Harper's Round Table, March 2, 1897

by Various

For a long time he could not, and when he finally stepped into the land of dreams they were of such an unhappy nature that he was thankful to awake from them and find a faint dawn stealing over the weird landscape. Both he and his pony were shivering with the chill of early morning when he once more mounted and attempted to retrace his course of the previous day. This, however, was soon given up as a fruitless task, for in that region every prominent feature was reproduced over and over again with a bewildering sameness. Then he sought for some one among the many inaccessible sandstone bluffs by which he was surrounded that might be climbed. Before he found such a one and gained its summit the sun was high overhead, and blazing down with a pitiless heat. Still, on attaining the desired elevation, the lad felt amply repaid, for not many miles away he could plainly see a regular range of bluffs and the trees that indicated a river. He could even catch glimpses here and there of flashing waters. To be sure, these things did not lie in what he believed to be the right direction; but recalling that lost persons generally become turned about, he decided that this must have happened in his case. Carefully noting the bearings of intervening objects, the boy hastened down from his observatory, remounted, and began to urge his unwilling steed over the new course thus laid out.

For hours he travelled, wondering at the distance with each succeeding mile, until finally, at the crest of a long and toilsome ascent, he gained a point from which he again commanded a broad view of the outlying country. Casting an eager glance in the direction he supposed the river to be, the poor lad rubbed his eyes and looked again. Then, as he realized the bitter truth that there was no river, and that he had been the victim of a fleeting mirage, all his strength and energy seemed to leave him, and he sank down on a fragment of rock as weak as a babe. For some time he sat oblivious to his surroundings. He did not note the wonderful scenery outspread as far as the eye could reach on all sides, and upon which every other boy in the country would have considered it a rare privilege to gaze. He had no thought save for his crushing disappointment and his own melancholy condition. He was weak in body from hunger, thirst, and fatigue, and heart-sick at remembrance of the folly and disobedience that had brought him to such a pass.

After a while a pull on the bridle-rein hanging across his arm roused him and caused him to look up. His pony was pulling away, as though impatient to be off.

"I want to go as much as you do, old fellow," said the boy, sadly; "but which way shall we turn?"

Just then his eye lighted on a cluster of slender blue pinnacles rising above a distant horizon, and appearing so different from all that intervened as to seem like signs of friendly promise. At the same time he saw, lying between him and them, a lovely rock-rimmed valley filled with green grass and waving trees, and threaded by a sparkling stream of water.

The boy gazed eagerly at the beautiful picture; and then, as it became blurred by dancing heat-waves, he closed his eyes wearily, muttering that it was only an effect of imagination. In a minute he opened them again, and saw the lovely valley as distinctly as before.

"It may be real, and we'll make a try for it, at any rate," he said, aloud, rising from the rock on which he had been sitting, and climbing very slowly into the saddle.

This time he was determined to gain frequent assurance that he was on the right course. So, within half an hour after leaving the place from which he had discovered the lovely valley, he fastened his pony by the picket-rope to a miniature spire of sandstone, and clambered on foot to the top of another elevated outlook. He hardly dared glance abroad, for fear that all the things he had seen before would have vanished. No. There at least were the slender blue peaks, looking as cool and refreshing, but, alas! quite as distant as before. But where was the green valley? It had disappeared, and in its place rose a range of tall cliffs, like a great white wall, miles in length.

It was a very cruel disappointment; but either the lad's senses were becoming numbed by his sufferings or he had expected it, for he only sighed wearily as he turned away.

"The blue peaks are there, at any rate," he said to himself, as he descended to the plain, "and I will make toward them. If I can reach them, I know I shall be all right; and if I can't—well, I will die as near to them as possible."