And wond'ring I wait thee, my sweetheart, Death!


It may be that the high tide of material development which in late
years has been sweeping over Southern California has penetrated even to
that isolated nook in the hills which, when I knew it, was the saddest
place I had ever seen. It was a lonely region, miles and miles away
from railroads, telegraphs, newspapers--all the mighty, roaring music
of civilization. Off toward the east the desert stretched its level
expanse of vague coloring, and westward the rounded hills, green in the
winter, yellow as ripe wheat fields through the long, rainless summer,
reared their mounds higher and higher until they stopped, as if cowed
and ashamed, at the flanks of Monte Pinos. And the mountain, majestic
and vapor-veiled, seemed always to be watching them in their work of
protecting and comforting the wrecks that clung to their feet.

For that was why this region, despite its soft, reposeful beauty,
seemed so sad--because of the wrecks, the human wrecks, who dwelt
there, who had seized such fast hold of the sphinx-like hills that only
death could unloose their grasp. Some of them were relics of
California's heyday, men who, when the waves of hope and adventure and
endeavor were rolling fast and high over the Golden State, were so
dashed about and bruised and beaten that at last they were glad to be
cast ashore among these hills. Some had hidden themselves there
because they were weary of the world and all its works, and wished to
go where they could no longer hear even its heart-beats. Others there
were who had fled thither to escape the scorn of men or the vengeance
of the law. And there were a few who were staying on and on, and would
always stay, because those enchantresses that whisper in the evening
breezes of the mountains and the desert, that put forth caressing hands