As always on his trips across the continent he sat apathetically smokingthrough the wide green lushness of the middle west. Only when thecultivated lands gave way to barren hills and faint blue mountains peepingover far horizons did he turn to the window and forget his misery and hisweariness. How it spoke to his heart, this country of his own! He wholoved no man, who had gone to women with desire and come away withbitterness, loved a vast and barren land, baking in the sun. The sight ofit quickened his pulses, softened and soothed his spirit. Like a goodliquor it nursed and beautified whatever mood was in him. When he had comeback to it a year before, it had spoken to him of hope, its mysteriousdistances had seemed full of promise and hidden possibility. And now thathe came back to it with hopes broken, weary in mind and body, it seemedthe very voice of rest. He thought of long cool nights in the mountainsand of the lullaby that wind and water sing, of the soothing monotony ofempty sunlit levels, of the cool caress of deep, green pools, of the sweetsatisfaction that goes with physical weariness and a full belly and a bedupon the ground.
But when on the last morning of his journey he waked up within a hundredmiles of home, and less than half that far from his own mountain lands,his new-found comfort quickly changed to a keen anxiety. For he saw at aglance that the country was under the blight of drought. The hills thatshould have borne a good crop of gramma grass at this time of the year, ifthe rains had been even fair, were nothing but bare red earth from whichthe rocks and the great roots of the _pinion_ trees stood out like thebones of a starving animal. Here and there on the hillsides he could see ascrubby pine that had died, its needles turned rust-red--the sure sign of aserious drought.
During the half month that he had been gone he had thought not once of hisaffairs at home. The moment had absorbed him completely. Now it all cameback to him suddenly. When he had left, the promise of the season had beengood. It had not rained for more than a week, but everyone had beenexpecting rain every day. It was clear to him that the needed rain hadnever come. And he knew just what that meant to him. It meant that he hadlost lambs and ewes, that he would have no money this year with which tomeet his notes at the bank. He sank deep in despair and disgust again. Notonly was the assault on his fortunes a serious one, but he felt littleinclined to meet it. He was weary of struggle. He saw before him a longslow fight to get on his feet again, with the chance of ultimate failureif he had another bad year.
The Mexicans firmly believe, in the face of much evidence to the contrary,that seven wet years are always followed by seven dry ones. He had heardthe saying gravely repeated many times. He more than half believed it. Andhe knew that for a good many years, perhaps as many as six or seven, therains had been remarkably good. He was intelligent, but superstition wasbred in his bones. Like all men of a primitive type he had a strongtendency to believe in fortune as a deliberate force in the affairs ofmen. It seemed clear to him now, in his depressed and exhausted condition,that bad luck had marked him for its prey.