Following a long established habit our three travelers were up next morning shortly after dawn.
The train was then thundering over the desert northeast of Wadsworth. Carlin noticed the country and said:
"This must be almost on the spot where poor Wright saw his wonderful mirage."
As he spoke the bending rays of the rising sun swept along the sterile earth, and a shimmer in the air close to the ground revealed how swiftly the heat waves were advancing.
"It is as Wright said; the desert grows warm at once, so soon as the morning sun strikes it," said Harding. "Heavens, how awful a desolation. It is as though the face-cloth had been lifted from a dead world."
"Do you remember what Wright told us, about the appalling stillness of this region?" asked Ashley. "One can realize a little of it by looking out. Were the train not here what would there be for sound to act upon?"
"Is it not pitiful," said Harding, "to think of a grand life like Wright's being worn out as his was? He met the terrors here when but a boy. From that time on there was but blow after blow of this merciless world's buffetings until the struggle closed in a violent and untimely death."
"You forget," said Ashley, "that a self-contained soul and royal heart like his, are their own comforters. He had joys that the selfish men of this world never know."
All that day the conversation was only awakened at intervals and then was not long continued. Not only the sorrow in their hearts was claiming their thoughts and imposing the silence which real sorrow covets; but the swift changes wrought in the week just passed, had really resulted in an entire revolution in all their thoughts and plans.
It was to them an epoch. The breakfast station came, later the dinner, later the supper station. All the day the train swept on up the Humboldt valley. Along the river bottom were meadows, but about the only change in the monotonous scenery, was from desert plains to desert mountains and back again to the plains.