CHAPTER TWO
THE SHAPES OF ILLUSION
Every day, as always, Senor Johnson rode abroad over the land. Hissurroundings had before been accepted casually as a more or lesspertinent setting of action and condition. Now he sensed some of thefascination of the Arizona desert.
He noticed many things before unnoticed. As he jingled loosely alongon his cow-horse, he observed how the animal waded fetlock deep in thegorgeous orange California poppies, and then he looked up and about,and saw that the rich colour carpeted the landscape as far as his eyecould reach, so that it seemed as though he could ride on and onthrough them to the distant Chiricahuas. Only, close under the hills,lay, unobtrusive, a narrow streak of grey. And in a few hours he hadreached the streak of grey, and ridden out into it to find himself thecentre of a limitless alkali plain, so that again it seemed the valleycould contain nothing else of importance.
Looking back, Senor Johnson could discern a tenuous ribbon oforange--the poppies. And perhaps ahead a little shadow blotted theface of the alkali, which, being reached and entered, spread like fireuntil it, too, filled the whole plain, until it, too, arrogated toitself the right of typifying Soda Springs Valley as a shimmeringprairie of mesquite. Flowered upland, dead lowland, brush, cactus,volcanic rock, sand, each of these for the time being occupied thewhole space, broad as the sea. In the circlet of the mountains wasroom for many infinities.
Among the foothills Senor Johnson, for the first time, appreciatedcolour. Hundreds of acres of flowers filled the velvet creases of thelittle hills and washed over the smooth, rounded slopes so accuratelyin the placing and manner of tinted shadows that the mind haddifficulty in believing the colour not to have been shaded in actuallyby free sweeps of some gigantic brush. A dozen shades of pinks andpurples, a dozen of blues, and then the flame reds, the yellows, andthe vivid greens. Beyond were the mountains in their glory of volcanicrocks, rich as the tapestry of a Florentine palace. And, modifying allthe others, the tinted atmosphere of the south-west, refracting the sunthrough the infinitesimal earth motes thrown up constantly by the winddevils of the desert, drew before the scene a delicate and gauzy veilof lilac, of rose, of saffron, of amethyst, or of mauve, according tothe time of day. Senor Johnson discovered that looking at thelandscape upside down accentuated the colour effects. It amused himvastly suddenly to bend over his saddle horn, the top of his headnearly touching his horse's mane. The distant mountains at oncestarted out into redder prominence; their shadows of purple deepened tothe royal colour; the rose veil thickened.
"She's the prettiest country God ever made!" exclaimed Senor Johnsonwith entire conviction.
And no matter where he went, nor into how familiar country he rode, theshapes of illusion offered always variety. One day the Chiricahuaswere a tableland; next day a series of castellated peaks; now an anvil;now a saw tooth; and rarely they threw a magnificent suspension bridgeacross the heavens to their neighbours, the ranges on the west. Lakesrippling in the wind and breaking on the shore, cattle big as elephantsor small as rabbits, distances that did not exist and forests thatnever were, beds of lava along the hills swearing to a cloud shadow,while the sky was polished like a precious stone--these, and many otherbeautiful and marvellous but empty shows the great desert displayedlavishly, with the glitter and inconsequence of a dream. Senor Johnsonsat on his horse in the hot sun, his chin in his band, his elbow on thepommel, 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 themoon worked her necromancies, hemming him in by mountains ten thousandfeet high through which there was no pass. And then as he rode, themountains shifted like the scenes in a theatre, and he crossed thelittle sand dunes out from the dream country to the adobe corrals ofthe home ranch.
All these things, and many others, Senor Johnson now saw for the firsttime, although he had lived among them for twenty years. It struck himwith the freshness of a surprise. Also it reacted chemically on hismental processes to generate a new power within him. The new power,being as yet unapplied, made him uneasy and restless and a littleirritable.
He tried to show some of his wonders to Parker.
"Jed," said he, one day, "this is a great country."
"You KNOW it," replied the foreman.
"Those tourists in their nickel-plated Pullmans call this a desert.Desert, hell! Look at them flowers!"
The foreman cast an eye on a glorious silken mantle of purple, ahundred yards broad.
"Sure," he agreed; "shows what we could do if we only had a littlewater."
And again: "Jed," began the Senor, "did you ever notice themmountains?"
"Sure," agreed Jed.
"Ain't that a pretty colour?"
"You bet," agreed the foreman; "now you're talking! I always, saidthey was mineralised enough to make a good prospect."
This was unsatisfactory. Senor Johnson grew more restless. Hiscritical eye began to take account of small details. At the ranchhouse one evening he, on a sudden, bellowed loudly for Sang, theChinese servant.
"Look at these!" he roared, when Sang appeared.
Sang's eyes opened in bewilderment.
"There, and there!" shouted the cattleman. "Look at them old newspapersand them gun rags! The place is like a cow-yard. Why in the name ofheaven don't you clean up here!"
"Allee light," babbled Sang; "I clean him."
The papers and gun rags had lain there unnoticed for nearly a year.Senor Johnson kicked them savagely.
"It's time we took a brace here," he growled, "we're livin' like a lotof Oilers." [5]
[5] Oilers: Greasers--Mexicans