imes
we dodged in and out among the mesquite bushes, alternately separating
and coming together again; sometimes we swept over grassy plains
apparently of illimitable extent, sometimes we skipped and hopped and
buck-jumped through and over little gullies, barrancas, and other sorts
of malpais--but always without drawing rein. The men rode easily, with
no thought to the way nor care for the footing. The air came back
sharp against our faces. The warm blood stirred by the rush flowed
more rapidly. We experienced a delightful glow. Of the morning cold
only the very tips of our fingers and the ends of our noses retained a
remnant. Already the sun was shining low and level across the plains.
The shadows of the canons modelled the hitherto flat surfaces of the
mountains.

After a time we came to some low hills helmeted with the outcrop of a
rock escarpment. Hitherto they had seemed a termination of Mount
Graham, but now, when we rode around them, we discovered them to be
separated from the range by a good five miles of sloping plain. Later
we looked back and would have sworn them part of the Dos Cabesas
system, did we not know them to be at least eight miles' distant from
that rocky rampart. It is always that way in Arizona. Spaces develop
of whose existence you had not the slightest intimation. Hidden in
apparently plane surfaces are valleys and prairies. At one sweep of
the eye you embrace the entire area of an eastern State; but
nevertheless the reality as you explore it foot by foot proves to be
infinitely more than the vision has promised.

Beyond the hill we stopped. Here our party divided again, half to the
right and half to the left. We had ridden, up to this time, directly
away from camp, now we rode a circumference of which headquarters was
the centre. The country was pleasantly rolling and covered with grass.
Here and there were clumps of soapweed. Far in a remote distance lay a
slender dark line across the plain. This we knew to be mesquite; and
once entered, we knew it, too, would seem to spread out vastly. And
then this grassy slope, on which we now rode, would show merely as an
insignificant streak of yellow. It is also like that in Arizona.

I have ridden in succession through grass land, brush land, flower
land, desert. Each in turn seemed entirely to fill the space of the
plains between the mountains.

From time to time Homer halted us and detached a man. The business of
the latter