18 



THE DESERT 



Winter cold. 



With them at times came a sharp cold, the 

 more biting for the thin dry air of the desert. 

 All the warmth seemed blown out of the basin 

 with a breath, and its place filled by a storm- 

 wind from the north that sent the condor 

 wheeling down the blast and made the coyote 

 shiver on the hill. How was it possible that 

 such a furnace could grow so cold ! And once 

 or more each winter, when the sky darkened 

 with clouds, there was a fall of snow that for 

 an hour or so whitened the desert mountains 

 and then passed away. At those times the 

 springs were frozen, the high sierras were 

 snow-bound, and down in the desert it seemed 

 as though a great frost-sheet had been let down 

 from above. The brown skins for all their 

 deer-hide clothing were red with cold, and the 

 breath blown from the pony's nostrils was 

 white as smoke. 



A waste of intense heat and cold, of drouth 

 and cloud-bursts, of winds and lightning, of 

 storm and death, what could make any race of 

 hunters or band of red men care for it ? What 

 was the attraction, wherein the fascination ? 

 How often have we wondered why the sailor 

 loves the sea, why the Bedouin loves the sand I 

 What is there but a strip of sky and another 



