The Shapes Of Illusion

: THE RAWHIDE
: Arizona Nights

Every day, as always, Senor Johnson rode abroad over the land. His

surroundings had before been accepted casually as a more or less

pertinent setting of action and condition. Now he sensed some of the

fascination of the Arizona desert.



He noticed many things before unnoticed. As he jingled loosely along

on his cow-horse, he observed how the animal waded fetlock deep in the

gorgeous orange California po pies, and then he looked up and about,

and saw that the rich colour carpeted the landscape as far as his eye

could reach, so that it seemed as though he could ride on and on

through them to the distant Chiricahuas. Only, close under the hills,

lay, unobtrusive, a narrow streak of grey. And in a few hours he had

reached the streak of grey, and ridden out into it to find himself the

centre of a limitless alkali plain, so that again it seemed the valley

could contain nothing else of importance.



Looking back, Senor Johnson could discern a tenuous ribbon of

orange--the poppies. And perhaps ahead a little shadow blotted the

face of the alkali, which, being reached and entered, spread like fire

until it, too, filled the whole plain, until it, too, arrogated to

itself the right of typifying Soda Springs Valley as a shimmering

prairie of mesquite. Flowered upland, dead lowland, brush, cactus,

volcanic rock, sand, each of these for the time being occupied the

whole space, broad as the sea. In the circlet of the mountains was

room for many infinities.



Among the foothills Senor Johnson, for the first time, appreciated

colour. Hundreds of acres of flowers filled the velvet creases of the

little hills and washed over the smooth, rounded slopes so accurately

in the placing and manner of tinted shadows that the mind had

difficulty in believing the colour not to have been shaded in actually

by free sweeps of some gigantic brush. A dozen shades of pinks and

purples, a dozen of blues, and then the flame reds, the yellows, and

the vivid greens. Beyond were the mountains in their glory of volcanic

rocks, rich as the tapestry of a Florentine palace. And, modifying all

the others, the tinted atmosphere of the south-west, refracting the sun

through the infinitesimal earth motes thrown up constantly by the wind

devils of the desert, drew before the scene a delicate and gauzy veil

of lilac, of rose, of saffron, of amethyst, or of mauve, according to

the time of day. Senor Johnson discovered that looking at the

landscape upside down accentuated the colour effects. It amused him

vastly suddenly to bend over his saddle horn, the top of his head

nearly touching his horse's mane. The distant mountains at once

started out into redder prominence; their shadows of purple deepened to

the royal colour; the rose veil thickened.



"She's the prettiest country God ever made!" exclaimed Senor Johnson

with entire conviction.



And no matter where he went, nor into how familiar country he rode, the

shapes of illusion offered always variety. One day the Chiricahuas

were a tableland; next day a series of castellated peaks; now an anvil;

now a saw tooth; and rarely they threw a magnificent suspension bridge

across the heavens to their neighbours, the ranges on the west. Lakes

rippling in the wind and breaking on the shore, cattle big as elephants

or small as rabbits, distances that did not exist and forests that

never were, beds of lava along the hills swearing to a cloud shadow,

while the sky was polished like a precious stone--these, and many other

beautiful and marvellous but empty shows the great desert displayed

lavishly, with the glitter and inconsequence of a dream. Senor Johnson

sat on his horse in the hot sun, his chin in his band, his elbow on the

pommel, 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 the

moon worked her necromancies, hemming him in by mountains ten thousand

feet high through which there was no pass. And then as he rode, the

mountains shifted like the scenes in a theatre, and he crossed the

little sand dunes out from the dream country to the adobe corrals of

the home ranch.



All these things, and many others, Senor Johnson now saw for the first

time, although he had lived among them for twenty years. It struck him

with the freshness of a surprise. Also it reacted chemically on his

mental processes to generate a new power within him. The new power,

being as yet unapplied, made him uneasy and restless and a little

irritable.



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, a

hundred yards broad.



"Sure," he agreed; "shows what we could do if we only had a little

water."



And again: "Jed," began the Senor, "did you ever notice them

mountains?"



"Sure," agreed Jed.



"Ain't that a pretty colour?"



"You bet," agreed the foreman; "now you're talking! I always, said

they was mineralised enough to make a good prospect."



This was unsatisfactory. Senor Johnson grew more restless. His

critical eye began to take account of small details. At the ranch

house one evening he, on a sudden, bellowed loudly for Sang, the

Chinese 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 newspapers

and them gun rags! The place is like a cow-yard. Why in the name of

heaven 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 lot

of Oilers." [5]







[5] Oilers: Greasers--Mexicans