He was a slumbering volcano of passion that
might at any time become active and destroying.

Gazing now from under the brim of his hat at the desolate, silent world
that swept away from the base of the hill on whose crest he sat, his
lips curved with a slow, bitter sneer. During the time he had been on
the hill he had lived over his life and he saw its bleakness, its
emptiness, its mystery. This was his country. He had been born here;
he had passed days, months, years, in this valley. He knew it, and
hated it. He sneered as his gaze went out of the valley and sought the
vast stretches of the flaming desert. He knew the desert, too; it had
not changed. Riding through it yesterday and the day before he had
been impressed with the somber grimness of it all, as he had been
impressed many times before when watching it from this very hill. But
it was no more somber than his own life had been; its brooding silence
was no deeper than that which dwelt in his own heart; he reflected its
spirit, its mystery was his. His life had been like--like the
stretching waste of sky that yawned above the desert, as cold, hard,
and unsympathetic.

He saw a shadow; looked upward to see the Mexican eagle winging its
slow way overhead, and the sneer on his lips grew. It was a prophecy,
perhaps. At least the sight of the bird gave him an opportunity to
draw a swift and bitter comparison. He was like the eagle. Both he
and the bird he detested were beset with a constitutional
predisposition to rend and destroy. There was this difference between
them: The bird feasted on carrion, while he spent his life stifling
generous impulses and tearing from his heart the noble ideals which his
latent manhood persisted in erecting.

For two hours he sat on the hill, watching. He saw the sun sink slowly
toward the remote mountains, saw it hang a golden rim on a barren peak;
watched the shadows steal out over the foothills and stretch swiftly
over the valley toward him. Mystery seemed to awaken and fill the
world. The sky blazed with color--orange and gold and violet; a veil
of rose and amethyst descended and stretched to the horizons,
enveloping the mountains in a misty haze; purple shafts shot from
distant canyons, mingling with the brighter colors--gleaming,
shimmering, ever-changing. Over the desert the colors were even more
wonderful, the mystery deeper, the lure more appealing. But Calumet
made a grimace at it all, it seemed to mock