is thoughts. Her presence
seemed still to be all about him. One of her hairs was tangled about a
button of his coat; her powder and the scent of her were all over his
shoulder; the recollection of her kisses smarted sweetly on his mouth. He
was weak, confused, ridiculously happy. But he knew that he would carry
North with him greater courage and purpose than ever before he had known.

CHAPTER XXI

In the dry clean air of the Southwest all things change slowly. Growth is
slow and decay is even slower. The body of a dead horse in the desert does
not rot but dessicates, the hide remaining intact for months, the bones
perhaps for years. Men and beasts often live to great age. The _pinon_
trees on the red hills were there when the conquerors came, and they are
not much larger now--only more gnarled and twisted.

This strange inertia seems to possess institutions and customs as well as
life itself. In the valley towns, it is true, the railroads have brought
and thrown down all the conveniences and incongruities of civilization.
But ride away from the railroads into the mountains or among the lava
_mesas_, and you are riding into the past. You will see little earthen
towns, brown or golden or red in the sunlight, according to the soil that
bore them, which have not changed in a century. You will see grain
threshed by herds of goats and ponies driven around and around the
threshing floors, as men threshed grain before the Bible was written. You
will see Indian pueblos which have not changed materially since the brave
days when Coronado came to Taos and the Spanish soldiers stormed the
heights of Acoma. You will hear of strange Gods and devils and of the evil
eye. It is almost as though this crystalline air were indeed a great clear
crystal, impervious to time, in which the past is forever encysted.

The region in which Ramon's heritage lay was a typical part of this
forgotten land. In the southern end of the Rocky Mountains, it was a
country of great tilted _mesas_ reaching above timber line, covered for
the most part with heavy forests of pine and fir, with here and there
great upland pastures swept clean by forest fires of long ago. Along the
lower slopes of the mountains, where the valleys widened, were primitive
little _adobe_ towns, in which the Mexicans lived, each owning a few acres
of tillable land. In the summer they followed their sheep herds in the
upland pastures. There wer