[1] Camp-lingo for any kind of syrup.
The winds were indeed abroad that night. They rattled our cabin, they shrieked in our eaves, they puffed down our chimney, scattering the ashes and leaving in the room a balloon of smoke as though a shell had burst. When we opened the door and stepped out, after our good-nights had been said, it caught at our hats and garments as though it had been lying in wait for us.
To our eyes, fire-dazzled, the night seemed very dark. There would be a moon later, but at present even the stars seemed only so many pinpoints of dull metal, lustreless, without illumination. We felt our way to camp, conscious of the softness of grasses, the uncertainty of stones.
At camp the remains of the fire crouched beneath the rating of the storm. Its embers glowed sullen and red, alternately glaring with a half-formed resolution to rebel, and dying to a sulky resignation. Once a feeble flame sprang up for an instant, but was immediately pounced on and beaten flat as though by a vigilant antagonist.
We, stumbling, gathered again our tumbled blankets. Across the brow of the knoll lay a huge pine trunk. In its shelter we respread our bedding, and there, standing, dressed for the night. The power of the wind tugged at our loose garments, hoping for spoil. A towel, shaken by accident from the interior of a sweater, departed white-winged, like a bird, into the outer blackness. We found it next day caught in the bushes several hundred yards distant. Our voices as we shouted were snatched from our lips and hurled lavishly into space. The very breath of our bodies seemed driven back, so that as we faced the elements, we breathed in gasps, with difficulty.
Then we dropped down into our blankets.
At once the prostrate tree-trunk gave us its protection. We lay in a little back-wash of the racing winds, still as a night in June. Over us roared the battle. We felt like sharpshooters in the trenches; as though, were we to raise our heads, at that instant we should enter a zone of danger. So we lay quietly on our backs and stared at the heavens.
The first impression thence given was of stars sailing serene and unaffected, remote from the turbulence of what until this instant had seemed to fill the universe. They were as always, just as we should see them when the evening was warm and the tree-toads chirped clearly audible at half a mile. The importance of the tempest shrank. Then below them next we noticed the mountains; they too were serene and calm.
Immediately it was as though the storm were an hallucination; something not objective; something real, but within the soul of him who looked upon it. It claimed sudden kinship with those blackest days when nevertheless the sun, the mere external unimportant sun, shines with superlative brilliancy. Emotions of a power to shake the foundations of life seemed vaguely to stir in answer to these their hollow symbols. For after all, we were contented at heart and tranquil in mind, and this was but the outer gorgeous show of an intense emotional experience we did not at the moment prove. Our nerves responded to it automatically. We became excited, keyed to a high tension, and so lay rigid on our backs, as though fighting out the battles of our souls.
It was all so unreal and yet so plain to our senses that perforce automatically our experience had to conclude it psychical. We were in air absolutely still. Yet above us the trees writhed and twisted and turned and bent and struck back, evidently in the power of a mighty force. Across the calm heavens the murk of flying atmosphere—I have always maintained that if you looked closely enough you could SEE the wind—the dim, hardly-made-out, fine debris fleeing high in the air;—these faintly hinted at intense movement rushing down through space. A roar of sound filled the hollow of the sky. Occasionally it intermitted, falling abruptly in volume like the mysterious rare hushings of a rapid stream. Then the familiar noises of a summer night became audible for the briefest instant,—a horse sneezed, an owl hooted, the wild call of birds came down the wind. And with a howl the legions of good and evil took up their warring. It was too real, and yet it was not reconcilable with the calm of our resting-places.
For hours we lay thus in all the intensity of an inner storm and stress, which it seemed could not fail to develop us, to mould us, to age us, to leave on us its scars, to bequeath us its peace or remorse or despair, as would some great mysterious dark experience direct from the sources of life. And then abruptly we were exhausted, as we should have been by too great emotion. We fell asleep. The morning dawned still and clear, and garnished and set in order as though such things had never been. Only our white towel fluttered like a flag of truce in the direction the mighty elements had departed.
Once upon a time I happened to be staying in a hotel room which had originally been part of a suite, but which was then cut off from the others by only a thin door through which sounds carried clearly. It was about eleven o'clock in the evening. The occupants of that next room came home. I heard the door open and close. Then the bed shrieked aloud as somebody fell heavily upon it. There breathed across the silence a deep restful sigh.
"Mary," said a man's voice, "I'm mighty sorry I didn't join that Association for Artificial Vacations. They guarantee to get you just as tired and just as mad in two days as you could by yourself in two weeks."
We thought of that one morning as we descended the Glacier Point Trail in Yosemite.
The contrast we need not have made so sharp. We might have taken the regular wagon-road by way of Chinquapin, but we preferred to stick to the trail, and so encountered our first sign of civilization within an hundred yards of the brink. It, the sign, was tourists. They were male and female, as the Lord had made them, but they had improved on that idea since. The women were freckled, hatted with alpines, in which edelweiss—artificial, I think—flowered in abundance; they sported severely plain flannel shirts, bloomers of an aggressive and unnecessary cut, and enormous square boots weighing pounds. The men had on hats just off the sunbonnet effect, pleated Norfolk jackets, bloomers ditto ditto to the women, stockings whose tops rolled over innumerable times to help out the size of that which they should have contained, and also enormous square boots. The female children they put in skin-tight blue overalls. The male children they dressed in bloomers. Why this should be I cannot tell you. All carried toy hatchets with a spike on one end built to resemble the pictures of alpenstocks.
They looked business-like, trod with an assured air of veterans and a seeming of experience more extended than it was possible to pack into any one human life. We stared at them, our eyes bulging out. They painfully and evidently concealed a curiosity as to our pack-train. We wished them good-day, in order to see to what language heaven had fitted their extraordinary ideas as regards raiment. They inquired the way to something or other—I think Sentinel Dome. We had just arrived, so we did not know, but in order to show a friendly spirit we blandly pointed out A way. It may have led to Sentinel Dome for all I know. They departed uttering thanks in human speech.
Now this particular bunch of tourists was evidently staying at the Glacier Point, and so was fresh. But in the course of that morning we descended straight down a drop of, is it four thousand feet? The trail was steep and long and without water. During the descent we passed first and last probably twoscore of tourists, all on foot. A good half of them were delicate women,—young, middle-aged, a few gray-haired and evidently upwards of sixty. There were also old men, and fat men, and men otherwise out of condition. Probably nine out of ten, counting in the entire outfit, were utterly unaccustomed, when at home where grow street-cars and hansoms, to even the mildest sort of exercise. They had come into the Valley, whose floor is over four thousand feet up, without the slightest physical preparation for the altitude. They had submitted to the fatigue of a long and dusty stage journey. And then they had merrily whooped it up at a gait which would have appalled seasoned old stagers like ourselves. Those blessed lunatics seemed positively unhappy unless they climbed up to some new point of view every day. I have never seen such a universally tired out, frazzled, vitally exhausted, white-faced, nervous community in my life as I did during our four days' stay in the Valley. Then probably they go away, and take a month to get over it, and have queer residual impressions of the trip. I should like to know what those impressions really are.
Not but that Nature has done everything in her power to oblige them. The things I am about to say are heresy, but I hold them true.
Yosemite is not as interesting nor as satisfying to me as some of the other big box cañons, like those of the Tehipite, the Kings in its branches, or the Kaweah. I will admit that its waterfalls are better. Otherwise it possesses no features which are not to be seen in its sister valleys. And there is this difference. In Yosemite everything is jumbled together, apparently for the benefit of the tourist with a linen duster and but three days' time at his disposal. He can turn from the cliff-headland to the dome, from the dome to the half dome, to the glacier formation, the granite slide and all the rest of it, with hardly the necessity of stirring his feet. Nature has put samples of all her works here within reach of his cataloguing vision. Everything is crowded in together, like a row of houses in forty-foot lots. The mere things themselves are here in profusion and wonder, but the appropriate spacing, the approach, the surrounding of subordinate detail which should lead in artistic gradation to the supreme feature—these things, which are a real and essential part of esthetic effect, are lacking utterly for want of room. The place is not natural scenery; it is a junk-shop, a storehouse, a sample-room wherein the elements of natural scenery are to be viewed. It is not an arrangement of effects in accordance with the usual laws of landscape, but an abnormality, a freak of Nature.
All these things are to be found elsewhere. There are cliffs which to the naked eye are as grand as El Capitan; domes, half domes, peaks as noble as any to be seen in the Valley; sheer drops as breath-taking as that from Glacier Point. But in other places each of these is led up to appropriately, and stands the central and satisfying feature to which all other things look. Then you journey on from your cliff, or whatever it happens to be, until, at just the right distance, so that it gains from the presence of its neighbor without losing from its proximity, a dome or a pinnacle takes to itself the right of prominence. I concede the waterfalls; but in other respects I prefer the sister valleys.
That is not to say that one should not visit Yosemite; nor that one will be disappointed. It is grand beyond any possible human belief; and no one, even a nerve-frazzled tourist, can gaze on it without the strongest emotion. Only it is not so intimately satisfying as it should be. It is a show. You do not take it into your heart. "Whew!" you cry. "Isn't that a wonder!" then after a moment, "Looks just like the photographs. Up to sample. Now let's go."
As we descended the trail, we and the tourists aroused in each other a mutual interest. One husband was trying to encourage his young and handsome wife to go on. She was beautifully dressed for the part in a marvelous, becoming costume of whipcord—short skirt, high laced elkskin boots and the rest of it; but in all her magnificence she had sat down on the ground, her back to the cliff, her legs across the trail, and was so tired out that she could hardly muster interest enough to pull them in out of the way of our horses' hoofs. The man inquired anxiously of us how far it was to the top. Now it was a long distance to the top, but a longer to the bottom, so we lied a lie that I am sure was immediately forgiven us, and told them it was only a short climb. I should have offered them the use of Bullet, but Bullet had come far enough, and this was only one of a dozen such cases. In marked contrast was a jolly white-haired clergyman of the bishop type who climbed vigorously and hailed us with a shout.
The horses were decidedly unaccustomed to any such sights, and we sometimes had our hands full getting them by on the narrow way. The trail was safe enough, but it did have an edge, and that edge jumped pretty straight off. It was interesting to observe how the tourists acted. Some of them were perfect fools, and we had more trouble with them than we did with the horses. They could not seem to get the notion into their heads that all we wanted them to do was to get on the inside and stand still. About half of them were terrified to death, so that at the crucial moment, just as a horse was passing them, they had little fluttering panics that called the beast's attention. Most of the remainder tried to be bold and help. They reached out the hand of assistance toward the halter rope; the astonished animal promptly snorted, tried to turn around, cannoned against the next in line. Then there was a mix-up. Two tall clean-cut well-bred looking girls of our slim patrician type offered us material assistance. They seemed to understand horses, and got out of the way in the proper manner, did just the right thing, and made sensible suggestions. I offer them my homage.
They spoke to us as though they had penetrated the disguise of long travel, and could see we were not necessarily members of Burt Alvord's gang. This phase too of our descent became increasingly interesting to us, a species of gauge by which we measured the perceptions of those we encountered. Most did not speak to us at all. Others responded to our greetings with a reserve in which was more than a tinge of distrust. Still others patronized us. A very few overlooked our faded flannel shirts, our soiled trousers, our floppy old hats with their rattlesnake bands, the wear and tear of our equipment, to respond to us heartily. Them in return we generally perceived to belong to our totem.
We found the floor of the Valley well sprinkled with campers. They had pitched all kinds of tents; built all kinds of fancy permanent conveniences; erected all kinds of banners and signs advertising their identity, and were generally having a nice, easy, healthful, jolly kind of a time up there in the mountains. Their outfits they had either brought in with their own wagons, or had had freighted. The store near the bend of the Merced supplied all their needs. It was truly a pleasant sight to see so many people enjoying themselves, for they were mostly those in moderate circumstances to whom a trip on tourist lines would be impossible. We saw bakers' and grocers' and butchers' wagons that had been pressed into service. A man, his wife, and little baby had come in an ordinary buggy, the one horse of which, led by the man, carried the woman and baby to the various points of interest.
We reported to the official in charge, were allotted a camping and grazing place, and proceeded to make ourselves at home.
During the next two days we rode comfortably here and there and looked at things. The things could not be spoiled, but their effect was very materially marred by the swarms of tourists. Sometimes they were silly, and cracked inane and obvious jokes in ridicule of the grandest objects they had come so far to see; sometimes they were detestable and left their insignificant calling-cards or their unimportant names where nobody could ever have any object in reading them; sometimes they were pathetic and helpless and had to have assistance; sometimes they were amusing; hardly ever did they seem entirely human. I wonder what there is about the traveling public that seems so to set it apart, to make of it at least a sub-species of mankind?
Among other things, we were vastly interested in the guides. They were typical of this sort of thing. Each morning one of these men took a pleasantly awe-stricken band of tourists out, led them around in the brush awhile, and brought them back in time for lunch. They wore broad hats and leather bands and exotic raiment and fierce expressions, and looked dark and mysterious and extra-competent over the most trivial of difficulties.
Nothing could be more instructive than to see two or three of these imitation bad men starting out in the morning to "guide" a flock, say to Nevada Falls. The tourists, being about to mount, have outdone themselves in weird and awesome clothes—especially the women. Nine out of ten wear their stirrups too short, so their knees are hunched up. One guide rides at the head—great deal of silver spur, clanking chain, and the rest of it. Another rides in the rear. The third rides up and down the line, very gruff, very preoccupied, very careworn over the dangers of the way. The cavalcade moves. It proceeds for about a mile. There arise sudden cries, great but subdued excitement. The leader stops, raising a commanding hand. Guide number three gallops up. There is a consultation. The cinch-strap of the brindle shave-tail is taken up two inches. A catastrophe has been averted. The noble three look volumes of relief. The cavalcade moves again.
Now the trail rises. It is a nice, safe, easy trail. But to the tourists it is made terrible. The noble three see to that. They pass more dangers by the exercise of superhuman skill than you or I could discover in a summer's close search. The joke of the matter is that those forty-odd saddle-animals have been over that trail so many times that one would have difficulty in heading them off from it once they got started.
Very much the same criticism would hold as to the popular notion of the Yosemite stage-drivers. They drive well, and seem efficient men. But their wonderful reputation would have to be upheld on rougher roads than those into the Valley. The tourist is, of course, encouraged to believe that he is doing the hair-breadth escape; but in reality, as mountain travel goes, the Yosemite stage-road is very mild.
This that I have been saying is not by way of depreciation. But it seems to me that the Valley is wonderful enough to stand by itself in men's appreciation without the unreality of sickly sentimentalism in regard to imaginary dangers, or the histrionics of playing wilderness where no wilderness exists.
As we went out, this time by the Chinquapin wagon-road, we met one stage-load after another of tourists coming in. They had not yet donned the outlandish attire they believe proper to the occasion, and so showed for what they were,—prosperous, well-bred, well-dressed travelers. In contrast to their smartness, the brilliancy of new-painted stages, the dash of the horses maintained by the Yosemite Stage Company, our own dusty travel-worn outfit of mountain ponies, our own rough clothes patched and faded, our sheath-knives and firearms seemed out of place and curious, as though a knight in medieval armor were to ride down Broadway.
I do not know how many stages there were. We turned our pack-horses out for them all, dashing back and forth along the line, coercing the diabolical Dinkey. The road was too smooth. There were no obstructions to surmount; no dangers to avert; no difficulties to avoid. We could not get into trouble, but proceeded as on a county turnpike. Too tame, too civilized, too representative of the tourist element, it ended by getting on our nerves. The wilderness seemed to have left us forever. Never would we get back to our own again. After a long time Wes, leading, turned into our old trail branching off to the high country. Hardly had we traveled a half mile before we heard from the advance guard a crash and a shout.
"What is it, Wes?" we yelled.
In a moment the reply came,—
"Lily's fallen down again,—thank God!"
We understood what he meant. By this we knew that the tourist zone was crossed, that we had left the show country, and were once more in the open.
The traveler in the High Sierras generally keeps to the west of the main crest. Sometimes he approaches fairly to the foot of the last slope; sometimes he angles away and away even down to what finally seems to him a lower country,—to the pine mountains of only five or six thousand feet. But always to the left or right of him, according to whether he travels south or north, runs the rampart of the system, sometimes glittering with snow, sometimes formidable and rugged with splinters and spires of granite. He crosses spurs and tributary ranges as high, as rugged, as snow-clad as these. They do not quite satisfy him. Over beyond he thinks he ought to see something great,—some wide outlook, some space bluer than his trail can offer him. One day or another he clamps his decision, and so turns aside for the simple and only purpose of standing on the top of the world.
We were bitten by that idea while crossing the Granite Basin. The latter is some ten thousand feet in the air, a cup of rock five or six miles across, surrounded by mountains much higher than itself. That would have been sufficient for most moods, but, resting on the edge of a pass ten thousand six hundred feet high, we concluded that we surely would have to look over into Nevada.
We got out the map. It became evident, after a little study, that by descending six thousand feet into a box cañon, proceeding in it a few miles, and promptly climbing out again, by climbing steadily up the long narrow course of another box cañon for about a day and a half's journey, and then climbing out of that to a high ridge country with little flat valleys, we would come to a wide lake in a meadow eleven thousand feet up. There we could camp. The mountain opposite was thirteen thousand three hundred and twenty feet, so the climb from the lake became merely a matter of computation. This, we figured, would take us just a week, which may seem a considerable time to sacrifice to the gratification of a whim. But such a glorious whim!
We descended the great box cañon, and scaled its upper end, following near the voices of a cascade. Cliffs thousands of feet high hemmed us in. At the very top of them strange crags leaned out looking down on us in the abyss. From a projection a colossal sphinx gazed solemnly across at a dome as smooth and symmetrical as, but vastly larger than, St. Peter's at Rome.
The trail labored up to the brink of the cascade. At once we entered a long narrow aisle between regular palisaded cliffs.
The formation was exceedingly regular. At the top the precipice fell sheer for a thousand feet or so; then the steep slant of the debris, like buttresses, down almost to the bed of the river. The lower parts of the buttresses were clothed with heavy chaparral, which, nearer moisture, developed into cottonwoods, alders, tangled vines, flowers, rank grasses. And away on the very edge of the cliffs, close under the sky, were pines, belittled by distance, solemn and aloof, like Indian warriors wrapped in their blankets watching from an eminence the passage of a hostile force.
We caught rainbow trout in the dashing white torrent of the river. We followed the trail through delicious thickets redolent with perfume; over the roughest granite slides, along still dark aisles of forest groves, between the clefts of boulders so monstrous as almost to seem an insult to the credulity. Among the chaparral, on the slope of the buttress across the river, we made out a bear feeding. Wes and I sat ten minutes waiting for him to show sufficiently for a chance. Then we took a shot at about four hundred yards, and hit him somewhere so he angled down the hill furiously. We left the Tenderfoot to watch that he did not come out of the big thicket of the river bottom where last we had seen him, while we scrambled upstream nearly a mile looking for a way across. Then we trailed him by the blood, each step one of suspense, until we fairly had to crawl in after him; and shot him five times more, three in the head, before he gave up not six feet from us; and shouted gloriously and skinned that bear. But the meat was badly bloodshot, for there were three bullets in the head, two in the chest and shoulders, one through the paunch, and one in the hind quarters.
Since we were much in want of meat, this grieved us. But that noon while we ate, the horses ran down toward us, and wheeled, as though in cavalry formation, looking toward the hill and snorting. So I put down my tin plate gently, and took up my rifle, and without rising shot that bear through the back of the neck. We took his skin, and also his hind quarters, and went on.
By the third day from Granite Basin we reached the end of the long narrow cañon with the high cliffs and the dark pine-trees and the very blue sky. Therefore we turned sharp to the left and climbed laboriously until we had come up into the land of big boulders, strange spare twisted little trees, and the singing of the great wind.
The country here was mainly of granite. It out-cropped in dikes, it slid down the slopes in aprons, it strewed the prospect in boulders and blocks, it seamed the hollows with knife-ridges. Soil gave the impression of having been laid on top; you divined the granite beneath it, and not so very far beneath it, either. A fine hair-grass grew close to this soil, as though to produce as many blades as possible in the limited area.
But strangest of all were the little thick twisted trees with the rich shaded umber color of their trunks. They occurred rarely, but still in sufficient regularity to lend the impression of a scattered grove-cohesiveness. Their limbs were sturdy and reaching fantastically. On each trunk the colors ran in streaks, patches, and gradations from a sulphur yellow, through browns and red-orange, to a rich red-umber. They were like the earth-dwarfs of German legend, come out to view the roof of their workshop in the interior of the hill; or, more subtly, like some of the more fantastic engravings of Gustave Dore.
We camped that night at a lake whose banks were pebbled in the manner of an artificial pond, and whose setting was a thin meadow of the fine hair-grass, for the grazing of which the horses had to bare their teeth. All about, the granite mountains rose. The timber-line, even of the rare shrub-like gnome-trees, ceased here. Above us was nothing whatever but granite rock, snow, and the sky.
It was just before dusk, and in the lake the fish were jumping eagerly. They took the fly well, and before the fire was alight we had caught three for supper. When I say we caught but three, you will understand that they were of good size. Firewood was scarce, but we dragged in enough by means of Old Slob and a riata to build us a good fire. And we needed it, for the cold descended on us with the sharpness and vigor of eleven thousand feet.
For such an altitude the spot was ideal. The lake just below us was full of fish. A little stream ran from it by our very elbows. The slight elevation was level, and covered with enough soil to offer a fairly good substructure for our beds. The flat in which was the lake reached on up narrower and narrower to the foot of the last slope, furnishing for the horses an admirable natural corral about a mile long. And the view was magnificent.
First of all there were the mountains above us, towering grandly serene against the sky of morning; then all about us the tumultuous slabs and boulders and blocks of granite among which dare-devil and hardy little trees clung to a footing as though in defiance of some great force exerted against them; then below us a sheer drop, into which our brook plunged, with its suggestion of depths; and finally beyond those depths the giant peaks of the highest Sierras rising lofty as the sky, shrouded in a calm and stately peace.
Next day the Tenderfoot and I climbed to the top. Wes decided at the last minute that he hadn't lost any mountains, and would prefer to fish.
The ascent was accompanied by much breathlessness and a heavy pounding of our hearts, so that we were forced to stop every twenty feet to recover our physical balance. Each step upward dragged at our feet like a leaden weight. Yet once we were on the level, or once we ceased our very real exertions for a second or so, the difficulty left us, and we breathed as easily as in the lower altitudes.
The air itself was of a quality impossible to describe to you unless you have traveled in the high countries. I know it is trite to say that it had the exhilaration of wine, yet I can find no better simile. We shouted and whooped and breathed deep and wanted to do things.
The immediate surroundings of that mountain peak were absolutely barren and absolutely still. How it was accomplished so high up I do not know, but the entire structure on which we moved—I cannot say walked—was composed of huge granite slabs. Sometimes these were laid side by side like exaggerated paving flags; but oftener they were up-ended, piled in a confusion over which we had precariously to scramble. And the silence. It was so still that the very ringing in our ears came to a prominence absurd and almost terrifying. The wind swept by noiseless, because it had nothing movable to startle into noise. The solid eternal granite lay heavy in its statics across the possibility of even a whisper. The blue vault of heaven seemed emptied of sound.
But the wind did stream by unceasingly, weird in the unaccustomedness of its silence. And the sky was blue as a turquoise, and the sun burned fiercely, and the air was cold as the water of a mountain spring.
We stretched ourselves behind a slab of granite, and ate the luncheon we had brought, cold venison steak and bread. By and by a marvelous thing happened. A flash of wings sparkled in the air, a brave little voice challenged us cheerily, a pert tiny rock-wren flirted his tail and darted his wings and wanted to know what we were thinking of anyway to enter his especial territory. And shortly from nowhere appeared two Canada Jays, silent as the wind itself, hoping for a share in our meal. Then the Tenderfoot discovered in a niche some strange, hardy alpine flowers. So we established a connection, through these wondrous brave children of the great mother, with the world of living things.
After we had eaten, which was the very first thing we did, we walked to the edge of the main crest and looked over. That edge went straight down. I do not know how far, except that even in contemplation we entirely lost our breaths, before we had fallen half way to the bottom. Then intervened a ledge, and in the ledge was a round glacier lake of the very deepest and richest ultramarine you can find among your paint-tubes, and on the lake floated cakes of dazzling white ice. That was enough for the moment.
Next we leaped at one bound direct down to some brown hazy liquid shot with the tenderest filaments of white. After analysis we discovered the hazy brown liquid to be the earth of the plains, and the filaments of white to be roads. Thus instructed we made out specks which were towns. That was all.
The rest was too insignificant to classify without the aid of a microscope.
And afterwards, across those plains, oh, many, many leagues, were the Inyo and Panamit mountains, and beyond them Nevada and Arizona, and blue mountains, and bluer, and still bluer rising, rising, rising higher and higher until at the level of the eye they blended with the heavens and were lost somewhere away out beyond the edge of the world.
We said nothing, but looked for a long time. Then we turned inland to the wonderful great titans of mountains clear-cut in the crystalline air. Never was such air. Crystalline is the only word which will describe it, for almost it seemed that it would ring clearly when struck, so sparkling and delicate and fragile was it. The crags and fissures across the way—two miles across the way—were revealed through it as through some medium whose transparence was absolute. They challenged the eye, stereoscopic in their relief. Were it not for the belittling effects of the distance, we felt that we might count the frost seams or the glacial scorings on every granite apron. Far below we saw the irregular outline of our lake. It looked like a pond a few hundred feet down. Then we made out a pin-point of white moving leisurely near its border. After a while we realized that the pin-point of white was one of our pack-horses, and immediately the flat little scene shot backwards as though moved from behind and acknowledged its due number of miles. The miniature crags at its back became gigantic; the peaks beyond grew thousands of feet in the establishment of a proportion which the lack of "atmosphere" had denied. We never succeeded in getting adequate photographs. As well take pictures of any eroded little arroyo or granite cañon. Relative sizes do not exist, unless pointed out.
"See that speck there?" we explain. "That's a big pine-tree. So by that you can see how tremendous those cliffs really are."
And our guest looks incredulously at the speck.
There was snow, of course, lying cold in the hot sun. This phenomenon always impresses a man when first he sees it. Often I have ridden with my sleeves rolled up and the front of my shirt open, over drifts whose edges, even, dripped no water. The direct rays seem to have absolutely no effect. A scientific explanation I have never heard expressed; but I suppose the cold nights freeze the drifts and pack them so hard that the short noon heat cannot penetrate their density. I may be quite wrong as to my reason, but I am entirely correct as to my fact.
Another curious thing is that we met our mosquitoes only rarely below the snow-line. The camping in the Sierras is ideal for lack of these pests. They never bite hard nor stay long even when found. But just as sure as we approached snow, then we renewed acquaintance with our old friends of the north woods.
It is analogous to the fact that the farther north you go into the fur countries, the more abundant they become.
By and by it was time to descend. The camp lay directly below us. We decided to go to it straight, and so stepped off on an impossibly steep slope covered, not with the great boulders and granite blocks, but with a fine loose shale. At every stride we stepped ten feet and slid five. It was gloriously near to flying. Leaning far back, our arms spread wide to keep our balance, spying alertly far ahead as to where we were going to land, utterly unable to check until we encountered a half-buried ledge of some sort, and shouting wildly at every plunge, we fairly shot downhill. The floor of our valley rose to us as the earth to a descending balloon. In three quarters of an hour we had reached the first flat.
There we halted to puzzle over the trail of a mountain lion clearly printed on the soft ground. What had the great cat been doing away up there above the hunting country, above cover, above everything that would appeal to a well-regulated cat of any size whatsoever? We theorized at length, but gave it up finally, and went on. Then a familiar perfume rose to our nostrils. We plucked curiously at a bed of catnip and wondered whether the animal had journeyed so far to enjoy what is always such a treat to her domestic sisters.
It was nearly dark when we reached camp. We found Wes contentedly scraping away at the bearskins.
"Hello," said he, looking up with a grin. "Hello, you dam fools! I'VE been having a good time. I've been fishing."
Every one is familiar, at least by reputation and photograph, with the Big Trees of California. All have seen pictures of stage-coaches driving in passageways cut through the bodies of the trunks; of troops of cavalry ridden on the prostrate trees. No one but has heard of the dancing-floor or the dinner-table cut from a single cross-section; and probably few but have seen some of the fibrous bark of unbelievable thickness. The Mariposa, Calaveras, and Santa Cruz groves have become household names.
The public at large, I imagine, meaning by that you and me and our neighbors, harbor an idea that the Big Tree occurs only as a remnant, in scattered little groves carefully fenced and piously visited by the tourist. What would we have said to the information that in the very heart of the Sierras there grows a thriving forest of these great trees; that it takes over a day to ride throughout that forest; and that it comprises probably over five thousand specimens?
Yet such is the case. On the ridges and high plateaus north of the Kaweah River is the forest I describe; and of that forest the trees grow from fifteen to twenty-six feet in diameter. Do you know what that means? Get up from your chair and pace off the room you are in. If it is a very big room, its longest dimension would just about contain one of the bigger trunks. Try to imagine a tree like that.
It must be a columnar tree straight and true as the supports of a Greek facade. The least deviation from the perpendicular of such a mass would cause it to fall. The limbs are sturdy like the arms of Hercules, and grow out from the main trunk direct instead of dividing and leading that main trunk to themselves, as is the case with other trees. The column rises with a true taper to its full height; then is finished with the conical effect of the top of a monument. Strangely enough the frond is exceedingly fine, and the cones small.
When first you catch sight of a Sequoia, it does not impress you particularly except as a very fine tree. Its proportions are so perfect that its effect is rather to belittle its neighbors than to show in its true magnitude. Then, gradually, as your experience takes cognizance of surroundings,—the size of a sugar-pine, of a boulder, of a stream flowing near,—the giant swells and swells before your very vision until he seems at the last even greater than the mere statistics of his inches had led you to believe. And after that first surprise over finding the Sequoia something not monstrous but beautiful in proportion has given place to the full realization of what you are beholding, you will always wonder why no one who has seen has ever given any one who has not seen an adequate idea of these magnificent old trees.
Perhaps the most insistent note, besides that of mere size and dignity, is of absolute stillness. These trees do not sway to the wind, their trunks are constructed to stand solid. Their branches do not bend and murmur, for they too are rigid in fiber. Their fine thread-like needles may catch the breeze's whisper, may draw together and apart for the exchange of confidences as do the leaves of other trees, but if so, you and I are too far below to distinguish it. All about, the other forest growths may be rustling and bowing and singing with the voices of the air; the Sequoia stands in the hush of an absolute calm. It is as though he dreamed, too wrapt in still great thoughts of his youth, when the earth itself was young, to share the worldlier joys of his neighbor, to be aware of them, even himself to breathe deeply. You feel in the presence of these trees as you would feel in the presence of a kindly and benignant sage, too occupied with larger things to enter fully into your little affairs, but well disposed in the wisdom of clear spiritual insight.
This combination of dignity, immobility, and a certain serene detachment has on me very much the same effect as does a mountain against the sky. It is quite unlike the impression made by any other tree, however large, and is lovable.
We entered the Giant Forest by a trail that climbed. Always we entered desirable places by trails that climbed or dropped. Our access to paradise was never easy. About halfway up we met five pack-mules and two men coming down. For some reason, unknown, I suspect, even to the god of chance, our animals behaved themselves and walked straight ahead in a beautiful dignity, while those weak-minded mules scattered and bucked and scraped under trees and dragged back on their halters when caught. The two men cast on us malevolent glances as often as they were able, but spent most of their time swearing and running about. We helped them once or twice by heading off, but were too thankfully engaged in treading lightly over our own phenomenal peace to pay much attention. Long after we had gone on, we caught bursts of rumpus ascending from below. Shortly we came to a comparatively level country, and a little meadow, and a rough sign which read
Just beyond this extortion was the Giant Forest.
We entered it toward the close of the afternoon, and rode on after our wonted time looking for feed at less than twenty cents a night. The great trunks, fluted like marble columns, blackened against the western sky. As they grew huger, we seemed to shrink, until we moved fearful as prehistoric man must have moved among the forces over which he had no control. We discovered our feed in a narrow "stringer" a few miles on. That night, we, pigmies, slept in the setting before which should have stridden the colossi of another age. Perhaps eventually, in spite of its magnificence and wonder, we were a little glad to leave the Giant Forest. It held us too rigidly to a spiritual standard of which our normal lives were incapable; it insisted on a loftiness of soul, a dignity, an aloofness from the ordinary affairs of life, the ordinary occupations of thought hardly compatible with the powers of any creature less noble, less aged, less wise in the passing of centuries than itself.
Your cowboy is a species variously subdivided. If you happen to be traveled as to the wild countries, you will be able to recognize whence your chance acquaintance hails by the kind of saddle he rides, and the rigging of it; by the kind of rope he throws, and the method of the throwing; by the shape of hat he wears; by his twist of speech; even by the very manner of his riding. Your California "vaquero" from the Coast Ranges is as unlike as possible to your Texas cowman, and both differ from the Wyoming or South Dakota article. I should be puzzled to define exactly the habitat of the "typical" cowboy. No matter where you go, you will find your individual acquaintance varying from the type in respect to some of the minor details.
Certain characteristics run through the whole tribe, however. Of these some are so well known or have been so adequately done elsewhere that it hardly seems wise to elaborate on them here. Let us assume that you and I know what sort of human beings cowboys are,—with all their taciturnity, their surface gravity, their keen sense of humor, their courage, their kindness, their freedom, their lawlessness, their foulness of mouth, and their supreme skill in the handling of horses and cattle. I shall try to tell you nothing of all that.
If one thinks down doggedly to the last analysis, he will find that the basic reason for the differences between a cowboy and other men rests finally on an individual liberty, a freedom from restraint either of society or convention, a lawlessness, an accepting of his own standard alone. He is absolutely self-poised and sufficient; and that self-poise and that sufficiency he takes pains to assure first of all. After their assurance he is willing to enter into human relations. His attitude toward everything in life is, not suspicious, but watchful. He is "gathered together," his elbows at his side.
This evidences itself most strikingly in his terseness of speech. A man dependent on himself naturally does not give himself away to the first comer. He is more interested in finding out what the other fellow is than in exploiting his own importance. A man who does much promiscuous talking he is likely to despise, arguing that man incautious, hence weak.
Yet when he does talk, he talks to the point and with a vivid and direct picturesqueness of phrase which is as refreshing as it is unexpected. The delightful remodeling of the English language in Mr. Alfred Lewis's "Wolfville" is exaggerated only in quantity, not in quality. No cowboy talks habitually in quite as original a manner as Mr. Lewis's Old Cattleman; but I have no doubt that in time he would be heard to say all the good things in that volume. I myself have note-books full of just such gorgeous language, some of the best of which I have used elsewhere, and so will not repeat here.[1]
This vividness manifests itself quite as often in the selection of the apt word as in the construction of elaborate phrases with a half-humorous intention. A cowboy once told me of the arrival of a tramp by saying, "He SIFTED into camp." Could any verb be more expressive? Does not it convey exactly the lazy, careless, out-at-heels shuffling gait of the hobo? Another in the course of description told of a saloon scene, "They all BELLIED UP TO the bar." Again, a range cook, objecting to purposeless idling about his fire, shouted: "If you fellows come MOPING around here any more, I'LL SURE MAKE YOU HARD TO CATCH!" "Fish in that pond, son? Why, there's some fish in there big enough to rope," another advised me. "I quit shoveling," one explained the story of his life, "because I couldn't see nothing ahead of shoveling but dirt." The same man described ploughing as, "Looking at a mule's tail all day." And one of the most succinct epitomes of the motifs of fiction was offered by an old fellow who looked over my shoulder as I was reading a novel. "Well, son," said he, "what they doing now, KISSING OR KILLING?"
Nor are the complete phrases behind in aptness. I have space for only a few examples, but they will illustrate what I mean. Speaking of a companion who was "putting on too much dog," I was informed, "He walks like a man with a new suit of WOODEN UNDERWEAR!" Or again, in answer to my inquiry as to a mutual acquaintance, "Jim? Oh, poor old Jim! For the last week or so he's been nothing but an insignificant atom of humanity hitched to a boil."
But to observe the riot of imagination turned loose with the bridle off, you must assist at a burst of anger on the part of one of these men. It is mostly unprintable, but you will get an entirely new idea of what profanity means. Also you will come to the conclusion that you, with your trifling DAMNS, and the like, have been a very good boy indeed. The remotest, most obscure, and unheard of conceptions are dragged forth from earth, heaven, and hell, and linked together in a sequence so original, so gaudy, and so utterly blasphemous, that you gasp and are stricken with the most devoted admiration. It is genius.
Of course I can give you no idea here of what these truly magnificent oaths are like. It is a pity, for it would liberalize your education. Occasionally, like a trickle of clear water into an alkali torrent, a straight English sentence will drop into the flood. It is refreshing by contrast, but weak.
"If your brains were all made of dynamite, you couldn't blow the top of your head off."
"I wouldn't speak to him if I met him in hell carrying a lump of ice in his hand."
"That little horse'll throw you so high the blackbirds will build nests in your hair before you come down."
These are ingenious and amusing, but need the blazing settings from which I have ravished them to give them their due force.
In Arizona a number of us were sitting around the feeble camp-fire the desert scarcity of fuel permits, smoking our pipes. We were all contemplative and comfortably silent with the exception of one very youthful person who had a lot to say. It was mainly about himself. After he had bragged awhile without molestation, one of the older cow-punchers grew very tired of it. He removed his pipe deliberately, and spat in the fire.
"Say, son," he drawled, "if you want to say something big, why don't you say 'elephant'?"
The young fellow subsided. We went on smoking our pipes.
Down near the Chiracahua Range in southeastern Arizona, there is a butte, and halfway up that butte is a cave, and in front of that cave is a ramshackle porch-roof or shed. This latter makes the cave into a dwelling-house. It is inhabited by an old "alkali" and half a dozen bear dogs. I sat with the old fellow one day for nearly an hour. It was a sociable visit, but economical of the English language. He made one remark, outside our initial greeting. It was enough, for in terseness, accuracy, and compression, I have never heard a better or more comprehensive description of the arid countries.
"Son," said he, "in this country thar is more cows and less butter, more rivers and less water, and you kin see farther and see less than in any other country in the world."
Now this peculiar directness of phrase means but one thing,—freedom from the influence of convention. The cowboy respects neither the dictionary nor usage. He employs his words in the manner that best suits him, and arranges them in the sequence that best expresses his idea, untrammeled by tradition. It is a phase of the same lawlessness, the same reliance on self, that makes for his taciturnity and watchfulness.
In essence, his dress is an adaptation to the necessities of his calling; as a matter of fact, it is an elaboration on that. The broad heavy felt hat he has found by experience to be more effective in turning heat than a lighter straw; he further runs to variety in the shape of the crown and in the nature of the band. He wears a silk handkerchief about his neck to turn the sun and keep out the dust, but indulges in astonishing gaudiness of color. His gauntlets save his hands from the rope; he adds a fringe and a silver star. The heavy wide "chaps" of leather about his legs are necessary to him when he is riding fast through brush; he indulges in such frivolities as stamped leather, angora hair, and the like. High heels to his boots prevent his foot from slipping through his wide stirrup, and are useful to dig into the ground when he is roping in the corral. Even his six-shooter is more a tool of his trade than a weapon of defense. With it he frightens cattle from the heavy brush; he slaughters old or diseased steers; he "turns the herd" in a stampede or when rounding it in; and especially is it handy and loose to his hip in case his horse should fall and commence to drag him.
So the details of his appearance spring from the practical, but in the wearing of them and the using of them he shows again that fine disregard for the way other people do it or think it.
Now in civilization you and I entertain a double respect for firearms and the law. Firearms are dangerous, and it is against the law to use them promiscuously. If we shoot them off in unexpected places, we first of all alarm unduly our families and neighbors, and in due course attract the notice of the police. By the time we are grown up we look on shooting a revolver as something to be accomplished after an especial trip for the purpose.
But to the cowboy shooting a gun is merely what lighting a match would be to us. We take reasonable care not to scratch that match on the wall nor to throw it where it will do harm. Likewise the cowboy takes reasonable care that his bullets do not land in some one's anatomy nor in too expensive bric-a-brac. Otherwise any time or place will do.
The picture comes to me of a bunk-house on an Arizona range. The time was evening. A half-dozen cowboys were sprawled out on the beds smoking, and three more were playing poker with the Chinese cook. A misguided rat darted out from under one of the beds and made for the empty fireplace. He finished his journey in smoke. Then the four who had shot slipped their guns back into their holsters and resumed their cigarettes and drawling low-toned conversation.
On another occasion I stopped for noon at the Circle I ranch. While waiting for dinner, I lay on my back in the bunk-room and counted three hundred and sixty-two bullet-holes in the ceiling. They came to be there because the festive cowboys used to while away the time while lying as I was lying, waiting for supper, in shooting the flies that crawled about the plaster.
This beautiful familiarity with the pistol as a parlor toy accounts in great part for a cowboy's propensity to "shoot up the town" and his indignation when arrested therefor.
The average cowboy is only a fair target-shot with the revolver. But he is chain lightning at getting his gun off in a hurry. There are exceptions to this, however, especially among the older men. Some can handle the Colts 45 and its heavy recoil with almost uncanny accuracy. I have seen individuals who could from their saddles nip lizards darting across the road; and one who was able to perforate twice before it hit the ground a tomato-can tossed into the air. The cowboy is prejudiced against the double-action gun, for some reason or other. He manipulates his single-action weapon fast enough, however.
His sense of humor takes the same unexpected slants, not because his mental processes differ from those of other men, but because he is unshackled by the subtle and unnoticed nothingnesses of precedent which deflect our action toward the common uniformity of our neighbors. It must be confessed that his sense of humor possesses also a certain robustness.
The J. H. outfit had been engaged for ten days in busting broncos. This the Chinese cook, Sang, a newcomer in the territory, found vastly amusing. He liked to throw the ropes off the prostrate broncos, when all was ready; to slap them on the flanks; to yell shrill Chinese yells; and to dance in celestial delight when the terrified animal arose and scattered out of there. But one day the range men drove up a little bunch of full-grown cattle that had been bought from a smaller owner. It was necessary to change the brands. Therefore a little fire was built, the stamp-brand put in to heat, and two of the men on horseback caught a cow by the horns and one hind leg, and promptly upset her. The old brand was obliterated, the new one burnt in. This irritated the cow. Promptly the branding-men, who were of course afoot, climbed to the top of the corral to be out of the way. At this moment, before the horsemen could flip loose their ropes, Sang appeared.
"Hol' on!" he babbled. "I take him off;" and he scrambled over the fence and approached the cow.
Now cattle of any sort rush at the first object they see after getting to their feet. But whereas a steer makes a blind run and so can be avoided, a cow keeps her eyes open. Sang approached that wild-eyed cow, a bland smile on his countenance.
A dead silence fell. Looking about at my companions' faces I could not discern even in the depths of their eyes a single faint flicker of human interest.
Sang loosened the rope from the hind leg, he threw it from the horns, he slapped the cow with his hat, and uttered the shrill Chinese yell. So far all was according to programme.
The cow staggered to her feet, her eyes blazing fire. She took one good look, and then started for Sang.
What followed occurred with all the briskness of a tune from a circus band. Sang darted for the corral fence. Now, three sides of the corral were railed, and so climbable, but the fourth was a solid adobe wall. Of course Sang went for the wall. There, finding his nails would not stick, he fled down the length of it, his queue streaming, his eyes popping, his talons curved toward an ideal of safety, gibbering strange monkey talk, pursued a scant arm's length behind by that infuriated cow. Did any one help him? Not any. Every man of that crew was hanging weak from laughter to the horn of his saddle or the top of the fence. The preternatural solemnity had broken to little bits. Men came running from the bunk-house, only to go into spasms outside, to roll over and over on the ground, clutching handfuls of herbage in the agony of their delight.
At the end of the corral was a narrow chute. Into this Sang escaped as into a burrow. The cow came too. Sang, in desperation, seized a pole, but the cow dashed such a feeble weapon aside. Sang caught sight of a little opening, too small for cows, back into the main corral. He squeezed through. The cow crashed through after him, smashing the boards. At the crucial moment Sang tripped and fell on his face. The cow missed him by so close a margin that for a moment we thought she had hit. But she had not, and before she could turn, Sang had topped the fence and was halfway to the kitchen. Tom Waters always maintained that he spread his Chinese sleeves and flew. Shortly after a tremendous smoke arose from the kitchen chimney. Sang had gone back to cooking.
Now that Mongolian was really in great danger, but no one of the outfit thought for a moment of any but the humorous aspect of the affair. Analogously, in a certain small cow-town I happened to be transient when the postmaster shot a Mexican. Nothing was done about it. The man went right on being postmaster, but he had to set up the drinks because he had hit the Mexican in the stomach. That was considered a poor place to hit a man.
The entire town of Willcox knocked off work for nearly a day to while away the tedium of an enforced wait there on my part. They wanted me to go fishing. One man offered a team, the other a saddle-horse. All expended much eloquence in directing me accurately, so that I should be sure to find exactly the spot where I could hang my feet over a bank beneath which there were "a plumb plenty of fish." Somehow or other they raked out miscellaneous tackle. But they were a little too eager. I excused myself and hunted up a map. Sure enough the lake was there, but it had been dry since a previous geological period. The fish were undoubtedly there too, but they were fossil fish. I borrowed a pickaxe and shovel and announced myself as ready to start.
Outside the principal saloon in one town hung a gong. When a stranger was observed to enter the saloon, that gong was sounded. Then it behooved him to treat those who came in answer to the summons.
But when it comes to a case of real hospitality or helpfulness, your cowboy is there every time. You are welcome to food and shelter without price, whether he is at home or not. Only it is etiquette to leave your name and thanks pinned somewhere about the place. Otherwise your intrusion may be considered in the light of a theft, and you may be pursued accordingly.
Contrary to general opinion, the cowboy is not a dangerous man to those not looking for trouble. There are occasional exceptions, of course, but they belong to the universal genus of bully, and can be found among any class. Attend to your own business, be cool and good-natured, and your skin is safe. Then when it is really "up to you," be a man; you will never lack for friends.
The Sierras, especially towards the south where the meadows are wide and numerous, are full of cattle in small bands. They come up from the desert about the first of June, and are driven back again to the arid countries as soon as the autumn storms begin. In the very high land they are few, and to be left to their own devices; but now we entered a new sort of country.
Below Farewell Gap and the volcanic regions one's surroundings change entirely. The meadows become high flat valleys, often miles in extent; the mountains—while registering big on the aneroid—are so little elevated above the plateaus that a few thousand feet is all of their apparent height; the passes are low, the slopes easy, the trails good, the rock outcrops few, the hills grown with forests to their very tops. Altogether it is a country easy to ride through, rich in grazing, cool and green, with its eight thousand feet of elevation. Consequently during the hot months thousands of desert cattle are pastured here; and with them come many of the desert men.
Our first intimation of these things was in the volcanic region where swim the golden trout. From the advantage of a hill we looked far down to a hair-grass meadow through which twisted tortuously a brook, and by the side of the brook, belittled by distance, was a miniature man. We could see distinctly his every movement, as he approached cautiously the stream's edge, dropped his short line at the end of a stick over the bank, and then yanked bodily the fish from beneath. Behind him stood his pony. We could make out in the clear air the coil of his raw-hide "rope," the glitter of his silver bit, the metal points on his saddle skirts, the polish of his six-shooter, the gleam of his fish, all the details of his costume. Yet he was fully a mile distant. After a time he picked up his string of fish, mounted, and jogged loosely away at the cow-pony's little Spanish trot toward the south. Over a week later, having caught golden trout and climbed Mount Whitney, we followed him and so came to the great central camp at Monache Meadows.
Imagine an island-dotted lake of grass four or five miles long by two or three wide to which slope regular shores of stony soil planted with trees. Imagine on the very edge of that lake an especially fine grove perhaps a quarter of a mile in length, beneath whose trees a dozen different outfits of cowboys are camped for the summer. You must place a herd of ponies in the foreground, a pine mountain at the back, an unbroken ridge across ahead, cattle dotted here and there, thousands of ravens wheeling and croaking and flapping everywhere, a marvelous clear sun and blue sky. The camps were mostly open, though a few possessed tents. They differed from the ordinary in that they had racks for saddles and equipments. Especially well laid out were the cooking arrangements. A dozen accommodating springs supplied fresh water with the conveniently regular spacing of faucets.
Towards evening the men jingled in. This summer camp was almost in the nature of a vacation to them after the hard work of the desert. All they had to do was to ride about the pleasant hills examining that the cattle did not stray nor get into trouble. It was fun for them, and they were in high spirits.
Our immediate neighbors were an old man of seventy-two and his grandson of twenty-five. At least the old man said he was seventy-two. I should have guessed fifty. He was as straight as an arrow, wiry, lean, clear-eyed, and had, without food, ridden twelve hours after some strayed cattle. On arriving he threw off his saddle, turned his horse loose, and set about the construction of supper. This consisted of boiled meat, strong tea, and an incredible number of flapjacks built of water, baking-powder, salt, and flour, warmed through—not cooked—in a frying-pan. He deluged these with molasses and devoured three platefuls. It would have killed an ostrich, but apparently did this decrepit veteran of seventy-two much good.
After supper he talked to us most interestingly in the dry cowboy manner, looking at us keenly from under the floppy brim of his hat. He confided to us that he had had to quit smoking, and it ground him—he'd smoked since he was five years old.
"Tobacco doesn't agree with you any more?" I hazarded.
"Oh, 'taint that," he replied; "only I'd ruther chew."
The dark fell, and all the little camp-fires under the trees twinkled bravely forth. Some of the men sang. One had an accordion. Figures, indistinct and formless, wandered here and there in the shadows, suddenly emerging from mystery into the clarity of firelight, there to disclose themselves as visitors. Out on the plain the cattle lowed, the horses nickered. The red firelight flashed from the metal of suspended equipment, crimsoned the bronze of men's faces, touched with pink the high lights on their gracefully recumbent forms. After a while we rolled up in our blankets and went to sleep, while a band of coyotes wailed like lost spirits from a spot where a steer had died.