During the week that we camped at Emigrant Springs we saw no wild life except a few little brown birds that made a happy twittering in the mornings. Sometimes in the blue night we heard the distant howling of coyotes, and once an owl mocked us with a cry that sounded ridiculously like "Hoo, Hoo, Skidoo!" He was a native, no doubt, and old in wisdom. In the rambles among the mountains we found our first wild flowers. They were small except one striking crimson-velvet one with a ragged blossom like garden balsam. It grew in clumps about six inches high and made vivid spots of color against the rocks. Later, as the spring advanced, we found a great variety of flowers, but never this one except at high altitudes. Seeing it was always a joyful heart-beat. The graceful greasewood was in bloom, covered with small yellow flowers that looked like little butterflies perched on the slender branches. The nights were still very cold, often freezing the water in the pail, but the days were pleasantly warm. The sun shone with such dazzling brightness that during the middle of the day the shady sides of rocks were the best resting places. A fresh, steady wind blew nearly always up or down the canyon, sometimes piling great white masses of clouds in the sky, always scouring the world incredibly clean. Each night was a blue wonder. The mountains were delicate, luminous shapes in front of a sky infinitely far away. The big stars hung low and burned with a steady, silver shine.
Every day we climbed one or another of the ridges and smaller mountains close to the spring. It was good to lie on their summits in the sun. From any one of them we could look down the canyon and see the whole length of the Mesquite Valley, always the same, yet, like Death Valley, always different. You can look day after day at the deep, hot basins of the desert without ever knowing them. Quickly enough you can see the obvious features of the Mesquite Valley—the continuation of the Panamints on the west, the wine-red Grapevine Mountains on the east, the low blue hills in the north, the level bottom of the valley streaked with white alkali where Salt Creek crosses it and "Old Johnnie's" big sand-dunes are glistening little ant hills—but you must stay all the hours of a long day to find out what she really is, and then you will not know. Listen:
"Behold me! You think that I am an arid valley with a white alkali streak down the middle of my level-seeming floor. You think that I am surrounded by red mountains, or perhaps you think they are blue, or purple—well, not exactly—more rose.
"Come down to me! I am very deep between the mountains. I am very white. But if you do not like me so I can be a wide, level plain covered with velvet for you to lie on.
"Come down to me! Rest beside this lake. See how it shines, how blue it is! I am all in white like a young girl with a turquoise breastpin. You don't believe that? I am a Witch, I can be anything. My wardrobe is full of bright dresses. I will put them on for you one by one.
"See, I know more colors of blue than you ever dreamed of. When you tire of blue I change to ripe plums. Now I throw gray gauze over my purple. I look like a nun, but am not. Here is my yellow gown. You do not like it? See, I have all degrees of red, fire red and crimson and pink, the color of bride roses. Here is my finest. It is made of every color, but the tone of it is the gray breast of a dove. You did not know that the breast of a dove could be made of all colors, but now I show you.
"Do you not love me? You remember too well that I am hot as a bake-oven. You think that if any one were fool enough to come down to me I would steal behind and grip him by the throat.
"What of it? Why do you question me so much? You see how old I am, how many storms have left their scars on me, and you think I am wise. But I am only fair. Is it not enough to be old and yet fair?
"Beauty is sitting on my topmost peak making the enchantments that confirm your dreams. She experiments with many materials; she makes new combinations forever.
"Behold all the desolate places how they are hers—the lonely hills, the lonely plains, the lonely green sea, the lonely sands—she clothes us in gorgeous raiment, she makes us content with death. Where she is your heart can pasture even to the emptiness between the stars."
A lifetime is not long enough to listen to the songs of the desolate places. A whole sunny, timeless day is too short to hear the Mesquite Valley. The days and nights of the desert merge into each other. They are like perfectly matched pearls being strung on an endless string. You delight to run your fingers over their smooth surfaces and detect no difference.
"Do we move to-morrow?" Thus the Worrier.
"Why to-morrow?"
"We have been here a week."
That is not possible! How could a week slide into past things so soon?