catch the early worm he is almost sure not to find. The loping jack rabbit slips softly to his greasewood shelter and the prairie dog bounces barking from his snake-infested haunt, noisily preparing for his day’s digging and foraging.

The stubborn mountains begin to let the sun’s forerunning rays glide between them; the sky, now old gold, is fast transforming into kaleidoscopic crimsons and other reds, while the swift arms of the day-painter are reaching from between the peaks of the precipitous crags and dyeing the scales of the mackerel sky with hues and tints the rainbow would covet.

In the opposite direction a morning mirage inverts an image of a stretch of trees along the far-away river and blends them top to top till they seem greenish-black columns supporting the dun clouds of the west, while the belated moon peers through the half-unreal corridors. 37

SUNSET

The sunset is far more gorgeous; it often reaches grandeur. Let it be a winter evening. A suggestion of storm has been playing threats. The western hills have reached up their time-toughened arms and carried the burnt-out lantern of day to bed, tucking him away in gold-lace tapestry and rose-tinted down. Then the blue, black, and brown clouds change quickly to purple, pink, and red by turns, and the opaline sky itself forms a background for the dissolving community of interlacing filaments of priceless filigree, till in time too full of interest to compute by measure, the whole heavens are aflame with a riotous orgy of color, a prodigality of shifting scene, making one think of the descriptions essayed by the writer of the Apocalypse.

We think of Moses who wished to see God “face to face,” but was told he would be permitted to behold only the “dying away of his glory.” No wonder the man who was forty years in the wilderness before that grand exode, and forty more through the unsurveyed deserts, was enabled to write the majestic prose-poems 38 that have lived unaltered through all these thousands of critical years! He was in the region where inspiration is dispensed with hands of infinite wealth. God is the dispenser. 39

SAGEBRUSH

Frequently within these pages mention has been made of the commonest of all our native plants on the Trail––sagebrush. Botanically, it is, Artemisia tridentata. The new Standard Dictionary defines sagebrush as “any one of the various shrubby species of Artemisia, of the aster family, growing on the elevated plains of the Western United States, especially Artemisia tridentata, very abundant from Montana to Colorado and westward.” The leaf ends in three points; hence the adjective tridentata––the three-toothed artemisia.

There are several varieties of sagebrush, and a person not well acquainted with the desert might easily mistake one for the other. There are the white sage, a good forage plant for sheep, and the yellow sage, which, when properly taken, can be made useful for cattle. Then there is the common variety, the sort named above. This is not to be mistaken for the prickly greasewood 42 which infests the more alkaline regions; nor the rabbit-brush with its blossom so like the goldenrod, but with a very disagreeable odor. No man who knows will ever buy land where the greasewood grows thickly; it is unproductive because of the large percentage of alkali. But the ancient-looking sage is a pretty sure indication of fertility of soil. Mother Nature is sometimes hard pushed to find dresses for all her poorer areas; of course the better portions of the land east or west, north or south, care for their clothes better than do these arid stretches and the clothing is a richer vegetation.

This ever-gray, little hunger-pinched pygmy among trees looks about as much like an oak as does a diminutive monkey like a grown man.

A peculiarity of this individual in treedom is that it keeps its ash-colored leaf until it has a new set to put on in the spring, so that all winter long it presents the same color as it does in the summertime. Its bark is loose and shaggy, being shed rapidly, and gives one the thought of the old grape vine; hanging in bunches, the 43 bole has always a ragged appearance. It is truly the dry-land plant, always found where the alkali or water is not too abundant; but in favored spots where there is only a little dampness and not too much fierceness of the summer heat it grows eight or ten feet high, making a body large enough for fence posts. This is extraordinary, for usually these Liliputian forests do not attain a height of more than four feet, and often much less. So diminutive are these solemn woods that the ordinary gang-plow can walk right through them, turning the shrubbery under like tall grass, although every tree is perfect, just like the dwarf creations produced by the resourceful Japanese.

The seed of this tiny tree grows on stiff, upright filaments like the broom-corn straws. These stems are very bitter and are often used by the range-riders on long rides or roundups to excite the flow of saliva when thirst overtakes them too far from water. Because of its bitterness it is often called wormwood.

Not many uses have been found for the wood of these primeval forests. In many 44 sections the people have nothing but sagebrush for firewood. The whole tree is used, special stoves, or heaters, being made to accommodate the whole plant. It is gathered in the following manner: Two immense T-rails of railroad iron are laid side by side, one inverted, and securely fastened together; to the ends of these are hitched two teams of horses or mules, which pulling parallel to each other, are driven into the standing fairy forests and the swaths of fallen timber show the track of this unnatural storm. Its roots have such slight hold on the soil that it easily falls. Wagons and pitchforks follow, and the whole of the felling is hauled untrimmed to the home for hand-axing if too large; and it is all burned, top and root. There is so much vegetable oil in this queer plant that it makes a fine and very quick fire, green or dry.

After a summer rain there is no aromatic perfume surpassing that of the odor of sagebrush filling the newly washed air. The mountaineer who has had to make a trip East gladly opens his window, as his train pushes back into the habitat of these 45 aromatic shrubs, to get an early whiff of the health-laden, sage-sweetened atmosphere of the beloved Westland and homeland.