THE MESA TRAIL 



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 chil- 

 dren call " evening snow," and it is no use 

 trying to improve on children's names for 

 wild flowers. 



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 shad- 

 ows begin to swell out from the sidelong 

 ranges, come little flakes of whiteness flut- 

 tering at the edge of the sand. By dusk 

 there are tiny drifts in the lee of every 

 strong shrub, rosy-tipped corollas as riot- 

 ous 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, 

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