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diff --git a/old/51893-0.txt b/old/51893-0.txt deleted file mode 100644 index db66e4d..0000000 --- a/old/51893-0.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,3938 +0,0 @@ -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 *** - - - - -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) - - - - - - - - - -[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. - -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. - -“Winnenap´” was printed with the trailing acute accent mark. - - - - - -End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Land of Little Rain, by Mary Austin - -*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LAND OF LITTLE RAIN *** - -***** This file should be named 51893-0.txt or 51893-0.zip ***** -This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: - http://www.gutenberg.org/5/1/8/9/51893/ - -Produced by Larry B. 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