Everywhere there are evidences of the terrible struggle for water—a struggle in which men who come to the desert must instantly engage: every wagon that crosses the desert carries its barrel of water; every man who sets out takes with him a canteen; every ranch has its windmill and its water-barrel. Water is the only thing that is not free. Stop at a desert well, and a sign offers water at ten cents or five cents a head for your horses.
Color, indeed, is one of the great joys of the desert, and one who has learned to love these silent places finds unending pleasure in the changing lights and shades, many of them marvelously delicate and beautiful.
Who can convey the feeling of the mysterious night on the desert, suddenly and sweetly cool after the burning heat of the day, the sky a deep, clear blue above—nowhere so blue as in this dry, pure air—the stars almost crowding down to earth in their nearness and brilliancy, a deep and profound silence round about, broken occasionally by the far-off echoing scream of some prowling coyote or the hoot of an owl? The horses loom big and dark where they feed in the near distance; here and there on the top of a dry yucca-stalk an owl or a hawk sits outlined in black against the sky; otherwise there is nothing anywhere to break the long, smooth line of the horizon.
It is good to feel that, in spite of human enterprise, there is plenty of desert left for many years to come, a place where men can go and have it out with themselves, where they can breathe clean air and get down close to the great, quiet, simple life of the earth. "Few in these hot, dim, frictiony times," says John Muir, "are quite sane or free; choked with care like clocks full of dust, laboriously doing so much good and making so much money—or so little—they are no longer good themselves." But here in the desert there yet remain places of wildness and solitude and quiet; there is room here to turn without rubbing elbows, places where one may yet find refreshment.
INDEX
Across the Continent, [43-45], [103-118], [119-139].
Beginnings of the Westward Movement, [3-13].
Bill Williams, [151-154].