The Last of the Plainsmen | Page 8

the other shore. Of all the pitiful yelps ever uttered by a frightened
and lonely puppy, his were the most forlorn I had ever heard. Time
after time he plunged in, and with many bitter howls of distress, went
back. I kept calling, and at last, hoping to make him come by a show of
indifference, I started away. This broke his heart. Putting up his head,
he let out a long, melancholy wail, which for aught I knew might have
been a prayer, and then consigned himself to the yellow current. Ranger
swam like a boy learning. He seemed to be afraid to get wet. His
forefeet were continually pawing the air in front of his nose. When he
struck the swift place, he went downstream like a flash, but still kept
swimming valiantly. I tried to follow along the sand-bar, but found it
impossible. I encouraged him by yelling. He drifted far below, stranded
on an island, crossed it, and plunged in again, to make shore almost out
of my sight. And when at last I got to dry sand, there was Ranger, wet
and disheveled, but consciously proud and happy.
After lunch we entered upon the seventy-mile stretch from the Little to
the Big Colorado.
Imagination had pictured the desert for me as a vast, sandy plain, flat
and monotonous. Reality showed me desolate mountains gleaming bare
in the sun, long lines of red bluffs, white sand dunes, and hills of blue
clay, areas of level ground--in all, a many-hued, boundless world in
itself, wonderful and beautiful, fading all around into the purple haze of
deceiving distance.
Thin, clear, sweet, dry, the desert air carried a languor, a dreaminess,
tidings of far-off things, and an enthralling promise. The fragrance of
flowers, the beauty and grace of women, the sweetness of music, the
mystery of life--all seemed to float on that promise. It was the air
breathed by the lotus-eaters, when they dreamed, and wandered no
more.
Beyond the Little Colorado, we began to climb again. The sand was
thick; the horses labored; the drivers shielded their faces. The dogs
began to limp and lag. Ranger had to be taken into a wagon; and then,

one by one, all of the other dogs except Moze. He refused to ride, and
trotted along with his head down.
Far to the front the pink cliffs, the ragged mesas, the dark, volcanic
spurs of the Big Colorado stood up and beckoned us onward. But they
were a far hundred miles across the shifting sands, and baked day, and
ragged rocks. Always in the rear rose the San Francisco peaks, cold and
pure, startlingly clear and close in the rare atmosphere.
We camped near another water hole, located in a deep, yellow-colored
gorge, crumbling to pieces, a ruin of rock, and silent as the grave. In the
bottom of the canyon was a pool of water, covered with green scum.
My thirst was effectually quenched by the mere sight of it. I slept
poorly, and lay for hours watching the great stars. The silence was
painfully oppressive. If Jones had not begun to give a respectable
imitation of the exhaust pipe on a steamboat, I should have been
compelled to shout aloud, or get up; but this snoring would have
dispelled anything. The morning came gray and cheerless. I got up stiff
and sore, with a tongue like a rope.
All day long we ran the gauntlet of the hot, flying sand. Night came
again, a cold, windy night. I slept well until a mule stepped on my bed,
which was conducive to restlessness. At dawn, cold, gray clouds tried
to blot out the rosy east. I could hardly get up. My lips were cracked;
my tongue swollen to twice its natural size; my eyes smarted and
burned. The barrels and kegs of water were exhausted. Holes that had
been dug in the dry sand of a dry streambed the night before in the
morning yielded a scant supply of muddy alkali water, which went to
the horses.
Only twice that day did I rouse to anything resembling enthusiasm. We
came to a stretch of country showing the wonderful diversity of the
desert land. A long range of beautifully rounded clay stones bordered
the trail. So symmetrical were they that I imagined them works of
sculptors. Light blue, dark blue, clay blue, marine blue, cobalt
blue--every shade of blue was there, but no other color. The other time
that I awoke to sensations from without was when we came to the top
of a ridge. We had been passing through red-lands. Jones called the

place a strong, specific word which really was illustrative of the heat
amid those scaling red ridges. We came out where the red changed
abruptly to gray. I seemed always