walled, and canyoned country, as rough as a stormy sea; but when he
rode into that country the sharp and broken features held to the
distance.

He was glad to get out of the sand. Long narrow flats, gray with grass
and dotted with patches of greasewood, and lined by low bare ridges of
yellow rock, stretched away from him, leading toward the yellow peak
that seemed never to be gained upon.

Shefford had pictures in his mind, pictures of stone walls and wild
valleys and domed buttes, all of which had been painted in colorful
and vivid words by his friend Venters. He believed he would recognize
the distinctive and remarkable landmarks Venters had portrayed, and he
was certain that he had not yet come upon one of them. This was his
second lonely day of travel and he had grown more and more susceptible
to the influence of horizon and the different prominent points. He
attributed a gradual change in his feelings to the loneliness and the
increasing wildness. Between Tuba and Flagstaff he had met Indians
and an occasional prospector and teamster. Here he was alone, and
though he felt some strange gladness, he could not help but see the
difference.

He rode on during the gray, lowering, chilly day, and toward evening
the clouds broke in the west, and a setting sun shone through the
rift, burnishing the desert to red and gold. Shefford's instinctive
but deadened love of the beautiful in nature stirred into life, and
the moment of its rebirth was a melancholy and sweet one. Too late
for the artist's work, but not too late for his soul!

For a place to make camp he halted near a low area of rock that lay