hated it; loved it.

Often as Barbara sat looking over that great basin her heart cried
out to know the secret it held. Who was she? Who were her people?
What was the name to which she had been born? What was the life from
which the desert had taken her? But no answer to her cry had ever
come from the awful "Hollow of God's Hand."

Before Barbara had left her home that afternoon a man, walking with
long, easy stride, followed the San Felipe trail out from the city
on to the Mesa. He was a tall man and of so angular and lean a
figure that his body seemed made up mostly of bone somewhat loosely
fastened together with sinews almost as hard as the frame-work. His
face, thin and rugged, was burned to the color of saddle leather. He
was dressed in corduroy trousers, belted and tucked in high-laced
boots, a soft gray shirt and slouch hat, and over his square
shoulders was the strap of a small canteen. His long legs carried
him over the ground at an astonishing rate, so that before Barbara
had left the Mexicans the pedestrian had gained the foot of the low
hill at the mouth of the canyon.

With remarkable ease the man ascended the rough, steep side of the
hill, where, selecting a convenient rock, he seated himself and gave
his attention to the wonderful scene that, from his feet, stretched
away miles and miles to the purple mountain wall on the west. So
still was he and so intent in his study of the landscape, that a
horned-toad, which had dodged under the edge of the rock at his
approach, crept forth again, venturing quite to the edge of his boot
heel; and a lizard, scaling the rock at his back, almost touched his
shoulder.