ic cliff-dwellings.

The desert beyond Kayenta spread out impressively, bare red flats
and plains of sage leading to the rugged vividly-colored and
wind-sculptured sandstone heights typical of the Painted Desert of
Arizona. Laguna Creek, at that season, became flooded after every
thunderstorm; and it was a treacherous red-mired quicksand where I
convinced myself we would have stuck forever had it not been for
Wetherill's Navajos.

We rode all day, for the most part closed in by ridges and bluffs, so
that no extended view was possible. It was hot, too, and the sand blew
and the dust rose. Travel in northern Arizona is never easy, and this
grew harder and steeper. There was one long slope of heavy sand that
I made sure would prove too much for Wetherill's pack mules. But they
surmounted it apparently less breathless than I was. Toward sunset a
storm gathered ahead of us to the north with a promise of cooling and
sultry air.

At length we turned into a long canyon with straight rugged red
walls, and a sandy floor with quite a perceptible ascent. It appeared
endless. Far ahead I could see the black storm-clouds; and by and bye
began to hear the rumble of thunder. Darkness had overtaken us by the
time we had reached the head of this canyon; and my first sight of
Monument Valley came with a dazzling flash of lightning. It revealed
a vast valley, a strange world of colossal shafts and buttes of rock,
magnificently sculptored, standing isolated and aloof, dark, weird,
lonely. When the sheet lightning flared across the sky showing the
monuments silhouetted black against that strange horizon the effect
was marvelously beautiful. I watched until the storm died away.

[Illustration: Z. G. AFTER TWO MONTHS IN THE WILDS]

Dawn, with the desert sunrise, changed Monument Valley, bereft it of
its night gloom and weird shadow, and showed it in another aspect of
beauty. It was hard for me to realize that those monuments were not
the works of man. The great valley must once have been a plateau of
red rock from which the softer strata had eroded, leaving the gentle
league-long slopes marked here and there by upstanding pillars and
columns of singular shape and beauty. I rode down the sweet-scented
sage-slopes under the shadow of the lofty Mittens, and around and
across the valley, and back again to the height of land. And when I
had completed the ride a story had woven itself into my mind; and
the spot where I stood was to be the plac