Two routes offered for Tucson; the short cut through Lordsburg and Willcox, and the longer way by Douglas and the Mexican border. When we inquired which route would have more interesting scenery, we had met invariably with a stare and a laugh.
“Not much scenery, wherever you go,—sand and cactus! Just as much on one road as another.”
We therefore chose the shorter way, to learn later that the Douglas-Bisbe route which we discarded was one of the most beautiful drives in the country. Yet we ourselves moved into a theater of loveliness. Saw-toothed ranges, high and stormy, snow-topped, shadowed our trail. The wide amphitheater of our golden valley was encircled with mountains of every size and color; blue, rosy, purple, and at sunset pure gold and transparently radiant. The gray sage turned at sun-down to lavender; mauve shadows lengthened on the desert floor; gorges of angry orange and red cliffs gave savage contrast to the delicate Alpine glow lighting white peaks; a cold, pastel sky framed a solitary star, and frosty air, thinned in its half-mile height to a stimulating sharpness, woke us keenly to life. We felt the enchantment that Arizona weaves from her gray cocoon toward sunset, and wondered at eyes which could look on it all, and see only sand and cactus. Show them the unaccustomed, and they would doubtless have been appreciative enough. A green New England farm with running brooks and blossoming orchards would have spelled Paradise to them, as this Persian pattern of desert did to us; beauty to the parched native of Arizona is an irrigation ditch, bordered by emerald cottonwoods.
If I tint these pages with too many sunsets, it is not from unawareness of my weakness, but because without them a description of Arizona does not describe. In the afternoon hours, between four and eight, the country wakes and glows, and has its moment, like a woman whose youth was plain but whom middle age has touched with charm and mystery. Not to speak of the sunsets of Arizona, till the reader is as saturated with their glory as is the traveler, is to leave the heart of the country unrevealed.
From Willcox to Lordsburg we realized there was more than jest in the remark of our old-timer concerning “dead soldiers.” All the way through that uninhabited desert, we picked our road through avenues of discarded flat bottles of familiar shape, turning all shades of amethyst under the burning rays of the sun. It is an odd effect of the sun on glass here in the desert that it slowly turns a deeper and deeper violet. The desert-wise can tell the date a bottle was discarded from its hue. I was told that one man made a fortune by ripening window-glass in this manner, and selling it to opticians at a fancy price. It may have been a similar industry which lined our path with empty bottles. It must have been so, for Arizona had been “dry” for three years.
Even the lakes were dry. When we met with the term “dry lake” in the guide book, we set it down as another flight of the fanciful creature who had composed its pages, but soon we came upon it. Four miles and more we drove over the bottom of a lake now not even damp, making deep tracks in the white sand. Dry rivers were later to become commonplace, but we were children of Israel but this once. Suddenly beyond us in the distance, through a heat where no drop of water could live, we saw a sparkle and a shimmer of cool blue, and cottonwoods reflected in wet, wavering lines. Our dry lake had turned wet! Mountain peaks rose and floated on its surface,—and not till they melted and skipped about could I believe Toby’s assertion that we were gazing on a mirage. When she focused her camera upon the mirage I scoffed loudly. Tales of travelers in the desert had early rooted in my none too scientific mind the idea that a mirage is a subconscious desire visually projected, like the rootless vines which climb the air at the command of Hindu fakirs. When our finished print showed a definite, if faint, outline of non-existent hills, my little world was slightly less shaken than if Toby had produced a photograph of an astral wanderer from the spirit world. I do not like to look at it. It seems like black magic.
The desert, bleached dazzling white under an afternoon sun, seemed shorn of all the mysteries and apprehensions with which the previous night and Mrs. Flanagan had enveloped it. Now it lay stark and unromantic, colorless in a blare of heat. We were only a few miles from Tucson, when we mounted a hill, and poised a second, looking down on a horseshoe canyon. Our road, narrow and stony, threaded the edge of it,—a sharp down grade, a quick curve at the base, and a steady climb up. As we turned the brow of the hill and passed a clump of trees hiding the view of the bottom, ahead, directly across the road and blocking all passage stood a car. I put on the brakes sharply, and our car veered toward the edge and wavered. How stupid to leave a car directly across a dangerous road on a down grade! This was my first reaction. Then we saw two men, with the slouch that marks the Westerner, step from behind their car, and await our approach. Even while I concentrated on avoiding turning into the ditch, their very quiet manner as they awaited us arrested attention. It was not stupidity which made them choose to alight at that spot. It was an ideally clever place for a hold-up! Concealed itself, it commanded a view of the entire canyon, and would catch a car coming from either direction at lowered speed. These men were not waiting our approach for any casual purpose; something too guarded and watchful, too tensely alert, lay taut beneath their easy slouch. The elder, a bearded thick-set man, carelessly held his hand on his hip pocket, as they do in all Western novels. The taller and younger man stepped into the middle of the road, and raised a hand to stop us.
“Toby,” I said in a low voice, “this looks serious.”
“Bandits!” said Toby, her tone confirming my suspicions.
“Get out the monkey wrench, and point it as if it were a gun. I’ll try to crowd past the car and up the hill.”