he
brief stop had brought back poignantly certain old days--choking dust,
thirst, the heat of a heavy sun, the long day that led one nowhere----

The noon mirages were taking shape, throwing stately and slow their vast
illusions across the horizon. Lakes glimmered; distant ranges took on
the forms of phantasm, rising higher, flattening, reaching across space
the arches of their spans, rendering unreal a world of beauty and dread.
That in the old days was the deliberate fashion the desert had of
searing men's souls with her majesty. Slowly, slowly, the changes
melted one into the other; massively, deliberately the face of the world
was altered; so that at last the poor plodding human being, hot, dry,
blinded, thirsty, felt himself a nothing in the presence of eternities.
Well I knew that old spell of the desert. But now! Honestly, after a few
minutes I began to feel sorry for the poor old desert! Its spells didn't
work for the simple reason that _we didn't give it time!_ We charged
down on its phantom lakes and disproved them and forgot them. We broke
right in on the dignified and deliberate scene shifting of mountains and
_mesas_, showed them up for the brittle, dry hills they were, and left
them behind. It was pitiful! It was as though a revered tragedian should
overnight find that his vogue had departed; that he was no longer
getting over; that an irreverent upstart, breaking in on his most
sonorous periods, was getting laughs with slang. We had lots of water;
the dust we left behind; it wasn't even hot in the wind of our going!

In the shallow crease of hills a shimmer of white soon changed to
evident houses. We drew into a straggling desert town.

It was typical--thirty miles from the railroad, a distributing point for
the cattle country. Four broad buildings with peeled, sunburned faces, a
wooden house or so, and a dozen flat-roofed adobe huts hung pleasingly
with long strips of red peppers. Of course one of the wooden buildings
was labelled General Store; and another, smaller, contained a barber
shop and postoffice combined. The third was barred and unoccupied. The
fourth had been a livery stable but was now a garage. Six saddle horses
and six Fords stood outside the General Store, which was a fair
division.

Bill slowed down.

"Have a drink," I observed, hospitably.

"Arizona's a dry state," Bill reminded me; but nevertheless stopped and
uncoiled. That unbelievable phenomenon had escaped my memory. In the o