actually
by free sweeps of some gigantic brush. A dozen shades of pinks and
purples, a dozen of blues, and then the flame reds, the yellows, and
the vivid greens. Beyond were the mountains in their glory of volcanic
rocks, rich as the tapestry of a Florentine palace. And, modifying all
the others, the tinted atmosphere of the south-west, refracting the sun
through the infinitesimal earth motes thrown up constantly by the wind
devils of the desert, drew before the scene a delicate and gauzy veil
of lilac, of rose, of saffron, of amethyst, or of mauve, according to
the time of day. Senor Johnson discovered that looking at the
landscape upside down accentuated the colour effects. It amused him
vastly suddenly to bend over his saddle horn, the top of his head
nearly touching his horse's mane. The distant mountains at once
started out into redder prominence; their shadows of purple deepened to
the royal colour; the rose veil thickened.

"She's the prettiest country God ever made!" exclaimed Senor Johnson
with entire conviction.

And no matter where he went, nor into how familiar country he rode, the
shapes of illusion offered always variety. One day the Chiricahuas
were a tableland; next day a series of castellated peaks; now an anvil;
now a saw tooth; and rarely they threw a magnificent suspension bridge
across the heavens to their neighbours, the ranges on the west. Lakes
rippling in the wind and breaking on the shore, cattle big as elephants
or small as rabbits, distances that did not exist and forests that
never were, beds of lava along the hills swearing to a cloud shadow,
while the sky was polished like a precious stone--these, and many other
beautiful and marvellous but empty shows the great desert displayed
lavishly, with the glitter and inconsequence of a dream. Senor Johnson
sat on his horse in the hot sun, his chin in his band, his elbow on the
pommel, watching it all with grave, unshifting eyes.

Occasionally, belated, he saw the stars, the wonderful desert stars,
blazing clear and unflickering, like the flames of candles. Or the
moon worked her necromancies, hemming him in by mountains ten thousand
feet high through which there was no pass. And then as he rode, the
mountains shifted like the scenes in a theatre, and he crossed the
little sand dunes out from the dream country to the adobe corrals of
the home ranch.

All these things, and many others, Senor Johnson now saw for the first
time, alth