looked out and away over those awful reaches of desolate solitude.
The Seer and Pat uttered involuntary exclamations. Jefferson Worth,
Texas, and Abe were silent, but the boy's thin features were aglow
with eager enthusiasm, and the face of the driver revealed an
interest in the scene that years of familiarity could not entirely
deaden, but the gray mask of the banker betrayed no emotion.

In that view, of such magnitude that miles meant nothing, there was
not a sign of man save the one slender thread of road that was so
soon lost in the distance. From horizon to horizon, so far that the
eye ached in the effort to comprehend it, there was no cloud to cast
a shadow, and the deep sky poured its resistless flood of light upon
the vast dun plain with savage fury, as if to beat into helplessness
any living creature that might chance to be caught thereon. And the
desert, receiving that flood from the wide, hot sky, mysteriously
wove with it soft scarfs of lilac, misty veils of purple and filmy
curtains of rose and pearl and gold; strangely formed with it wide
lakes of blue rimmed with phantom hills of red and violet--
constantly changing, shifting, scene on scene, as dream pictures
shift and change.

Only the strange, silent life that, through long years, the desert
had taught to endure its hardships was there--the lizard, horned-
toad, lean jack-rabbit, gaunt coyote, and their kind. Only the hard
growth that the ages had evolved dotted the floor of the Basin in
the near distance--the salt-bush and greasewood, with here and there
clumps of mesquite.

And over it all--over the strange hard life, the weird, constantly
shifting scenes, the wondrous, ever-changing colors--was the