Raymond S. Spears

“ No one, least of all garage keepers and other purveyors, refused Paula any demand, however impertinent or unreasonable it might seem. Harry must obey, however embarrassing it might be to him.
Out in the desert with the caravan tribe, he climbed, one evening, to the crest of a shifting dune, to see the sun set. Nowhere is the twilight glow more beautiful than over the Salton Sink. That dry bed of an ancient sea was, for this desert lover, a chance to study the wind drifts, the mesquite, the water wash, and the color of shadows. ”

“ I rode away from the home ranch three days ago, and came down here to the rim of the desert, where I tell you this. All I have is my horse and saddle. I am riding, swinging wide, on my own now. I'm no good, May—just a cowboy. I can ride, rope, and cut, but only owners and foremen do any cutting, not leaving to a cowboy to pick shippers for them. I have no cows of my own.
Father knows I'm no good, and mother's sick about me. I'm crossing the tracks, to-morrow, to go down into the desert, which I know. All I know is alkali and rocks, dancing sand maidens and the mirage. ”

“ The desert does not mock those who love in it, or jeer those who seek its privileges. Those who seek its glories, with singleness of heart, find treasure.
Henry Howard saw the beauty of the colored precipices, and knew that in such places the prophets of old were inspired. ”

“ In those dark mountains, which have almost no springs or water, you see what was once a land of fire, the melted rock blazing in the night like slag from an unimaginable furnace. They are full of minerals—silver, gold, platinum, probably, and perhaps precious stones. ”

“ Henry Howard followed the miles on the time-table. He was gasping for breath in the high altitudes, but he turned a beatific face to his parents.
"We're nine thousand feet above the sea level!" he whispered, in the tone of a child who speaks an unbelievable truth.
They left the train at a settlement on the sunny side of the Rockies, journeyed out on the range, and entered a cabin among the juniper cedars. The timber line was behind them, up the slope of the Continental Divide. The desert stretched away below them. ”

“ A spring, heading in a clear, deep pool at a rock in the wilderness, was their great possession.
The boy walked into the open. He shaded his eyes with his hand. He saw the Continental Divide, a wall topped by jagged peaks and knife-edge lines in rich, dark blue, fringed with white pearl against the sky. ”

“ The books in the store never alarmed him. They were worn, used, often somewhat tattered; few were wholly clean. The genial old dealer welcomed his customer with a smile, and before Howard had made many purchases he knew that this garage helper was interested in the land of naked stone, of mocking pictures, and of a spirit that grips the human soul. He showed Howard the works of men who had gone into deserts to study them, who had named their thistles, solved the organizations of their wild life, and analyzed their rocks.
One by one, Henry Howard took these desert records into the garage. ”

“ They are burned and melted stone, a flood of lava from volcanoes now long dead. If you go into them, you must carry water. Once in five or ten years rain falls on them, and on this desert. Then you would not know the land, for it blossoms like a rose. Once, in Death Valley, they had a rainy summer. The seeds long dormant in the bare sand, or among the greasebush and cactus, became a weed patch that covered the valley with flowers and a jungle of tall stalks. ”

“ Lacking white man words for some of the things he knew, Howard was obliged to fall back on Indian, old Spanish, the dog Latin of desert prospectors, and the lingo of tramps. Wells took Howard out into the mountains, where each could instruct the other, one explaining what was to be had from science, the other what he had found through observation and experience. Together, they uncovered what none had ever known before.
"You do not realize what you have gathered," Wells exclaimed one day. "You see with desert inspiration!" ”

“ Wells was friendly, kind of heart, to say such things. The garage mechanic knew better, however, than to misunderstand. Daily, in such associations, Howard felt the lack of his training, the certainty that for himself there was no hope of securing the solid framework of education that comes only when one is grounded in theory as well as in practice.
No need to tell Wells that! The learned man must realize it as he gave the real, the scientific names to the things that Howard brought to his attention. ”

“ Millions knew her features, but not this garage worker!
"Her eyes are exactly like the eyes of a skinny, freckle-faced girl I knew in New York fifteen or eighteen years ago," Howard said frankly.
Wells made no comment. He was not surprised, however, when Paula Carlon demanded that the garage should send Howard into the Colorado Desert sand hills, to take care of her automobile. No one else was able to keep it running so well as he did, she said. She wanted, on location, the same workman who looked after her car in town. ”

“ He dared not betray so sweet and delicate a secret, even to a sheet of paper meant only for her eyes. She would not speak of such a thing.
Howard stopped down at the desert edge, where a devoted agent kept a railroad station. Borrowing some paper and ink, he wrote a letter. In it he said:
I've been writing you a long time, May, all the time making out I am somebody. ”

“ Wells was at the head of the State School of Mines. He drove a little old car that required much attention, and Howard seemed to have the knack of keeping it adjusted. He first astonished the professor by remarking that the car had been over at Bakersfield, in the oil country. He proved it by oil and sand.
"You know deserts, don't you?" Wells remarked.
"I lived more than ten years in them," Howard explained. "They are hard to forget. I suppose I ought not to think of anything else but gears and—"
"You are entitled to your pleasures," the professor interrupted, with an odd smile. ”

“ He heard of the sand hills, of salt lakes, of the Panamints, the Calico Range, and the Funereals. He could look at the dust on a car and tell by what trail it had come into the city. He knew the accumulations from the Lincoln Highway, the national trails. He picked tiny bits of crushed stone out of layers of oil tar, and knew from them that the car had come through freshly oiled roads where Trenton limestone or Adirondack granites had been used to surface highways. ”

“ He feared their feeling of regret, or shame, that their son was washing cars and messing around flivvers. His father had been a good attorney, his mother a splendid school-teacher; both were educated in colleges. They could but sorrow over the son whose chance of learning had been destroyed by the necessity of saving his health. ”