dust in sheets and clouds. It seemed to
me each gully had its mystic pall of color. I lost no time climbing out.
What a hot choking ordeal! But I never would have missed it even had I
known I would get lost. Looking down again the scene was vastly changed.
A smoky weird murky hell with the dull sun gleaming magenta-hued through
the shifting pall of dust!

In the afternoon we proceeded leisurely, through an atmosphere growing
warmer and denser, down to the valley, reaching it at dusk. We followed
the course of Furnace Creek and made camp under some cottonwood trees,
on the west slope of the valley.

The wind blew a warm gale all night. I lay awake a while and slept with
very little covering. Toward dawn the gale died away. I was up at
five-thirty. The morning broke fine, clear, balmy. A flare of pale
gleaming light over the Funeral Range heralded the sunrise. The tips of
the higher snow-capped Panamints were rose colored, and below them the
slopes were red. The bulk of the range showed dark. All these features
gradually brightened until the sun came up. How blazing and intense! The
wind began to blow again. Under the cottonwoods with their rustling
leaves, and green so soothing to the eye, it was very pleasant.

Beyond our camp stood green and pink thickets of tamarack, and some dark
velvety green alfalfa fields, made possible by the spreading of Furnace
Creek over the valley slope. A man lived there, and raised this alfalfa
for the mules of the borax miners. He lived there alone and his was
indeed a lonely, wonderful, and terrible life. At this season a few
Shoshone Indians were camped near, helping him in his labors. This lone
rancher's name was Denton, and he turned out to be a brother of a
Denton, hunter and guide, whom I had met in Lower California.

[Illustration: DESERT GRAVES]

[Illustration: THE GHASTLY SWEEP OF DEATH VALLEY]

Like all desert men, used to silence, Denton talked with difficulty, but
the content of his speech made up for its brevity. He told us about the
wanderers and prospectors he had rescued from death by starvation and
thirst; he told us about the terrific noonday heat of summer; and about
the incredible and horrible midnight furnace gales that swept down the
valley. With the mercury at one hundred and twenty-five degrees at
midnight, below the level of the sea, when these furnace blasts bore
down upon him, it was just all he could do to live. No man could spend
many summers there. As f