than you can properly appreciate.</p>
-
-<p>Whatever goes up or comes down the
-streets of the mountains, water has the
-right of way; it takes the lowest ground
-and the shortest passage. Where the
-rifts are narrow, and some of the Sierra
-cañons are not a stone’s throw from wall
-to wall, the best trail for foot or horse
-winds considerably above the watercourses;
-but in a country of cone-bearers there is
-usually a good strip of swardy sod along<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_190">190</a></span>
-the cañon floor. Pine woods, the short-leafed
-Balfour and Murryana of the high
-Sierras, are sombre, rooted in the litter of
-a thousand years, hushed, and corrective
-to the spirit. The trail passes insensibly
-into them from the black pines and a thin
-belt of firs. You look back as you rise,
-and strain for glimpses of the tawny valley,
-blue glints of the Bitter Lake, and
-tender cloud films on the farther ranges.
-For such pictures the pine branches make
-a noble frame. Presently they close in
-wholly; they draw mysteriously near, covering
-your tracks, giving up the trail indifferently,
-or with a secret grudge. You get
-a kind of impatience with their locked
-ranks, until you come out lastly on some
-high, windy dome and see what they are
-about. They troop thickly up the open
-ways, river banks, and brook borders; up<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_191">191</a></span>
-open swales of dribbling springs; swarm
-over old moraines; circle the peaty swamps
-and part and meet about clean still lakes;
-scale the stony gullies; tormented, bowed,
-persisting to the door of the storm chambers,
-tall priests to pray for rain. The
-spring winds lift clouds of pollen dust, finer
-than frankincense, and trail it out over high
-altars, staining the snow. No doubt they
-understand this work better than we; in
-fact they know no other. “Come,” say
-the churches of the valleys, after a season
-of dry years, “let us pray for rain.” They
-would do better to plant more trees.</p>
-
-<p>It is a pity we have let the gift of lyric
-improvisation die out. Sitting islanded on
-some gray peak above the encompassing
-wood, the soul is lifted up to sing the Iliad
-of the pines. They have no voice but the
-wind, and no sound of them rises up to the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_192">192</a></span>
-high places. But the waters, the evidences
-of their power, that go down the steep and
-stony ways, the outlets of ice-bordered
-pools, the young rivers swaying with the
-force of their running, they sing and shout
-and trumpet at the falls, and the noise of it
-far outreaches the forest spires. You see
-from these conning towers how they call
-and find each other in the slender gorges;
-how they fumble in the meadows, needing
-the sheer nearing walls to give them countenance
-and show the way; and how the
-pine woods are made glad by them.</p>
-
-<p>Nothing else in the streets of the mountains
-gives such a sense of pageantry as the
-conifers; other trees, if there are any, are
-home dwellers, like the tender fluttered,
-sisterhood of quaking asp. They grow in
-clumps by spring borders, and all their
-stems have a permanent curve toward the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_193">193</a></span>
-down slope, as you may also see in hillside
-pines, where they have borne the
-weight of sagging drifts.</p>
-
-<p>Well up from the valley, at the confluence
-of cañons, are delectable summer
-meadows. Fireweed flames about them
-against the gray boulders; streams are
-open, go smoothly about the glacier slips
-and make deep bluish pools for trout.
-Pines raise statelier shafts and give themselves
-room to grow,&mdash;gentians, shinleaf,
-and little grass of Parnassus in their
-golden checkered shadows; the meadow is
-white with violets and all outdoors keeps
-the clock. For example, when the ripples
-at the ford of the creek raise a clear half
-tone,&mdash;sign that the snow water has come
-down from the heated high ridges,&mdash;it is
-time to light the evening fire. When it
-drops off a note&mdash;but you will not know<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_194">194</a></span>
-it except the Douglas squirrel tells you
-with his high, fluty chirrup from the
-pines’ aerial gloom&mdash;sign that some star
-watcher has caught the first far glint of
-the nearing sun. Whitney cries it from
-his vantage tower; it flashes from Oppapago
-to the front of Williamson; LeConte
-speeds it to the westering peaks. The
-high rills wake and run, the birds begin.
-But down three thousand feet in the
-cañon, where you stir the fire under the
-cooking pot, it will not be day for an hour.
-It goes on, the play of light across the
-high places, rosy, purpling, tender, glint
-and glow, thunder and windy flood, like
-the grave, exulting talk of elders above a
-merry game.</p>
-
-<p>Who shall say what another will find
-most to his liking in the streets of the
-mountains. As for me, once set above the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_195">195</a></span>
-country of the silver firs, I must go on
-until I find white columbine. Around the
-amphitheatres of the lake regions and above
-them to the limit of perennial drifts they
-gather flock-wise in splintered rock wastes.
-The crowds of them, the airy spread of
-sepals, the pale purity of the petal spurs,
-the quivering swing of bloom, obsesses the
-sense. One must learn to spare a little of
-the pang of inexpressible beauty, not to
-spend all one’s purse in one shop. There
-is always another year, and another.</p>
-
-<p>Lingering on in the alpine regions until
-the first full snow, which is often before
-the cessation of bloom, one goes down in
-good company. First snows are soft and
-clogging and make laborious paths. Then
-it is the roving inhabitants range down to
-the edge of the wood, below the limit of
-early storms. Early winter and early<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_196">196</a></span>
-spring one may have sight or track of deer
-and bear and bighorn, cougar and bobcat,
-about the thickets of buckthorn on open
-slopes between the black pines. But when
-the ice crust is firm above the twenty foot
-drifts, they range far and forage where
-they will. Often in midwinter will come,
-now and then, a long fall of soft snow piling
-three or four feet above the ice crust,
-and work a real hardship for the dwellers
-of these streets. When such a storm portends
-the weather-wise black-tail will go
-down across the valley and up to the pastures
-of Waban where no more snow falls
-than suffices to nourish the sparsely growing
-pines. But the bighorn, the wild
-sheep, able to bear the bitterest storms
-with no signs of stress, cannot cope with
-the loose shifty snow. Never such a
-storm goes over the mountains that the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_197">197</a></span>
-Indians do not catch them floundering
-belly deep among the lower rifts. I have
-a pair of horns, inconceivably heavy, that
-were borne as late as a year ago by a very
-monarch of the flock whom death overtook
-at the mouth of Oak Creek after a
-week of wet snow. He met it as a king
-should, with no vain effort or trembling,
-and it was wholly kind to take him so with
-four of his following rather than that the
-night prowlers should find him.</p>
-
-<div id="if_i_197" class="figright rm15" style="width: 224px;"><img src="images/i_197.jpg" width="224" height="253" alt="" /></div>
-
-<p>There is always more life abroad in the
-winter hills than one looks to find, and
-much more in evidence than in summer
-weather. Light feet of hare that make no
-print on the forest litter leave a wondrously
-plain track in the snow. We used to look
-and look at the beginning of winter for
-the birds to come down from the pine
-lands; looked in the orchard and stubble;<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_198">198</a></span>
-looked north and south on the mesa for
-their migratory passing, and wondered that
-they never came. Busy little grosbeaks
-picked about the kitchen doors, and woodpeckers
-tapped the eves of the farm buildings,
-but we saw hardly any other of the
-frequenters of the summer cañons. After
-a while when we grew bold to tempt the
-snow borders we found them in the street
-of the mountains. In the thick pine woods
-where the overlapping boughs hung with
-snow-wreaths make wind-proof shelter
-tents, in a very community of dwelling,
-winter the bird-folk who get their living
-from the persisting cones and the larvæ
-harboring bark. Ground inhabiting species
-seek the dim snow chambers of the
-chaparral. Consider how it must be in a
-hill-slope overgrown with stout-twigged,
-partly evergreen shrubs, more than man<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_199">199</a></span>
-high, and as thick as a hedge. Not all the
-cañon’s sifting of snow can fill the intricate
-spaces of the hill tangles. Here and
-there an overhanging rock, or a stiff arch
-of buckthorn, makes an opening to communicating
-rooms and runways deep under
-the snow.</p>
-
-<p>The light filtering through the snow walls
-is blue and ghostly, but serves to show
-seeds of shrubs and grass, and berries, and
-the wind-built walls are warm against the
-wind. It seems that live plants, especially
-if they are evergreen and growing, give off
-heat; the snow wall melts earliest from
-within and hollows to thinness before there
-is a hint of spring in the air. But you
-think of these things afterward. Up in
-the street it has the effect of being done
-consciously; the buckthorns lean to each
-other and the drift to them, the little birds<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_200">200</a></span>
-run in and out of their appointed ways
-with the greatest cheerfulness. They give
-almost no tokens of distress, and even if
-the winter tries them too much you are
-not to pity them. You of the house habit
-can hardly understand the sense of the
-hills. No doubt the labor of being comfortable
-gives you an exaggerated opinion
-of yourself, an exaggerated pain to be set
-aside. Whether the wild things understand
-it or not they adapt themselves to its
-processes with the greater ease. The business
-that goes on in the street of the mountain
-is tremendous, world-formative. Here
-go birds, squirrels, and red deer, children
-crying small wares and playing in the
-street, but they do not obstruct its affairs.
-Summer is their holiday; “Come now,”
-says the lord of the street, “I have need of
-a great work and no more playing.”</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_201">201</a></span>
-But they are left borders and breathing-space
-out of pure kindness. They are not
-pushed out except by the exigencies of the
-nobler plan which they accept with a dignity
-the rest of us have not yet learned.</p>
-
-<div id="if_i_201" class="figright rm5" style="width: 194px;"><img src="images/i_201.jpg" width="194" height="189" alt="" /></div>
-
-<hr />
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_203">203</a></span></p>
-
-<div class="chapter">
-<h2 id="h_203">WATER BORDERS</h2>
-</div>
-
-<div id="if_i_203" class="figcenter" style="width: 205px;"><img src="images/i_203.jpg" width="205" height="376" alt="" /></div>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_205">205</a></span></p>
-
-<h3>WATER BORDERS</h3>
-
-<p class="drop-cap i"><span class="smcap1">I like</span> that name the Indians give to
-the mountain of Lone Pine, and find it
-pertinent to my subject,&mdash;Oppapago, The
-Weeper. It sits eastward and solitary from
-the lordliest ranks of the Sierras, and above
-a range of little, old, blunt hills, and has a
-bowed, grave aspect as of some woman
-you might have known, looking out across
-the grassy barrows of her dead. From twin
-gray lakes under its noble brow stream
-down incessant white and tumbling waters.
-“Mahala all time cry,” said Winnenap´,
-drawing furrows in his rugged, wrinkled
-cheeks.</p>
-
-<p>The origin of mountain streams is like
-the origin of tears, patent to the understanding
-but mysterious to the sense.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_206">206</a></span>
-They are always at it, but one so seldom
-catches them in the act. Here in the valley
-there is no cessation of waters even in
-the season when the niggard frost gives
-them scant leave to run. They make the
-most of their midday hour, and tinkle all
-night thinly under the ice. An ear laid to
-the snow catches a muffled hint of their
-eternal busyness fifteen or twenty feet
-under the cañon drifts, and long before
-any appreciable spring thaw, the sagging
-edges of the snow bridges mark out the
-place of their running. One who ventures
-to look for it finds the immediate source of
-the spring freshets&mdash;all the hill fronts furrowed
-with the reek of melting drifts, all
-the gravelly flats in a swirl of waters. But
-later, in June or July, when the camping
-season begins, there runs the stream away
-full and singing, with no visible reinforcement<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_207">207</a></span>
-other than an icy trickle from some
-high, belated clot of snow. Oftenest the
-stream drops bodily from the bleak bowl
-of some alpine lake; sometimes breaks out
-of a hillside as a spring where the ear can
-trace it under the rubble of loose stones to
-the neighborhood of some blind pool. But
-that leaves the lakes to be accounted for.</p>
-
-<p>The lake is the eye of the mountain, jade
-green, placid, unwinking, also unfathomable.
-Whatever goes on under the high
-and stony brows is guessed at. It is always
-a favorite local tradition that one or another
-of the blind lakes is bottomless. Often
-they lie in such deep cairns of broken
-boulders that one never gets quite to them,
-or gets away unhurt. One such drops below
-the plunging slope that the Kearsarge
-trail winds over, perilously, nearing the pass.
-It lies still and wickedly green in its sharplipped<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_208">208</a></span>
-cup, and the guides of that region
-love to tell of the packs and pack animals
-it has swallowed up.</p>
-
-<div id="if_i_209" class="figright rm10" style="width: 279px;"><img src="images/i_209.jpg" width="279" height="227" alt="" /></div>
-
-<p>But the lakes of Oppapago are perhaps
-not so deep, less green than gray, and better
-befriended. The ousel haunts them, while
-still hang about their coasts the thin undercut
-drifts that never quite leave the high
-altitudes. In and out of the bluish ice
-caves he flits and sings, and his singing
-heard from above is sweet and uncanny
-like the Nixie’s chord. One finds butterflies,
-too, about these high, sharp regions
-which might be called desolate, but will not
-by me who love them. This is above timber-line
-but not too high for comforting by
-succulent small herbs and golden tufted
-grass. A granite mountain does not
-crumble with alacrity, but once resolved to
-soil makes the best of it. Every handful<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_209">209</a></span>
-of loose gravel not wholly water leached
-affords a plant footing, and even in such
-unpromising surroundings there is a choice
-of locations. There is never going to be
-any communism of mountain herbage, their
-affinities are too sure. Full in the runnels
-of snow water on gravelly, open spaces in
-the shadow of a drift, one looks to find
-buttercups, frozen knee-deep by night, and
-owning no desire but to ripen their fruit
-above the icy bath. Soppy little plants of
-the portulaca and small, fine ferns shiver
-under the drip of falls and in dribbling
-crevices. The bleaker the situation, so it
-is near a stream border, the better the cassiope
-loves it. Yet I have not found it
-on the polished glacier slips, but where
-the country rock cleaves and splinters in
-the high windy headlands that the wild
-sheep frequents, hordes and hordes of the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_210">210</a></span>
-white bells swing over matted, mossy foliage.
-On Oppapago, which is also called
-Sheep Mountain, one finds not far from the
-beds of cassiope the ice-worn, stony hollows
-where the bighorns cradle their young.
-These are above the wolf’s quest and the
-eagle’s wont, and though the heather beds
-are softer, they are neither so dry nor so
-warm, and here only the stars go by. No
-other animal of any pretensions makes a
-habitat of the alpine regions. Now and
-then one gets a hint of some small, brown
-creature, rat or mouse kind, that slips
-secretly among the rocks; no others adapt
-themselves to desertness of aridity or altitude
-so readily as these ground inhabiting,
-graminivorous species. If there is an open
-stream the trout go up the lake as far as
-the water breeds food for them, but the
-ousel goes farthest, for pure love of it.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_211">211</a></span></p>
-
-<div id="if_i_211" class="figright rm10" style="width: 134px;"><img src="images/i_211.jpg" width="134" height="323" alt="" /></div>
-
-<p>Since no lake can be at the highest
-point, it is possible to find plant life higher
-than the water borders; grasses perhaps
-the highest, gilias, royal blue trusses of polymonium,
-rosy plats of Sierra primroses.
-What one has to get used to in flowers at
-high altitudes is the bleaching of the sun.
-Hardly do they hold their virgin color for
-a day, and this early fading before their
-function is performed gives them a pitiful
-appearance not according with their hardihood.
-The color scheme runs along the
-high ridges from blue to rosy purple, carmine
-and coral red; along the water borders
-it is chiefly white and yellow where the
-mimulus makes a vivid note, running into
-red when the two schemes meet and mix
-about the borders of the meadows, at the
-upper limit of the columbine.</p>
-
-<p>Here is the fashion in which a mountain<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_212">212</a></span>
-stream gets down from the perennial pastures
-of the snow to its proper level and
-identity as an irrigating ditch. It slips
-stilly by the glacier scoured rim of an ice
-bordered pool, drops over sheer, broken
-ledges to another pool, gathers itself,
-plunges headlong on a rocky ripple slope,
-finds a lake again, reinforced, roars downward
-to a pot-hole, foams and bridles, glides
-a tranquil reach in some still meadow,
-tumbles into a sharp groove between hill
-flanks, curdles under the stream tangles,
-and so arrives at the open country and
-steadier going. Meadows, little strips of
-alpine freshness, begin before the timber-line
-is reached. Here one treads on a
-carpet of dwarf willows, downy catkins of
-creditable size and the greatest economy
-of foliage and stems. No other plant of
-high altitudes knows its business so well.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_213">213</a></span>
-It hugs the ground, grows roots from stem
-joints where no roots should be, grows a
-slender leaf or two and twice as many erect
-full catkins that rarely, even in that short
-growing season, fail of fruit. Dipping over
-banks in the inlets of the creeks, the fortunate
-find the rosy apples of the miniature
-manzanita, barely, but always quite sufficiently,
-borne above the spongy sod. It
-does not do to be anything but humble in
-the alpine regions, but not fearful. I have
-pawed about for hours in the chill sward
-of meadows where one might properly expect
-to get one’s death, and got no harm
-from it, except it might be Oliver Twist’s
-complaint. One comes soon after this to
-shrubby willows, and where willows are
-trout may be confidently looked for in
-most Sierra streams. There is no accounting
-for their distribution; though provident<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_214">214</a></span>
-anglers have assisted nature of late, one
-still comes upon roaring brown waters
-where trout might very well be, but are
-not.</p>
-
-<p>The highest limit of conifers&mdash;in the
-middle Sierras, the white bark pine&mdash;is
-not along the water border. They come
-to it about the level of the heather, but
-they have no such affinity for dampness as
-the tamarack pines. Scarcely any bird-note
-breaks the stillness of the timber-line,
-but chipmunks inhabit here, as may be
-guessed by the gnawed ruddy cones of the
-pines, and lowering hours the woodchucks
-come down to the water. On a little spit
-of land running into Windy Lake we found
-one summer the evidence of a tragedy; a
-pair of sheep’s horns not fully grown caught
-in the crotch of a pine where the living
-sheep must have lodged them. The trunk<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_215">215</a></span>
-of the tree had quite closed over them, and
-the skull bones crumbled away from the
-weathered horn cases. We hoped it was
-not too far out of the running of night
-prowlers to have put a speedy end to the
-long agony, but we could not be sure. I
-never liked the spit of Windy Lake again.</p>
-
-<p>It seems that all snow nourished plants
-count nothing so excellent in their kind as
-to be forehanded with their bloom, working
-secretly to that end under the high
-piled winters. The heathers begin by the
-lake borders, while little sodden drifts still
-shelter under their branches. I have seen
-the tiniest of them (<i xml:lang="la" lang="la">Kalmia glauca</i>) blooming,
-and with well-formed fruit, a foot away
-from a snowbank from which it could
-hardly have emerged within a week. Somehow
-the soul of the heather has entered
-into the blood of the English-speaking.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_216">216</a></span>
-“And oh! is that heather?” they say;
-and the most indifferent ends by picking
-a sprig of it in a hushed, wondering way.
-One must suppose that the root of their
-respective races issued from the glacial
-borders at about the same epoch, and remember
-their origin.</p>
-
-<p>Among the pines where the slope of the
-land allows it, the streams run into smooth,
-brown, trout-abounding rills across open
-flats that are in reality filled lake basins.
-These are the displaying grounds of the
-gentians&mdash;blue&mdash;blue&mdash;eye-blue, perhaps,
-virtuous and likable flowers. One is
-not surprised to learn that they have tonic
-properties. But if your meadow should be
-outside the forest reserve, and the sheep
-have been there, you will find little but the
-shorter, paler <i xml:lang="la" lang="la">G. Newberryii</i>, and in the
-matted sods of the little tongues of greenness<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_217">217</a></span>
-that lick up among the pines along
-the watercourses, white, scentless, nearly
-stemless, alpine violets.</p>
-
-<p>At about the nine thousand foot level
-and in the summer there will be hosts of
-rosy-winged dodecatheon, called shooting-stars,
-outlining the crystal runnels in the
-sod. Single flowers have often a two-inch
-spread of petal, and the full, twelve blossomed
-heads above the slender pedicels
-have the airy effect of wings.</p>
-
-<p>It is about this level one looks to find
-the largest lakes with thick ranks of pines
-bearing down on them, often swamped in
-the summer floods and paying the inevitable
-penalty for such encroachment. Here
-in wet coves of the hills harbors that crowd
-of bloom that makes the wonder of the Sierra
-cañons.</p>
-
-<p>They drift under the alternate flicker<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_218">218</a></span>
-and gloom of the windy rooms of pines, in
-gray rock shelters, and by the ooze of blind
-springs, and their juxtapositions are the
-best imaginable. Lilies come up out of
-fern beds, columbine swings over meadowsweet,
-white rein-orchids quake in the leaning
-grass. Open swales, where in wet years
-may be running water, are plantations of
-false hellebore (<i xml:lang="la" lang="la">Veratrum Californicum</i>),
-tall, branched candelabra of greenish bloom
-above the sessile, sheathing, boat-shaped
-leaves, semi-translucent in the sun. A
-stately plant of the lily family, but why
-“false?” It is frankly offensive in its
-character, and its young juices deadly as
-any hellebore that ever grew.</p>
-
-<p>Like most mountain herbs it has an
-uncanny haste to bloom. One hears by
-night, when all the wood is still, the crepitatious
-rustle of the unfolding leaves and<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_219">219</a></span>
-the pushing flower-stalk within, that has
-open blossoms before it has fairly uncramped
-from the sheath. It commends
-itself by a certain exclusiveness of growth,
-taking enough room and never elbowing;
-for if the flora of the lake region has a fault
-it is that there is too much of it. We have
-more than three hundred species from
-Kearsarge Cañon alone, and if that does
-not include them all it is because they were
-already collected otherwhere.</p>
-
-<div id="if_i_219" class="figright rm12" style="width: 182px;"><img src="images/i_219.jpg" width="182" height="505" alt="" /></div>
-
-<p>One expects to find lakes down to about
-nine thousand feet, leading into each other
-by comparatively open ripple slopes and
-white cascades. Below the lakes are filled
-basins that are still spongy swamps, or
-substantial meadows, as they get down and
-down.</p>
-
-<p>Here begin the stream tangles. On
-the east slopes of the middle Sierras the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_220">220</a></span>
-pines, all but an occasional yellow variety,
-desert the stream borders about the level
-of the lowest lakes, and the birches and
-tree-willows begin. The firs hold on almost
-to the mesa levels,&mdash;there are no
-foothills on this eastern slope,&mdash;and whoever
-has firs misses nothing else. It goes
-without saying that a tree that can afford
-to take fifty years to its first fruiting will
-repay acquaintance. It keeps, too, all that
-half century, a virginal grace of outline,
-but having once flowered, begins quietly
-to put away the things of its youth. Year
-by year the lower rounds of boughs are
-shed, leaving no scar; year by year the
-star-branched minarets approach the sky.
-A fir-tree loves a water border, loves a long
-wind in a draughty cañon, loves to spend
-itself secretly on the inner finishings of its
-burnished, shapely cones. Broken open<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_221">221</a></span>
-in mid-season the petal-shaped scales show
-a crimson satin surface, perfect as a rose.</p>
-
-<p>The birch&mdash;the brown-bark western
-birch characteristic of lower stream tangles&mdash;is
-a spoil sport. It grows thickly to
-choke the stream that feeds it; grudges it
-the sky and space for angler’s rod and fly.
-The willows do better; painted-cup, cypripedium,
-and the hollow stalks of span-broad
-white umbels, find a footing among their
-stems. But in general the steep plunges,
-the white swirls, green and tawny pools,
-the gliding hush of waters between the
-meadows and the mesas afford little fishing
-and few flowers.</p>
-
-<p>One looks for these to begin again when
-once free of the rifted cañon walls; the
-high note of babble and laughter falls off
-to the steadier mellow tone of a stream
-that knows its purpose and reflects the sky.</p>
-
-<hr />
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_223">223</a></span></p>
-
-<div class="chapter">
-<h2 id="h_223">OTHER WATER BORDERS</h2>
-</div>
-
-<div id="if_i_223" class="figcenter" style="width: 226px;"><img src="images/i_223.jpg" width="226" height="269" alt="" /></div>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_225">225</a></span></p>
-
-<h3>OTHER WATER BORDERS</h3>
-
-<p class="drop-cap"><span class="smcap1">It</span> is the proper destiny of every considerable
-stream in the west to become an
-irrigating ditch. It would seem the streams
-are willing. They go as far as they can,
-or dare, toward the tillable lands in their
-own boulder fenced gullies&mdash;but how
-much farther in the man-made waterways.
-It is difficult to come into intimate relations
-with appropriated waters; like very busy
-people they have no time to reveal themselves.
-One needs to have known an irrigating
-ditch when it was a brook, and to
-have lived by it, to mark the morning and
-evening tone of its crooning, rising and
-falling to the excess of snow water; to have
-watched far across the valley, south to the
-Eclipse and north to the Twisted Dyke,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_226">226</a></span>
-the shining wall of the village water gate;
-to see still blue herons stalking the little
-glinting weirs across the field.</p>
-
-<div id="if_i_227" class="figright rm10" style="width: 362px;"><img src="images/i_227.jpg" width="362" height="254" alt="" /></div>
-
-<p>Perhaps to get into the mood of the
-waterways one needs to have seen old
-Amos Judson asquat on the headgate with
-his gun, guarding his water-right toward
-the end of a dry summer. Amos owned
-the half of Tule Creek and the other half
-pertained to the neighboring Greenfields
-ranch. Years of a “short water crop,” that
-is, when too little snow fell on the high
-pine ridges, or, falling, melted too early,
-Amos held that it took all the water that
-came down to make his half, and maintained
-it with a Winchester and a deadly aim.
-Jesus Montaña, first proprietor of Greenfields,&mdash;you
-can see at once that Judson
-had the racial advantage,&mdash;contesting the
-right with him, walked into five of Judson’s<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_227">227</a></span>
-bullets and his eternal possessions on the
-same occasion. That was the Homeric
-age of settlement and passed into tradition.
-Twelve years later one of the Clarks, holding
-Greenfields, not so very green by now,
-shot one of the Judsons. Perhaps he hoped
-that also might become classic, but the jury
-found for manslaughter. It had the effect
-of discouraging the Greenfields claim, but
-Amos used to sit on the headgate just the
-same, as quaint and lone a figure as the
-sandhill crane watching for water toads
-below the Tule drop. Every subsequent
-owner of Greenfields bought it with Amos
-in full view. The last of these was Diedrick.
-Along in August of that year came
-a week of low water. Judson’s ditch failed
-and he went out with his rifle to learn why.
-There on the headgate sat Diedrick’s frau
-with a long-handled shovel across her lap<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_228">228</a></span>
-and all the water turned into Diedrick’s
-ditch; there she sat knitting through the
-long sun, and the children brought out her
-dinner. It was all up with Amos; he was
-too much of a gentleman to fight a lady&mdash;that
-was the way he expressed it. She was
-a very large lady, and a long-handled shovel
-is no mean weapon. The next year Judson
-and Diedrick put in a modern water gauge
-and took the summer ebb in equal inches.
-Some of the water-right difficulties are
-more squalid than this, some more tragic;
-but unless you have known them you cannot
-very well know what the water thinks
-as it slips past the gardens and in the long
-slow sweeps of the canal. You get that
-sense of brooding from the confined and
-sober floods, not all at once but by degrees,
-as one might become aware of a middle-aged
-and serious neighbor who has had<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_229">229</a></span>
-that in his life to make him so. It is the
-repose of the completely accepted instinct.</p>
-
-<p>With the water runs a certain following
-of thirsty herbs and shrubs. The willows
-go as far as the stream goes, and a bit farther
-on the slightest provocation. They
-will strike root in the leak of a flume, or
-the dribble of an overfull bank, coaxing
-the water beyond its appointed bounds.
-Given a new waterway in a barren land,
-and in three years the willows have fringed
-all its miles of banks; three years more and
-they will touch tops across it. It is perhaps
-due to the early usurpation of the willows
-that so little else finds growing-room along
-the large canals. The birch beginning far
-back in the cañon tangles is more conservative;
-it is shy of man haunts and needs
-to have the permanence of its drink assured.
-It stops far short of the summer limit of<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_230">230</a></span>
-waters, and I have never known it to take
-up a position on the banks beyond the
-ploughed lands. There is something almost
-like premeditation in the avoidance of cultivated
-tracts by certain plants of water
-borders. The clematis, mingling its foliage
-secretly with its host, comes down with the
-stream tangles to the village fences, skips
-over to corners of little used pasture lands
-and the plantations that spring up about
-waste water pools; but never ventures a
-footing in the trail of spade or plough; will
-not be persuaded to grow in any garden
-plot. On the other hand, the horehound,
-the common European species imported
-with the colonies, hankers after hedgerows
-and snug little borders. It is more widely
-distributed than many native species, and
-may be always found along the ditches in
-the village corners, where it is not appreciated.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_231">231</a></span>
-The irrigating ditch is an impartial
-distributer. It gathers all the alien weeds
-that come west in garden and grass seeds
-and affords them harbor in its banks.
-There one finds the European mallow
-(<i xml:lang="la" lang="la">Malva rotundifolia</i>) spreading out to the
-streets with the summer overflow, and every
-spring a dandelion or two, brought in with
-the blue grass seed, uncurls in the swardy
-soil. Farther than either of these have
-come the lilies that the Chinese coolies
-cultivate in adjacent mud holes for their
-foodful bulbs. The <i xml:lang="es" lang="es">seegoo</i> establishes itself
-very readily in swampy borders, and
-the white blossom spikes among the arrow-pointed
-leaves are quite as acceptable to
-the eye as any native species.</p>
-
-<p>In the neighborhood of towns founded
-by the Spanish Californians, whether this
-plant is native to the locality or not, one can<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_232">232</a></span>
-always find aromatic clumps of <i xml:lang="es" lang="es">yerba buena</i>,
-the “good herb” (<i xml:lang="la" lang="la">Micromeria Douglassii</i>).
-The virtue of it as a febrifuge was taught
-to the mission fathers by the neophytes,
-and wise old dames of my acquaintance have
-worked astonishing cures with it and the
-succulent <i xml:lang="es" lang="es">yerba mansa</i>. This last is native
-to wet meadows and distinguished enough
-to have a family all to itself.</p>
-
-<div id="if_i_232" class="figleft lm10" style="width: 125px;"><img src="images/i_232.jpg" width="125" height="177" alt="" /></div>
-
-<p>Where the irrigating ditches are shallow
-and a little neglected, they choke quickly
-with watercress that multiplies about the
-lowest Sierra springs. It is characteristic
-of the frequenters of water borders near
-man haunts, that they are chiefly of the
-sorts that are useful to man, as if they made
-their services an excuse for the intrusion.
-The joint-grass of soggy pastures produces
-edible, nut-flavored tubers, called by the
-Indians <em>taboose</em>. The common reed of the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_233">233</a></span>
-ultramontane marshes (here <i xml:lang="la" lang="la">Phragmites
-vulgaris</i>), a very stately, whispering reed,
-light and strong for shafts or arrows, affords
-sweet sap and pith which makes a passable
-sugar.</p>
-
-<p>It seems the secrets of plant powers and
-influences yield themselves most readily to
-primitive peoples, at least one never hears
-of the knowledge coming from any other
-source. The Indian never concerns himself,
-as the botanist and the poet, with the
-plant’s appearances and relations, but with
-what it can do for him. It can do much,
-but how do you suppose he finds it out;
-what instincts or accidents guide him?
-How does a cat know when to eat catnip?
-Why do western bred cattle avoid loco
-weed, and strangers eat it and go mad?
-One might suppose that in a time of famine
-the Paiutes digged wild parsnip in meadow<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_234">234</a></span>
-corners and died from eating it, and so
-learned to produce death swiftly and at
-will. But how did they learn, repenting
-in the last agony, that animal fat is the best
-antidote for its virulence; and who taught
-them that the essence of joint pine (<i xml:lang="la" lang="la">Ephedra
-nevadensis</i>), which looks to have no
-juice in it of any sort, is efficacious in
-stomachic disorders. But they so understand
-and so use. One believes it to be a
-sort of instinct atrophied by disuse in a
-complexer civilization. I remember very
-well when I came first upon a wet meadow
-of <i xml:lang="es" lang="es">yerba mansa</i>, not knowing its name or
-use. It <em>looked</em> potent; the cool, shiny
-leaves, the succulent, pink stems and fruity
-bloom. A little touch, a hint, a word, and
-I should have known what use to put them
-to. So I felt, unwilling to leave it until we
-had come to an understanding. So a musician<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_235">235</a></span>
-might have felt in the presence of
-an instrument known to be within his province,
-but beyond his power. It was with
-the relieved sense of having shaped a long
-surmise that I watched the Señora Romero
-make a poultice of it for my burned
-hand.</p>
-
-<p>On, down from the lower lakes to the
-village weirs, the brown and golden disks of
-<i xml:lang="la" lang="la">helenum</i> have beauty as a sufficient excuse
-for being. The plants anchor out on tiny
-capes, or mid-stream islets, with the nearly
-sessile radicle leaves submerged. The
-flowers keep up a constant trepidation in
-time with the hasty water beating at their
-stems, a quivering, instinct with life, that
-seems always at the point of breaking into
-flight; just as the babble of the watercourses
-always approaches articulation but
-never quite achieves it. Although of wide<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_236">236</a></span>
-range the helenum never makes itself common
-through profusion, and may be looked
-for in the same places from year to year.
-Another lake dweller that comes down to
-the ploughed lands is the red columbine (<i xml:lang="la" lang="la">C.
-truncata</i>). It requires no encouragement
-other than shade, but grows too rank in the
-summer heats and loses its wildwood grace.
-A common enough orchid in these parts is
-the false lady’s slipper (<i xml:lang="la" lang="la">Epipactis gigantea</i>),
-one that springs up by any water where
-there is sufficient growth of other sorts to
-give it countenance. It seems to thrive
-best in an atmosphere of suffocation.</p>
-
-<p>The middle Sierras fall off abruptly eastward
-toward the high valleys. Peaks of
-the fourteen thousand class, belted with
-sombre swathes of pine, rise almost directly
-from the bench lands with no foothill
-approaches. At the lower edge of the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_237">237</a></span>
-bench or mesa the land falls away, often
-by a fault, to the river hollows, and along
-the drop one looks for springs or intermittent
-swampy swales. Here the plant world
-resembles a little the lake gardens, modified
-by altitude and the use the town folk put
-it to for pasture. Here are cress, blue
-violets, potentilla, and, in the damp of the
-willow fence-rows, white false asphodels.
-I am sure we make too free use of this word
-<em>false</em> in naming plants&mdash;false mallow, false
-lupine, and the like. The asphodel is at
-least no falsifier, but a true lily by all the
-heaven-set marks, though small of flower
-and run mostly to leaves, and should have
-a name that gives it credit for growing up
-in such celestial semblance. Native to the
-mesa meadows is a pale iris, gardens of it
-acres wide, that in the spring season of full
-bloom make an airy fluttering as of azure<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_238">238</a></span>
-wings. Single flowers are too thin and
-sketchy of outline to affect the imagination,
-but the full fields have the misty blue of
-mirage waters rolled across desert sand,
-and quicken the senses to the anticipation
-of things ethereal. A very poet’s flower, I
-thought; not fit for gathering up, and
-proving a nuisance in the pastures, therefore
-needing to be the more loved. And
-one day I caught Winnenap´ drawing out
-from mid leaf a fine strong fibre for making
-snares. The borders of the iris fields are
-pure gold, nearly sessile buttercups and a
-creeping-stemmed composite of a redder
-hue. I am convinced that English-speaking
-children will always have buttercups.
-If they do not light upon the original companion
-of little frogs they will take the next
-best and cherish it accordingly. I find five
-unrelated species loved by that name, and<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_239">239</a></span>
-as many more and as inappropriately called
-cowslips.</p>
-
-<p>By every mesa spring one may expect to
-find a single shrub of the buckthorn, called
-of old time <i xml:lang="la" lang="la">Cascara sagrada</i>&mdash;the sacred
-bark. Up in the cañons, within the limit
-of the rains, it seeks rather a stony slope,
-but in the dry valleys is not found away
-from water borders.</p>
-
-<p>In all the valleys and along the desert
-edges of the west are considerable areas of
-soil sickly with alkali-collecting pools, black
-and evil-smelling like old blood. Very little
-grows hereabout but thick-leaved pickle
-weed. Curiously enough, in this stiff mud,
-along roadways where there is frequently
-a little leakage from canals, grows the only
-western representative of the true heliotropes
-(<i xml:lang="la" lang="la">Heliotropium curassavicum</i>). It has
-flowers of faded white, foliage of faded<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_240">240</a></span>
-green, resembling the “live-for-ever” of old
-gardens and graveyards, but even less attractive.
-After so much schooling in the
-virtues of water-seeking plants, one is not
-surprised to learn that its mucilaginous sap
-has healing powers.</p>
-
-<p>Last and inevitable resort of overflow
-waters is the tulares, great wastes of reeds
-(<i xml:lang="la" lang="la">Juncus</i>) in sickly, slow streams. The
-reeds, called tules, are ghostly pale in
-winter, in summer deep poisonous-looking
-green, the waters thick and brown; the
-reed beds breaking into dingy pools, clumps
-of rotting willows, narrow winding water
-lanes and sinking paths. The tules grow
-inconceivably thick in places, standing man-high
-above the water; cattle, no, not any
-fish nor fowl can penetrate them. Old
-stalks succumb slowly; the bed soil is quagmire,
-settling with the weight as it fills<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_241">241</a></span>
-and fills. Too slowly for counting they
-raise little islands from the bog and reclaim
-the land. The waters pushed out cut
-deeper channels, gnaw off the edges of the
-solid earth.</p>
-
-<p>The tulares are full of mystery and malaria.
-That is why we have meant to
-explore them and have never done so. It
-must be a happy mystery. So you would
-think to hear the redwinged blackbirds
-proclaim it clear March mornings. Flocks
-of them, and every flock a myriad, shelter
-in the dry, whispering stems. They make
-little arched runways deep into the heart
-of the tule beds. Miles across the valley
-one hears the clamor of their high, keen
-flutings in the mating weather.</p>
-
-<div id="if_i_242" class="figleft lm10" style="width: 138px;"><img src="images/i_242.jpg" width="138" height="377" alt="" /></div>
-
-<p>Wild fowl, quacking hordes of them, nest
-in the tulares. Any day’s venture will
-raise from open shallows the great blue<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_242">242</a></span>
-heron on his hollow wings. Chill evenings
-the mallard drakes cry continually from the
-glassy pools, the bittern’s hollow boom rolls
-along the water paths. Strange and far-flown
-fowl drop down against the saffron,
-autumn sky. All day wings beat above it
-hazy with speed; long flights of cranes
-glimmer in the twilight. By night one
-wakes to hear the clanging geese go over.
-One wishes for, but gets no nearer speech
-from those the reedy fens have swallowed
-up. What they do there, how fare, what
-find, is the secret of the tulares.</p>
-
-<hr />
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_243">243</a></span></p>
-
-<div class="chapter">
-<h2 id="h_243">NURSLINGS OF THE SKY</h2>
-</div>
-
-<div id="if_i_243" class="figcenter" style="width: 206px;"><img src="images/i_243.jpg" width="206" height="258" alt="" /></div>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_245">245</a></span></p>
-
-<h3>NURSLINGS OF THE SKY</h3>
-
-<div id="if_i_245" class="figcenter epub" style="width: 275px;"><img src="images/i_245.jpg" width="275" height="600" alt="" /></div>
-
-<p class="drop-cap"><span class="smcap1">Choose</span> a hill country for storms.
-There all the business of the weather
-is carried on above your horizon and loses
-its terror in familiarity. When you come
-to think about it, the disastrous storms are
-on the levels, sea or sand or plains. There
-you get only a hint of what is about to happen,
-the fume of the gods rising from their
-meeting place under the rim of the world;
-and when it breaks upon you there is no
-stay nor shelter. The terrible mewings
-and mouthings of a Kansas wind have the
-added terror of viewlessness. You are
-lapped in them like uprooted grass; suspect
-them of a personal grudge. But the
-storms of hill countries have other business.
-They scoop watercourses, manure<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_246">246</a></span>
-the pines, twist them to a finer fibre, fit the
-firs to be masts and spars, and, if you keep
-reasonably out of the track of their affairs,
-do you no harm.</p>
-
-<div class="html rm10">
-<div id="if_i_245-1" class="figrights" style="width: 138px;"><img src="images/i_245-1.jpg" width="138" height="419" alt="" /></div>
-<div id="if_i_245-2" class="figrights" style="width: 275px;"><img src="images/i_245-2.jpg" width="275" height="181" alt="" /></div>
-</div>
-
-<p>They have habits to be learned, appointed
-paths, seasons, and warnings, and they leave
-you in no doubt about their performances.
-One who builds his house on a water scar
-or the rubble of a steep slope must take
-chances. So they did in Overtown who
-built in the wash of Argus water, and at
-Kearsarge at the foot of a steep, treeless
-swale. After twenty years Argus water rose
-in the wash against the frail houses, and
-the piled snows of Kearsarge slid down
-at a thunder peal over the cabins and the
-camp, but you could conceive that it was
-the fault of neither the water nor the snow.</p>
-
-<p>The first effect of cloud study is a sense
-of presence and intention in storm processes.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_247">247</a></span>
-Weather does not happen. It is
-the visible manifestation of the Spirit moving
-itself in the void. It gathers itself together
-under the heavens; rains, snows,
-yearns mightily in wind, smiles; and the
-Weather Bureau, situated advantageously
-for that very business, taps the record on
-his instruments and going out on the
-streets denies his God, not having gathered
-the sense of what he has seen. Hardly
-anybody takes account of the fact that
-John Muir, who knows more of mountain
-storms than any other, is a devout man.</p>
-
-<p>Of the high Sierras choose the neighborhood
-of the splintered peaks about the
-Kern and King’s river divide for storm
-study, or the short, wide-mouthed cañons
-opening eastward on high valleys. Days
-when the hollows are steeped in a warm,
-winey flood the clouds come walking on<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_248">248</a></span>
-the floor of heaven, flat and pearly gray
-beneath, rounded and pearly white above.
-They gather flock-wise, moving on the level
-currents that roll about the peaks, lock
-hands and settle with the cooler air, drawing
-a veil about those places where they do
-their work. If their meeting or parting
-takes place at sunrise or sunset, as it often
-does, one gets the splendor of the apocalypse.
-There will be cloud pillars miles
-high, snow-capped, glorified, and preserving
-an orderly perspective before the unbarred
-door of the sun, or perhaps mere
-ghosts of clouds that dance to some pied
-piper of an unfelt wind. But be it day or
-night, once they have settled to their work,
-one sees from the valley only the blank
-wall of their tents stretched along the
-ranges. To get the real effect of a mountain
-storm you must be inside.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_249">249</a></span>
-One who goes often into a hill country
-learns not to say: What if it should rain?
-It always does rain somewhere among the
-peaks: the unusual thing is that one should
-escape it. You might suppose that if you
-took any account of plant contrivances to
-save their pollen powder against showers.
-Note how many there are deep-throated
-and bell-flowered like the pentstemons, how
-many have nodding pedicels as the columbine,
-how many grow in copse shelters and
-grow there only. There is keen delight in
-the quick showers of summer cañons, with
-the added comfort, born of experience, of
-knowing that no harm comes of a wetting
-at high altitudes. The day is warm; a
-white cloud spies over the cañon wall, slips
-up behind the ridge to cross it by some
-windy pass, obscures your sun. Next you
-hear the rain drum on the broad-leaved<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_250">250</a></span>
-hellebore, and beat down the mimulus beside
-the brook. You shelter on the lee of
-some strong pine with shut-winged butterflies
-and merry, fiddling creatures of the
-wood. Runnels of rain water from the
-glacier slips swirl through the pine needles
-into rivulets; the streams froth and rise in
-their banks. The sky is white with cloud;
-the sky is gray with rain; the sky is clear.
-The summer showers leave no wake.</p>
-
-<p>Such as these follow each other day by
-day for weeks in August weather. Sometimes
-they chill suddenly into wet snow
-that packs about the lake gardens clear to
-the blossom frills, and melts away harmlessly.
-Sometimes one has the good fortune
-from a heather-grown headland to
-watch a rain-cloud forming in mid-air.
-Out over meadow or lake region begins a
-little darkling of the sky,&mdash;no cloud, no<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_251">251</a></span>
-wind, just a smokiness such as spirits materialize
-from in witch stories.</p>
-
-<p>It rays out and draws to it some floating
-films from secret cañons. Rain begins,
-“slow dropping veil of thinnest lawn;” a
-wind comes up and drives the formless
-thing across a meadow, or a dull lake pitted
-by the glancing drops, dissolving as it
-drives. Such rains relieve like tears.</p>
-
-<p>The same season brings the rains that
-have work to do, ploughing storms that
-alter the face of things. These come with
-thunder and the play of live fire along the
-rocks. They come with great winds that
-try the pines for their work upon the seas
-and strike out the unfit. They shake
-down avalanches of splinters from sky-line
-pinnacles and raise up sudden floods like
-battle fronts in the cañons against towns,
-trees, and boulders. They would be kind<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_252">252</a></span>
-if they could, but have more important
-matters. Such storms, called cloud-bursts
-by the country folk, are not rain, rather
-the spillings of Thor’s cup, jarred by the
-Thunderer. After such a one the water
-that comes up in the village hydrants miles
-away is white with forced bubbles from the
-wind-tormented streams.</p>
-
-<p>All that storms do to the face of the
-earth you may read in the geographies, but
-not what they do to our contemporaries.
-I remember one night of thunderous rain
-made unendurably mournful by the houseless
-cry of a cougar whose lair, and perhaps
-his family, had been buried under a slide of
-broken boulders on the slope of Kearsarge.
-We had heard the heavy denotation of
-the slide about the hour of the alpenglow,
-a pale rosy interval in a darkling air, and
-judged he must have come from hunting<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_253">253</a></span>
-to the ruined cliff and paced the night out
-before it, crying a very human woe. I remember,
-too, in that same season of storms,
-a lake made milky white for days, and
-crowded out of its bed by clay washed into
-it by a fury of rain, with the trout floating
-in it belly up, stunned by the shock of the
-sudden flood. But there were trout enough
-for what was left of the lake next year and
-the beginning of a meadow about its upper
-rim. What taxed me most in the wreck
-of one of my favorite cañons by cloudburst
-was to see a bobcat mother mouthing
-her drowned kittens in the ruined lair
-built in the wash, far above the limit of accustomed
-waters, but not far enough for
-the unexpected. After a time you get the
-point of view of gods about these things to
-save you from being too pitiful.</p>
-
-<p>The great snows that come at the beginning<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_254">254</a></span>
-of winter, before there is yet any
-snow except the perpetual high banks, are
-best worth while to watch. These come
-often before the late bloomers are gone
-and while the migratory birds are still in
-the piney woods. Down in the valley you
-see little but the flocking of blackbirds in
-the streets, or the low flight of mallards
-over the tulares, and the gathering of
-clouds behind Williamson. First there is
-a waiting stillness in the wood; the pine-trees
-creak although there is no wind, the
-sky glowers, the firs rock by the water
-borders. The noise of the creek rises insistently
-and falls off a full note like a child
-abashed by sudden silence in the room.
-This changing of the stream-tone following
-tardily the changes of the sun on melting
-snows is most meaningful of wood notes.
-After it runs a little trumpeter wind to cry<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_255">255</a></span>
-the wild creatures to their holes. Sometimes
-the warning hangs in the air for days
-with increasing stillness. Only Clark’s
-crow and the strident jays make light of it;
-only they can afford to. The cattle get
-down to the foothills and ground inhabiting
-creatures make fast their doors. It
-grows chill, blind clouds fumble in the
-cañons; there will be a roll of thunder,
-perhaps, or a flurry of rain, but mostly the
-snow is born in the air with quietness and
-the sense of strong white pinions softly
-stirred. It increases, is wet and clogging,
-and makes a white night of midday.</p>
-
-<p>There is seldom any wind with first
-snows, more often rain, but later, when
-there is already a smooth foot or two over
-all the slopes, the drifts begin. The late
-snows are fine and dry, mere ice granules
-at the wind’s will. Keen mornings after<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_256">256</a></span>
-a storm they are blown out in wreaths and
-banners from the high ridges sifting into
-the cañons.</p>
-
-<p>Once in a year or so we have a “big
-snow.” The cloud tents are widened out
-to shut in the valley and an outlying range
-or two and are drawn tight against the sun.
-Such a storm begins warm, with a dry white
-mist that fills and fills between the ridges,
-and the air is thick with formless groaning.
-Now for days you get no hint of the neighboring
-ranges until the snows begin to
-lighten and some shouldering peak lifts
-through a rent. Mornings after the heavy
-snows are steely blue, two-edged with cold,
-divinely fresh and still, and these are times
-to go up to the pine borders. There you
-may find floundering in the unstable drifts
-“tainted wethers” of the wild sheep, faint
-from age and hunger; easy prey. Even the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_257">257</a></span>
-deer make slow going in the thick fresh
-snow, and once we found a wolverine going
-blind and feebly in the white glare.</p>
-
-<div id="if_i_257" class="figright rm12" style="width: 186px;"><img src="images/i_257.jpg" width="186" height="217" alt="" /></div>
-
-<p>No tree takes the snow stress with such
-ease as the silver fir. The star-whorled,
-fan-spread branches droop under the soft
-wreaths&mdash;droop and press flatly to the
-trunk; presently the point of overloading
-is reached, there is a soft sough and muffled
-dropping, the boughs recover, and the
-weighting goes on until the drifts have
-reached the midmost whorls and covered
-up the branches. When the snows are
-particularly wet and heavy they spread
-over the young firs in green-ribbed tents
-wherein harbor winter loving birds.</p>
-
-<div id="if_i_258" class="figleft lm12" style="width: 172px;"><img src="images/i_258.jpg" width="172" height="393" alt="" /></div>
-
-<p>All storms of desert hills, except wind
-storms, are impotent. East and east of the
-Sierras they rise in nearly parallel ranges,
-desertward, and no rain breaks over them,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_258">258</a></span>
-except from some far-strayed cloud or
-roving wind from the California Gulf, and
-these only in winter. In summer the sky
-travails with thunderings and the flare of
-sheet lightnings to win a few blistering big
-drops, and once in a lifetime the chance of
-a torrent. But you have not known what
-force resides in the mindless things until
-you have known a desert wind. One
-expects it at the turn of the two seasons,
-wet and dry, with electrified tense nerves.
-Along the edge of the mesa where it drops
-off to the valley, dust devils begin to rise
-white and steady, fanning out at the top
-like the genii out of the Fisherman’s bottle.
-One supposes the Indians might have
-learned the use of smoke signals from
-these dust pillars as they learn most things
-direct from the tutelage of the earth. The
-air begins to move fluently, blowing hot<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_259">259</a></span>
-and cold between the ranges. Far south
-rises a murk of sand against the sky; it
-grows, the wind shakes itself, and has a
-smell of earth. The cloud of small dust
-takes on the color of gold and shuts out
-the neighborhood, the push of the wind is
-unsparing. Only man of all folk is foolish
-enough to stir abroad in it. But being
-in a house is really much worse; no relief
-from the dust, and a great fear of the
-creaking timbers. There is no looking
-ahead in such a wind, and the bite of the
-small sharp sand on exposed skin is keener
-than any insect sting. One might sleep,
-for the lapping of the wind wears one to
-the point of exhaustion very soon, but
-there is dread, in open sand stretches sometimes
-justified, of being over blown by the
-drift. It is hot, dry, fretful work, but by
-going along the ground with the wind<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_260">260</a></span>
-behind, one may come upon strange things
-in its tumultuous privacy. I like these
-truces of wind and heat that the desert
-makes, otherwise I do not know how I
-should come by so many acquaintances
-with furtive folk. I like to see hawks sitting
-daunted in shallow holes, not daring
-to spread a feather, and doves in a row by
-the prickle bushes, and shut-eyed cattle,
-turned tail to the wind in a patient doze.
-I like the smother of sand among the
-dunes, and finding small coiled snakes in
-open places, but I never like to come in a
-wind upon the silly sheep. The wind robs
-them of what wit they had, and they seem
-never to have learned the self-induced hypnotic
-stupor with which most wild things
-endure weather stress. I have never heard
-that the desert winds brought harm to any
-other than the wandering shepherds and<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_261">261</a></span>
-their flocks. Once below Pastaria Little
-Pete showed me bones sticking out of the
-sand where a flock of two hundred had
-been smothered in a bygone wind. In
-many places the four-foot posts of a cattle
-fence had been buried by the wind-blown
-dunes.</p>
-
-<p>It is enough occupation, when no storm
-is brewing, to watch the cloud currents and
-the chambers of the sky. From Kearsarge,
-say, you look over Inyo and find pink soft
-cloud masses asleep on the level desert air;
-south of you hurries a white troop late to
-some gathering of their kind at the back
-of Oppapago; nosing the foot of Waban,
-a woolly mist creeps south. In the clean,
-smooth paths of the middle sky and highest
-up in air, drift, unshepherded, small flocks
-ranging contrarily. You will find the
-proper names of these things in the reports<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_262">262</a></span>
-of the Weather Bureau&mdash;cirrus, cumulus,
-and the like&mdash;and charts that will teach by
-study when to sow and take up crops. It is
-astonishing the trouble men will be at to
-find out when to plant potatoes, and gloze
-over the eternal meaning of the skies.
-You have to beat out for yourself many
-mornings on the windly headlands the
-sense of the fact that you get the same
-rainbow in the cloud drift over Waban and
-the spray of your garden hose. And not
-necessarily then do you live up to it.</p>
-
-<hr />
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_263">263</a></span></p>
-
-<div class="chapter">
-<h2 id="h_263" class="vspace">THE LITTLE TOWN OF THE GRAPE VINES</h2>
-</div>
-
-<div id="if_i_263" class="figcenter" style="width: 223px;"><img src="images/i_263.jpg" width="223" height="192" alt="" /></div>
-
-<hr />
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_265">265</a></span></p>
-
-<h3>THE LITTLE TOWN OF THE GRAPE VINES</h3>
-
-<p class="drop-cap"><span class="smcap1">There</span> are still some places in the
-west where the quails cry “<em>cuidado</em>”;
-where all the speech is soft, all the manners
-gentle; where all the dishes have
-<i xml:lang="es" lang="es">chile</i> in them, and they make more of the
-Sixteenth of September than they do of
-the Fourth of July. I mean in particular
-El Pueblo de Las Uvas. Where it lies,
-how to come at it, you will not get from
-me; rather would I show you the heron’s
-nest in the tulares. It has a peak behind
-it, glinting above the tamarack pines, above
-a breaker of ruddy hills that have a long
-slope valley-wards and the shoreward steep
-of waves toward the Sierras.</p>
-
-<p>Below the Town of the Grape Vines,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_266">266</a></span>
-which shortens to Las Uvas for common
-use, the land dips away to the river pastures
-and the tulares. It shrouds under
-a twilight thicket of vines, under a dome of
-cottonwood-trees, drowsy and murmurous
-as a hive. Hereabouts are some strips of
-tillage and the headgates that dam up the
-creek for the village weirs; upstream you
-catch the growl of the arrastra. Wild vines
-that begin among the willows lap over to
-the orchard rows, take the trellis and roof-tree.</p>
-
-<p>There is another town above Las Uvas
-that merits some attention, a town of arches
-and airy crofts, full of linnets, blackbirds,
-fruit birds, small sharp hawks, and mockingbirds
-that sing by night. They pour
-out piercing, unendurably sweet cavatinas
-above the fragrance of bloom and musky
-smell of fruit. Singing is in fact the business<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_267">267</a></span>
-of the night at Las Uvas as sleeping
-is for midday. When the moon comes
-over the mountain wall new-washed from
-the sea, and the shadows lie like lace on
-the stamped floors of the patios, from recess
-to recess of the vine tangle runs the thrum
-of guitars and the voice of singing.</p>
-
-<p>At Las Uvas they keep up all the good
-customs brought out of Old Mexico or
-bred in a lotus-eating land; drink, and are
-merry and look out for something to eat
-afterward; have children, nine or ten to a
-family, have cock-fights, keep the siesta,
-smoke cigarettes and wait for the sun to
-go down. And always they dance; at dusk
-on the smooth adobe floors, afternoons
-under the trellises where the earth is damp
-and has a fruity smell. A betrothal, a
-wedding, or a christening, or the mere
-proximity of a guitar is sufficient occasion;<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_268">268</a></span>
-and if the occasion lacks, send for the
-guitar and dance anyway.</p>
-
-<p>All this requires explanation. Antonio
-Sevadra, drifting this way from Old Mexico
-with the flood that poured into the Tappan
-district after the first notable strike, discovered
-La Golondrina. It was a generous
-lode and Tony a good fellow; to work
-it he brought in all the Sevadras, even to
-the twice-removed; all the Castros who
-were his wife’s family, all the Saises, Romeros,
-and Eschobars,&mdash;the relations of
-his relations-in-law. There you have the
-beginning of a pretty considerable town.
-To these accrued much of the Spanish
-California float swept out of the southwest
-by eastern enterprise. They slacked away
-again when the price of silver went down,
-and the ore dwindled in La Golondrina.
-All the hot eddy of mining life swept away<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_269">269</a></span>
-from that corner of the hills, but there
-were always those too idle, too poor to
-move, or too easily content with El Pueblo
-de Las Uvas.</p>
-
-<p>Nobody comes nowadays to the town of
-the grape vines except, as we say, “with
-the breath of crying,” but of these enough.
-All the low sills run over with small heads.
-Ah, ah! There is a kind of pride in that
-if you did but know it, to have your baby
-every year or so as the time sets, and keep
-a full breast. So great a blessing as marriage
-is easily come by. It is told of Ruy
-Garcia that when he went for his marriage
-license he lacked a dollar of the clerk’s
-fee, but borrowed it of the sheriff, who expected
-reëlection and exhibited thereby a
-commendable thrift.</p>
-
-<p>Of what account is it to lack meal or
-meat when you may have it of any neighbor?<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_270">270</a></span>
-Besides, there is sometimes a point
-of honor in these things. Jesus Romero,
-father of ten, had a job sacking ore in the
-Marionette which he gave up of his own
-accord. “Eh, why?” said Jesus, “for my
-fam’ly.”</p>
-
-<p>“It is so, señora,” he said solemnly, “I
-go to the Marionette, I work, I eat meat&mdash;pie&mdash;frijoles&mdash;good,
-ver’ good. I come
-home sad’day nigh’ I see my fam’ly. I play
-lil’ game poker with the boys, have lil’ drink
-wine, my money all gone. My family have
-no money, nothing eat. All time I work at
-mine I eat, good, ver’ good grub. I think
-sorry for my fam’ly. No, no, señora, I no
-work no more that Marionette, I stay with
-my fam’ly.” The wonder of it is, I think,
-that the family had the same point of view.</p>
-
-<p>Every house in the town of the vines has
-its garden plot, corn and brown beans and<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_271">271</a></span>
-a row of peppers reddening in the sun; and
-in damp borders of the irrigating ditches
-clumps of <i xml:lang="es" lang="es">yerba santa</i>, horehound, catnip,
-and spikenard, wholesome herbs and curative,
-but if no peppers then nothing at all.
-You will have for a holiday dinner, in Las
-Uvas, soup with meat balls and chile in it,
-chicken with chile, rice with chile, fried
-beans with more chile, enchilada, which is
-corn cake with a sauce of chile and tomatoes,
-onion, grated cheese, and olives,
-and for a relish chile <i xml:lang="es" lang="es">tepines</i> passed about
-in a dish, all of which is comfortable and
-corrective to the stomach. You will have
-wine which every man makes for himself,
-of good body and inimitable bouquet, and
-sweets that are not nearly so nice as they
-look.</p>
-
-<p>There are two occasions when you may
-count on that kind of a meal; always on<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_272">272</a></span>
-the Sixteenth of September, and on the
-two-yearly visits of Father Shannon. It
-is absurd, of course, that El Pueblo de
-Las Uvas should have an Irish priest, but
-Black Rock, Minton, Jimville, and all that
-country round do not find it so. Father
-Shannon visits them all, waits by the Red
-Butte to confess the shepherds who go
-through with their flocks, carries blessing
-to small and isolated mines, and so in the
-course of a year or so works around to
-Las Uvas to bury and marry and christen.
-Then all the little graves in the <i xml:lang="es" lang="es">Campo
-Santo</i> are brave with tapers, the brown pine
-headboards blossom like Aaron’s rod with
-paper roses and bright cheap prints of
-Our Lady of Sorrows. Then the Señora
-Sevadra, who thinks herself elect of heaven
-for that office, gathers up the original sinners,
-the little Elijias, Lolas, Manuelitas,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_273">273</a></span>
-Josés, and Felipés, by dint of adjurations
-and sweets smuggled into small perspiring
-palms, to fit them for the Sacrament.</p>
-
-<div id="if_i_273" class="figright rm12" style="width: 170px;"><img src="images/i_273.jpg" width="170" height="207" alt="" /></div>
-
-<p>I used to peek in at them, never so softly,
-in Doña Ina’s living-room; Raphael-eyed
-little imps, going sidewise on their knees
-to rest them from the bare floor, candles
-lit on the mantel to give a religious air,
-and a great sheaf of wild bloom before the
-Holy Family. Come Sunday they set out
-the altar in the schoolhouse, with the finedrawn
-altar cloths, the beaten silver candlesticks,
-and the wax images, chief glory of
-Las Uvas, brought up mule-back from Old
-Mexico forty years ago. All in white the
-communicants go up two and two in a
-hushed, sweet awe to take the body of their
-Lord, and Tomaso, who is priest’s boy, tries
-not to look unduly puffed up by his office.
-After that you have dinner and a bottle of<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_274">274</a></span>
-wine that ripened on the sunny slope of
-Escondito. All the week Father Shannon
-has shriven his people, who bring clean
-conscience to the betterment of appetite,
-and the Father sets them an example.
-Father Shannon is rather big about the
-middle to accommodate the large laugh that
-lives in him, but a most shrewd searcher
-of hearts. It is reported that one derives
-comfort from his confessional, and I for
-my part believe it.</p>
-
-<p>The celebration of the Sixteenth, though
-it comes every year, takes as long to prepare
-for as Holy Communion. The señoritas
-have each a new dress apiece, the
-señoras a new <i xml:lang="es" lang="es">rebosa</i>. The young gentlemen
-have new silver trimmings to their
-sombreros, unspeakable ties, silk handkerchiefs,
-and new leathers to their spurs. At
-this time when the peppers glow in the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_275">275</a></span>
-gardens and the young quail cry “<i xml:lang="es" lang="es">cuidado</i>,”
-“have a care!” you can hear the <em>plump,
-plump</em> of the <i xml:lang="es" lang="es">metate</i> from the alcoves of the
-vines where comfortable old dames, whose
-experience gives them the touch of art, are
-pounding out corn for tamales.</p>
-
-<p>School-teachers from abroad have tried
-before now at Las Uvas to have school
-begin on the first of September, but got
-nothing else to stir in the heads of the little
-Castros, Garcias, and Romeros but feasts
-and cock-fights until after the Sixteenth.
-Perhaps you need to be told that this is
-the anniversary of the Republic, when
-liberty awoke and cried in the provinces
-of Old Mexico. You are aroused at midnight
-to hear them shouting in the streets,
-“<i xml:lang="es" lang="es">Vive la Libertad!</i>” answered from the
-houses and the recesses of the vines, “<i xml:lang="es" lang="es">Vive
-la Mexico!</i>” At sunrise shots are fired<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_276">276</a></span>
-commemorating the tragedy of unhappy
-Maximilian, and then music, the noblest of
-national hymns, as the great flag of Old
-Mexico floats up the flag-pole in the bare
-little plaza of shabby Las Uvas. The sun
-over Pine Mountain greets the eagle of
-Montezuma before it touches the vineyards
-and the town, and the day begins with a
-great shout. By and by there will be a
-reading of the Declaration of Independence
-and an address punctured by <i xml:lang="es" lang="es">vives</i>;
-all the town in its best dress, and some exhibits
-of horsemanship that make lathered
-bits and bloodly spurs; also a cock-fight.</p>
-
-<div id="if_i_276" class="figcenter" style="width: 358px;"><img src="images/i_276.jpg" width="358" height="548" alt="" /><div class="caption">BY NIGHT THERE WILL BE DANCING</div></div>
-
-<p>By night there will be dancing, and such
-music! old Santos to play the flute, a little
-lean man with a saintly countenance, young
-Garcia whose guitar has a soul, and Carrasco
-with the violin. They sit on a high
-platform above the dancers in the candle<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_277">277</a></span>
-flare, backed by the red, white, and green of
-Old Mexico, and play fervently such music
-as you will not hear otherwhere.</p>
-
-<div id="if_i_277" class="figright rm12" style="width: 176px;"><img src="images/i_277.jpg" width="176" height="554" alt="" /></div>
-
-<p>At midnight the flag comes down. Count
-yourself at a loss if you are not moved by
-that performance. Pine Mountain watches
-whitely overhead, shepherd fires glow
-strongly on the glooming hills. The plaza,
-the bare glistening pole, the dark folk, the
-bright dresses, are lit ruddily by a bonfire.
-It leaps up to the eagle flag, dies down, the
-music begins softly and aside. They play
-airs of old longing and exile; slowly out of
-the dark the flag drops down, bellying and
-falling with the midnight draught. Sometimes
-a hymn is sung, always there are
-tears. The flag is down; Tony Sevadra
-has received it in his arms. The music
-strikes a barbaric swelling tune, another
-flag begins a slow ascent,&mdash;it takes a<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_278">278</a></span>
-breath or two to realize that they are both,
-flag and tune, the Star Spangled Banner,&mdash;a
-volley is fired, we are back, if you
-please, in California of America. Every
-youth who has the blood of patriots in him
-lays ahold on Tony Sevadra’s flag, happiest
-if he can get a corner of it. The music
-goes before, the folk fall in two and two,
-singing. They sing everything, America,
-the Marseillaise, for the sake of the French
-shepherds hereabout, the hymn of Cuba,
-and the Chilian national air to comfort
-two families of that land. The flag goes
-to Doña Ina’s, with the candlesticks and
-the altar cloths, then Las Uvas eats tamales
-and dances the sun up the slope of Pine
-Mountain.</p>
-
-<div id="if_i_278" class="figleft lm15" style="width: 216px;"><img src="images/i_278.jpg" width="216" height="116" alt="" /></div>
-
-<p>You are not to suppose that they do not
-keep the Fourth, Washington’s Birthday,
-and Thanksgiving at the town of the grape<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_279">279</a></span>
-vines. These make excellent occasions
-for quitting work and dancing, but the
-Sixteenth is the holiday of the heart. On
-Memorial Day the graves have garlands
-and new pictures of the saints tacked to
-the headboards. There is great virtue in
-an <i xml:lang="la" lang="la">Ave</i> said in the Camp of the Saints.
-I like that name which the Spanish speaking
-people give to the garden of the dead,
-<i xml:lang="es" lang="es">Campo Santo</i>, as if it might be some bed
-of healing from which blind souls and
-sinners rise up whole and praising God.
-Sometimes the speech of simple folk hints
-at truth the understanding does not reach.
-I am persuaded only a complex soul can get
-any good of a plain religion. Your earth-born
-is a poet and a symbolist. We breed
-in an environment of asphalt pavements
-a body of people whose creeds are chiefly
-restrictions against other people’s way of<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_280">280</a></span>
-life, and have kitchens and latrines under
-the same roof that houses their God. Such
-as these go to church to be edified, but at
-Las Uvas they go for pure worship and to
-entreat their God. The logical conclusion
-of the faith that every good gift cometh
-from God is the open hand and the finer
-courtesy. The meal done without buys a
-candle for the neighbor’s dead child. You
-do foolishly to suppose that the candle does
-no good.</p>
-
-<p>At Las Uvas every house is a piece of
-earth&mdash;thick walled, whitewashed adobe
-that keeps the even temperature of a cave;
-every man is an accomplished horseman
-and consequently bow-legged; every family
-keeps dogs, flea-bitten mongrels that loll
-on the earthen floors. They speak a purer
-Castilian than obtains in like villages of
-Mexico, and the way they count relationship<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_281">281</a></span>
-everybody is more or less akin. There is
-not much villainy among them. What incentive
-to thieving or killing can there be
-when there is little wealth and that to be
-had for the borrowing! If they love too
-hotly, as we say “take their meat before
-grace,” so do their betters. Eh, what! shall
-a man be a saint before he is dead? And
-besides, Holy Church takes it out of you
-one way or another before all is done.
-Come away, you who are obsessed with
-your own importance in the scheme of
-things, and have got nothing you did not
-sweat for, come away by the brown valleys
-and full-bosomed hills to the even-breathing
-days, to the kindliness, earthiness, ease of
-El Pueblo de Las Uvas.</p>
-
-<div id="if_i_281" class="figright rm5" style="width: 143px;"><img src="images/i_281.jpg" width="143" height="151" alt="" /></div>
-
-<p class="newpage p4 center vspace bold clear">
-<span class="smaller">The Riverside Press<br />
-<i>Electrotyped and printed by H.&nbsp;O. Houghton &amp; Co.<br />
-Cambridge, Mass., U.&nbsp;S.&nbsp;A.</i></span>
-</p>
-
-<div class="chapter">
-<div class="transnote">
-<h2 class="nobreak p1"><a id="Transcribers_Notes"></a>Transcriber’s Notes</h2>
-
-<p>Punctuation, hyphenation, and spelling were made consistent when a predominant
-preference was found in this book; otherwise they were not changed.</p>
-
-<p>Simple typographical errors were corrected; occasional unbalanced
-quotation marks retained.</p>
-
-<p>Ambiguous hyphens at the ends of lines were retained.</p>
-
-<p>In the original book, each chapter began with a hemi-title page that
-contained an illustration, and an identical chapter heading, sometimes
-with an illustration, on the next page. In some versions of this eBook,
-the second occurrences of those chapter headings have been omitted.</p>
-
-<p>Many of the illustrations in the original book were placed in
-the margins, and some of them partly-wrapped
-around the text. These effects could not be replicated, so,
-in some versions of this eBook, some of the illustrations nest
-within the text; in other versions, all of the illustrations appear
-between paragraphs of the text.</p>
-
-<p>“Winnenap´” was printed with the trailing acute accent mark.</p>
-</div>
-</div>
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-<pre>
-
-
-
-
-
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-</pre>
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