FIGTREE JOHN TO BOREGO SPRINGS 203 



slon. The trained eye, looking ahead, can trace this 

 dubious clue, though meeting it at right angles one 

 would see nothing and might cross it a dozen times 

 yet fail to recognize the trail one is seeking. 



Slowly the line of the western mountains grew 

 higher and darker. The tint was not, however, that 

 mystical azure that gives to distant mountain pros- 

 pects the usual wistful charm, but a smoky, furnace- 

 like hue as if the range were built of slag. I tried to 

 believe that I saw the appearance of timber against 

 the sky. Could that be my old friend the Cuyamaca, 

 or the Volcan? It was cheering at least to imagine 

 the green-plushed firs, the singing cedars, and wise, 

 sober pines up there, looking down with pity, surely, 

 on the blanched, sun-drained desert, so old, withered, 

 and gray. 



I felt pretty well withered myself, baked through 

 and through. The interminable ridge of clay danced 

 when I glanced over at it, as if bent on giving me 

 vertigo. At last we crossed a wider wash that I 

 guessed to be the channel of the San Felipe Creek, 

 one of those phantom streams that for nearly all 

 their course run underground, if they run at all. 

 Tracks began to come in from some mysterious 

 origin in the southeast. Then a patch of green ap- 

 peared a mile ahead, which I knew must mark 

 Borego Springs. I halted by a palo verde that had 

 somehow got lost out here, and recklessly drank my 

 remaining Fish Springs water. It was hot, of course, 

 and stale and flat, but to drink freely, with no 

 grudging of table-spoonfuls, was genuine dissipation. 



It was only early afternoon when we reached the 



