The Last of the Plainsmen | Page 9

to see things first, and I cried out:
"Look! here are a red lake and trees!"
"No, lad, not a lake," said old Jim, smiling at me; "that's what haunts
the desert traveler. It's only mirage!"
So I awoke to the realization of that illusive thing, the mirage, a
beautiful lie, false as stairs of sand. Far northward a clear rippling lake
sparkled in the sunshine. Tall, stately trees, with waving green foliage,
bordered the water. For a long moment it lay there, smiling in the sun, a
thing almost tangible; and then it faded. I felt a sense of actual loss. So
real had been the illusion that I could not believe I was not soon to
drink and wade and dabble in the cool waters. Disappointment was
keen. This is what maddens the prospector or sheep-herder lost in the
desert. Was it not a terrible thing to be dying of thirst, to see sparkling
water, almost to smell it and then realize suddenly that all was only a
lying track of the desert, a lure, a delusion? I ceased to wonder at the
Mormons, and their search for water, their talk of water. But I had not
realized its true significance. I had not known what water was. I had
never appreciated it. So it was my destiny to learn that water is the
greatest thing on earth. I hung over a three-foot hole in a dry
stream-bed, and watched it ooze and seep through the sand, and fill
up--oh, so slowly; and I felt it loosen my parched tongue, and steal
through all my dry body with strength and life. Water is said to
constitute three fourths of the universe. However that may be, on the
desert it is the whole world, and all of life.
Two days passed by, all hot sand and wind and glare. The Mormons
sang no more at evening; Jones was silent; the dogs were limp as rags.
At Moncaupie Wash we ran into a sandstorm. The horses turned their
backs to it, and bowed their heads patiently. The Mormons covered
themselves. I wrapped a blanket round my head and hid behind a sage
bush. The wind, carrying the sand, made a strange hollow roar. All was
enveloped in a weird yellow opacity. The sand seeped through the sage
bush and swept by with a soft, rustling sound, not unlike the wind in

the rye. From time to time I raised a corner of my blanket and peeped
out. Where my feet had stretched was an enormous mound of sand. I
felt the blanket, weighted down, slowly settle over me.
Suddenly as it had come, the sandstorm passed. It left a changed world
for us. The trail was covered; the wheels hub-deep in sand; the horses,
walking sand dunes. I could not close my teeth without grating harshly
on sand.
We journeyed onward, and passed long lines of petrified trees, some a
hundred feet in length, lying as they had fallen, thousands of years
before. White ants crawled among the ruins. Slowly climbing the sandy
trail, we circled a great red bluff with jagged peaks, that had seemed an
interminable obstacle. A scant growth of cedar and sage again made its
appearance. Here we halted to pass another night. Under a cedar I heard
the plaintive, piteous bleat of an animal. I searched, and presently
found a little black and white lamb, scarcely able to stand. It came
readily to me, and I carried it to the wagon.
"That's a Navajo lamb," said Emmett. "It's lost. There are Navajo
Indians close by."
"Away in the desert we heard its cry," quoted one of the Mormons.
Jones and I climbed the red mesa near camp to see the sunset. All the
western world was ablaze in golden glory. Shafts of light shot toward
the zenith, and bands of paler gold, tinging to rose, circled away from
the fiery, sinking globe. Suddenly the sun sank, the gold changed to
gray, then to purple, and shadows formed in the deep gorge at our feet.
So sudden was the transformation that soon it was night, the solemn,
impressive night of the desert. A stillness that seemed too sacred to
break clasped the place; it was infinite; it held the bygone ages, and
eternity.
More days, and miles, miles, miles! The last day's ride to the Big
Colorado was unforgettable. We rode toward the head of a gigantic red
cliff pocket, a veritable inferno, immeasurably hot, glaring, awful. It
towered higher and higher above us. When we reached a point of this

red barrier, we heard the dull rumbling roar of water, and we came out,
at length, on a winding trail cut in the face of a blue overhanging the
Colorado River. The first sight of most famous