“Well,” said he, as if he could think of nothing else, “the river comes to the surface here, you know.”
He spoke of the Santa Cruz. And it is true. The river comes to the surface; the stretch of watered farms and the brimming irrigation ditches bear witness to the fact; but it does not stay there. I have frequent occasion to go over the four roads that cross it from the city. On the southernmost of these, where Mexican women are always to be seen washing clothes, spreading the garment over a stone and beating it clean with a stick (“mangling,” I should suppose the word ought to be), carriages drive through the stream, while foot-passengers cross by means of stepping-stones; six or eight boulders of the size of a man’s head, perhaps, picked up at random and laid in a row. The next road is furnished with a bridge, though it is hard to see why. The other two (they are all within the distance of a mile) have neither bridge nor stepping-stones, nor need of any. The river bottom, so called, though it is rather roof than bottom, is as dry as the Sahara.
So it is with the Rillito, and, I suppose, with all the rivers of the desert. They are shy creatures. They love not the garish day. Like the saints of old and the capitalists of our own time, they abhor publicity. Water, they think, shouldn’t be too much in sight. With the squirrel and the rabbit, they live mostly in burrows.
Of certain more highly specialized inhabitants of the desert—rattlesnakes, Gila monsters, tarantulas, and the like—a winter stroller can have little or nothing to relate. They are all here, no doubt, and will disport themselves in their season. No midsummer sun will be too hot for them. For myself, in three weeks’ wandering I have seen one lizard, nothing else. And it, too, was shy, legging it for shelter; running, literally, “like a streak.” That was really all that I saw—a streak of brown over the gray sand. I was neither a road-runner nor a hawk, and for that time the lizard was more scared than hurt.
If this shy life of the desert is happy, as I believe it is, after its manner and according to its measure, we can only admire once more the beneficent effect of use and custom. The safest of us are always in danger. Whether we tread the sands of the desert or the shaded paths of some Garden of Eden, our steps all tend to one end, the one event that happeneth alike to all; and if we, who look before and after, go on our way smiling, why not the humbler and presumably less sensitive people whose homes are under the roots of the creosote bushes?
A NEW ACQUAINTANCE
A student of nature, differing from some less fortunate folk that one meets at wintering places, is never at a loss what to do with his day. In a strange land, at least (the stranger the better), he possesses one of the prime requisites of a contented life: he knows every night what is on his docket for the morrow. His days, so to express it, are all dovetailed together. Tuesday’s work is to finish Monday’s; Wednesday’s is to finish Tuesday’s; and so the weeks run by. What could be simpler, or more conducive to cheerfulness? A day should have a motive, as well as a piece of music or a poem.
I am still at Tucson. Two mornings ago there was but one thing for me to do. I knew it before I rose. I must take the half-past seven horse-car, ride down town as far as Simpson Street, walk thence across the Santa Cruz Valley to the base of Tucson Mountain, and from there follow the narrow road that winds between the foot of the cliffs and the old canal, till I came to a certain bush. The name of this bush I cannot give, not knowing it, but it bears millions of small, fleshy leaves, and, what is more to the present purpose, is covered with thousands, if not millions, of small purple flowers.
I had noticed it for the first time the forenoon before; and I noticed it then because, as I passed, I heard to my great surprise and intense gratification the buzz of a hummingbird’s wings. I was not in the least expecting to see any bird of that sort during my brief winter’s stay in Arizona; and which is better, ornithologically speaking, to find the long expected or the unexpected, is a point that wiser heads than mine may settle. For myself, either happening will do, so it be not too infrequent.
My eyes turned of themselves in the right direction, and there at my elbow was the tiny, emerald-backed, familiar-looking beauty, hovering before the blossoms of this spreading bush. It was only for a second or two. Then for another such period he perched on the slender tip of the nearest mesquite, and then was away on the wings of the wind. I waited for his return, but not long enough, and came back to the city, wondering.