ed of the first
wingless wizard of the plains, and the hapless voyager is left
gasping. Almost immediately there are to be seen the regular "desert
devils," as they are called, bringing a dozen or more whirling columns
of yellow silt rapidly through the air, each pirouetting on one foot,
assuming meanwhile all sorts of fantastic shapes.

Now for the fierce onset. Like blasts of a blizzard, the shrapnel of
the desert is hurled into eyes, face, ears, and nostrils; little
rivers pour down the back and fill every discoverable wrinkle and
cranny of the clothing with their gritty load.

If in summer, buttoning the clothing is suffocation, and the
perspiration soon makes one a mass of grime; if in winter, it is not
so unbearable, for a comfortable fencing can be made against the sand
and the cold.

The whole landscape is obliterated by and by, and the trails are so
often drift-filled that unless one is himself accustomed to such
methods of travel or has an experienced plainsman as his driver and
guide, there is danger of becoming lost, or so out of the way that
night may overtake him and compel a waterless camp for himself and
team.

TWILIGHT AND DAWN

But to see the morning slip off its night clothes and step out into
daylight, or watch day don her night-wraps and snuggle down into
twilight on the quiet sand-ocean! In summer it is a scene of splendor,
often coming after a day or an evening of sandy wrath.

At early dawn, lining the eastern horizon, are the soft pencils of
bashful day over-topping the jagged sawteeth of the yet sleeping
mountains, fifty or more miles away. A faint hinting of the lightening
of the sky only deepens the blackness of the snow-streaked peaks. The
cowardly coyote's yelp comes more and more faintly, the burrowing
owl's "to-whit, to-whoo" falls dying on the moveless air, and the
white sparrow of the sagebrush starts up as if to 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