Seeing nothing better to do, I picked my steps among the dust-bounded streams as best I was able, and passed by on the other side. I had always understood irrigation to be a kind of predictable and controllable rain, but it appeared that, if this were the rule, the rule had exceptions. The sight set me thinking that possibly if the general management of the weather were put into human hands, as the least presumptuous of us are more or less in the habit of wishing were possible, it might still be found difficult to escape an occasional fault of administration. As for my farmer’s emphatic language, I held it excusable. He certainly had provocation, and as the Scripture says, with commendable toleration, there is a time for everything under the sun.
The river valley is narrow, like the river itself, and on the farther side is bounded sharply by steep foothills, behind which are high mountains. I was barely beginning to climb the nearest hill, over its loose covering of small stones, when some bird broke into voice a little above me; one of those peculiar voices, I said to myself, that at a first hearing afford almost no indication as to the size of their owners.
My uncertainty lasted for some minutes, while I made my way cautiously upwards, a step or two at a time. The bird proved to be a small wren,—the rock wren, so called,—said to be “more or less abundant” in this region; “more” rather than “less,” I hope, for I fell in love with the creature immediately.
One of the birds,—for there were two, talking “back and forth,” as we say,—his fit of nervousness over, dropped into a lyrical mood, and regaled me with a very pleasing bit of simple music, all in brief phrases, but with a surprisingly wide range of pitch. Some of the measures had a peculiar vibrant quality suggestive of the finest work of our common Eastern snowbird. But withal, I received the impression that the musician was rather trying his instrument than aiming at a serious performance.
While I stood listening, a bunch of a dozen Mexican house finches, more than half the number in rosy plumage, happened along with the usual chorus of twitters, and alighted in a very peculiar and graceful shrub (ocotillo, I am told is its Mexican name), which grows in clusters of a dozen or so of slender, angular stems, leaning away from one another in all directions and covered sparsely with reddish leaves, which look for all the world like the autumnal foliage of the common barberry. The rosy finches, perched upon this group of slanting, wandlike, fountain-like stems,[13] were exceedingly pretty to look at.
All about me stood tall, fluted columns of the giant cactus, fifteen or twenty feet in height, and large enough for telegraph poles. On the day before, my first day in the city, I had turned a field-glass in this direction, and to my surprise had seen the hills covered with verdure. “Why,” said I, noticing what I took for the trunks of trees amid the green, “those hills are forested.” Now I discovered that the greenness was mostly that of the desert-loving creosote bush (a low shrub, noticeable for being thornless, which covers thousands on thousands of acres hereabouts, and just now is putting forth small yellow blossoms), while the boles of trees were nothing but giant cacti.
Among the stones at my feet grew flowers of various unknown sorts, especially a large yellow one, apparently an evening primrose, rising no more than two inches from the ground, with a tuft of leaves at the base of the stem, or rather at the bottom of the calyx. The only flower of them all that I could certainly name was a pretty blue lupine, smaller than our New England species, both in blossom and leaf, but so exactly like it in other respects that for old acquaintance’ sake, though the lupine was never one of my particular favorites, I plucked it for my buttonhole. I believe it is the only natural-looking, familiar-looking wild plant that I have so far seen in this desert country.
The wrens having become silent, and the finches flown away, I descended the hill and took the road running along its base northward. It must lead, I thought, to another road across the valley, and would make a round of my forenoon’s walk. And so it did; but first it brought me to a large building which proved to be St. Mary’s Sanatorium, more commonly known as the Sisters’ Hospital. I had just passed this and turned the corner, facing the town, when all in a moment, so far at least as my perception of events was concerned, the sky was covered with black clouds, and an icy north wind changed the day from summer to winter as in the twinkling of an eye.
No more loitering by the way. I did at once what every other creature was already doing—I hurried. “Now if I only had that overcoat!” I thought; but speed also is an extra garment, and I put it on.
No more loitering, I said; but I did stop once. Halfway across the valley a flock of blackbirds were feeding beside a barn, and I turned into the yard to look at them.