56 WHERE ROLLS THE OREGON 



into the car eight other new species of desert 

 flowers ; nibbled a leaf of the sage and some of 

 the salty shad-scale ; picked up a large fragment 

 of black obsidian, and beside it a broken Indian 

 arrowhead of the same lava glass; saw where a 

 coyote had been digging out picket-pins; and 

 was trying to capture a scorpion when the mended 

 car overtook me — and on through the sage we 

 rolled. 



Another stop like this and my desert would be 

 lost. One cannot watch a desert. But one can 

 watch a scorpion ; and to leave the only live scor- 

 pion I had ever seen was hard. As we whirled past 

 a camping freighter, his horses outspanned in the 

 sun, I envied him the ten days he was taking to 

 cover what I was being hurled across in one. To 

 freight it across the High Desert! To feel the 

 beating sun at midday, and at midnight the bite 

 of the frost ! To waken in the unspeakable fresh- 

 ness of the cold dawn to the singing of the sage 

 thrasher ; and at twilight, the long desert twilight, 

 to watch the life of the silent plains awaken, to 

 hear the quaking call of the burrowing owls, and 

 far off through the shadows the cry of the prowl- 

 ing coyotes ! 



