Before us was the opening in the mountains where the terrible valley itself lay. It was magnificent in the biggest sense of that big, ill-used word. On the east side rose the precipitous Panamints with a thin line of snow on their summits; opposite them the dark buttresses of the Funeral Mountains faded back into dimness. Between the ranges hung a blue haze of the quality of the sky, like the haze that had obscured the hot Imperial Valley. The mountains were majestic, immovable, their summits dwelt in the living silence. The haze had the magicalness of mirage. We longed to go on while the sun went down and the silence turned blue, for now we were certain that under that haze, between those imposing walls, lay the climax to which Mojave had been leading us, her White Heart. She could never be more desolate, or stiller or grander. It was the logical journey's end, and what had been at first merely a casual choice of destination became a fixed goal to be reached through any hazards.
"If you go there," the old prospector had said, "you will see something you won't see anywhere else on earth."
IV The Outfit
Death Valley was the goal, but after the day at Saratoga Springs one thing was certain: no matter if we could get there in an automobile—and various expedients were suggested to make it possible, even safe—not thus would we enter the White Heart, not with the throbbing of an engine, not dependent on gasoline, not limited in time, not thwarted by roads. When we went it would be slowly, quietly, camping by the springs, making fires of the brush, sleeping under the open sky, listening, watching. We had found the outdoors on the desert a wonderful thing and we wanted to live with it a while. If the White Heart was the climax of Mojave we felt that it must be a climax of the feel of the outdoors, one of its supreme expressions. We were going on a pilgrimage to that.
Such a pilgrimage meant an outfit, either a wagon or a pack-train, and a guide. We needed a man accustomed to living on the desert, who knew the valley thoroughly, who could work in its heat and brightness, and who had the courage to take two ignorant enthusiasts there. We had lost the easy assurance with which we had talked at Joburg about going to Death Valley. No wonder the inhabitants of that town had been stunned when we said that we were on the way there! The unspeakable road beyond Saratoga Springs and the little gravel-ridge which we could not climb were sufficient warning of the nature of the undertaking. Mojave is not easily to be known as we would know her. She keeps herself to herself. The season added a further complication. Soon it would be April and the heat in the valley would be too great for us to endure. The pilgrimage must start no later than January. That meant going home and coming back. As usual the way to the valley bristled with difficulties.
We talked to the Sheriff about it. Julius Meyer was nearing fifty, a lean, strong-looking man. He had a fine face, very somber in repose as though he had met with some lasting disappointment, but wonderfully lit by his occasional smile. His eyes had the hard clearness which living on the desert seems to produce. They looked straight at you. He said little, the kind of man who announces his decisions briefly and carries them out. Mrs. Brauer said of him: "Julius is good." Beyond her praise and the impression which he made we knew nothing of him except the incident of the little fishes and that he had lived twenty years on the desert and had once traveled the length of Death Valley with burros; but we had no hesitation in asking him to be our guide. He said it was a mad idea. Nobody ever went to Death Valley unless they expected to get something out of it, and then they took a Ford if they could find one and hurried.
"We are just like the rest of them," we told him. "We expect to get something out of it, but we can't get it in a Ford."