i6o CALIFORNIA DESERT TRAILS 



in the flicker and haze. On my right was the Pinto 

 Range, now showing a patching of light and dark 

 masses that gave point to the name. Ahead were the 

 Eagle and Cottonwood Mountains, into which the 

 road vanished as if there it must end. Hours passed 

 in stupefying heat while I alternately dozed in the 

 saddle or dragged the apathetic Kaweah along at 

 snail-like pace. The creosotes moved listlessly when 

 for a moment the wind came with furnace-like 

 breath. There was little comfort in the canteen, for 

 the water was unpleasantly hot, and the vacant shell 

 of a tortoise, or bleaching ribs of cattle, were objects 

 not interesting to a jaded mind. The spry white 

 lizards seemed the only things that kept any touch 

 of energy, I might almost say of life. 



By early afternoon we reached the entrance to a 

 rocky pass that led into the mountains, and stopped 

 for rest and lunch. I had saved a feed of barley for 

 Kaweah, which he munched with indifference and 

 then dozed with drooping head, too fagged to crop 

 the scraps of galleta that I pointed out to him. Loath 

 as I was to move on, I could not afford more than 

 the regulation hour, for there were many miles 

 ahead of us before we should reach the next water. 



The wash that issued from this cafion was filled 

 with a dense growth of the smoke tree, looking like a 

 column of men in light gray uniform winding away 

 in close-shut ranks across the plain. The flowering 

 season was nearly past, but the ground w^as colored 

 deep blue by the fallen petals. Plant life became 

 more varied as we gained the higher ground, as is 

 always the case in these desert cafions, bare as they 



