50 THE DESERT AND THE ROSE 



At a pinch they have flown to my rescue, spending 

 nights with me, and cooking- such breakfasts as lead- 

 ers of the simple life are more than glad to praise. 

 Followed by their piping farewells, and after Bet- 

 sinda has been kissed to repletion, I start for home. 



The sun has set, yet earth, air and sky are lumin- 

 ous with a quality which is not radiance but rather 

 its ethereal counterpart. The mountains, unlit, 

 thrust silvered shafts out of the violet gray of can- 

 ons, themselves as indefinite yet distinct as half 

 remembered dreams. The straw of the shorn wheat 

 fields lie like lakes of unclouded amber set in the 

 twilight of alfalfa meadows. Gold there is none. 

 Amber is everywhere, lustrous, pervasive, faintly 

 tinting the very backs of the sheep, as with bleats 

 of remonstrance they tread the circle of the thresh- 

 ing ground — laid out almost in the centre of the 

 highway — and lighting the sheaves beneath their 

 feet. Behind the circling flock walks a young boy 

 clad in sober blue, his straw sombrero pushed back 

 upon his dusky head, the seriousness of responsi- 

 bility in his agate eyes, and over his shoulder an 

 emerald cottonwood branch, borne as the boys of 

 Holy Writ bore their branches of palm. The weird 

 cry, wailing across wide reaching lands as the la- 

 ment of some abandoned soul, quivers on its sus- 

 tained note, then drops, as the men outside the circle 

 raise or lower their arms. Into the land of the 

 Northern Mystery my mind unbidden drifts — into 

 centuries dead and gone. 



Driving onward I find threshing at an end, and 

 in the light breeze fanning earthward men toss the 



