202 THE DESERT AND THE ROSE 



to another, and when they commit murder do so for 

 what appears to them lawful and sufficient reason. 

 In any case, homicides are all too frequent through- 

 out these United States and too rarely punished. 

 But the mountaineers pursue a course of their own 

 in the customary evasion of the law, and when 

 sheriffs are sent after them they stand together to 

 a man, cattlemen included, and if they do decide to 

 give themselves up it is with the serene conscious- 

 ness that no mountain witness will be found to testi- 

 fy against them ! 



Were we to pursue those ethereally blue shadows 

 on our porphyry mountains to their deepest depths, 

 we should find that many of them are formed by 

 canon diving into the apparently uninhabited 

 steeps — some green with wild grasses and oats, and 

 tinkling with tiny streams from which the casually 

 industrious mountaineer irrigates his crop patches 

 of potatoes or the like, and timbered with cedar, 

 pinon, juniper, and ash trees of various kinds. In 

 such pockets the intermittent labor of the mountain 

 man reaps reward in harmony with his sense of the 

 fitness of things. Where the streams are larger he 

 erects saw mills and becomes prosperous, also in 

 accordance with his simple requirements. Further 

 north the woods transform themselves into forests, 

 filled with game — often also bear and mountain 

 lion — for the diversion of the hunter, and the moun- 

 tain creeks furnish sport for the lover of the rod and 

 fly. As time goes on, more and more of "the tired 

 business man" species from eastern cities will dis- 

 cover the enchantments and diversions of the New 



