val."

In response to a question he explained, "I've been studying the
Cliff-Dwellings of the Mesa Verde. My name is Pruden. I am from New
York."

It was evident that "The Doctor" (as his guides called him) was not only
a man of wide experience on the trail, but a scientist as well, and I
found him most congenial.

We spent the evening together, and together we witnessed the mysterious
snake dance which the natives of Walpi give every other year--a ceremony
so incredibly primitive that it carried me back into the stone age, and
three days later (leaving Browne and MacNeill to paint and sculpture the
Hopi) we went to Zuni and Acoma and at last to the Grand Canon of the
Colorado, a trip which laid upon my mind a thousand glorious impressions
of the desert and its life. It was so beautiful, so marvelous that sand
and flies and hunger and thirst were forgotten.

Aside from its esthetic delight, this summer turned out to be the most
profitable season of my whole career. It marks a complete 'bout face in
my march. Coming just after _Rose of Dutcher's Coolly_, it dates the
close of my prairie tales and the beginning of a long series of mountain
stories. Cripple Creek and the Current Creek country suggested _The
Eagle's Heart_, _Witches' Gold_, _Money Magic_, and a dozen shorter
romances. In truth every page of my work thereafter was colored by the
experiences of this glorious savage splendid summer.

The reasons are easy to define. All my emotional relationships with the
"High Country" were pleasant, my sense of responsibility was less keen,
hence the notes of resentment, of opposition to unjust social conditions
which had made my other books an offense to my readers were almost
entirely absent in my studies of the mountaineers. My pity was less
challenged in their case. Lonely as their lives were, it was not a
sordid loneliness. The cattle rancher was at least not a drudge.
Careless, slovenly and wasteful as I knew him to be, he was not mean. He
had something of the Centaur in his bearing. Marvelous horsemanship
dignified his lean figure and lent a notable grace to his gestures. His
speech was picturesque and his observations covered a wide area.
Self-reliant, fearless, instant of action in emergency, his character
appealed to me with ever-increasing power.

I will not say that I consciously and deliberately cut myself off from
my prairie material, the desertion came about naturally. Swiftly,
inevitably, the unplowed v