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Even the sand of the desert would have been a welcome sight; a single clump of sage-brush would have fascinated the eye; but this was worse than the desert. It was abominable, this hideous sink of alkali, this bed of some primeval lake lying so far below the level of the ocean.
"For this reason, our uncounted acres of alkali lands, are so rich with stores of this valuable nitrogenous compound, that by proper treatment they may become the most valuable wheat-producing lands in the world. The desert shall become the source of abundance!
"If there's not too much alkali in it it'll be mighty welcome to the horses. Ah, Selim smells it now!" His great mount raised his head and neighed. Boyd smoothed his long, silky mane. "Yes, old friend," he said, as if he were talking to a man, "I'm quite sure it won't have much alkali, you're going to have a nice, big drink, so are your friends, and then, ho! for the mountains!"
He would make a circuit of the valley and come up on the other side. He would get into that country around Gold Mountain in the Armagosa hills, barred off from the world by the leagues of the red-hot alkali of Death Valley. "They" would hardly reach him there. He would stay at Gold Mountain two or three months, and then work his way down into Mexico.
It seemed a veritable rainbow realm of the sun. At first only the beauty stirred Hare he saw the copper belt close under the cliffs, the white beds of alkali and washes of silt farther out, the wind-ploughed canyons and dust-encumbered ridges ranging west and east, the scalloped slopes of the flat tableland rising low, the tips of volcanic peaks leading the eye beyond to veils and vapors hovering over blue clefts and dim line of level lanes, and so on, and on, out to the vast unknown.
"They came in sight early this morning just after we had had breakfast and had broken camp. The four of us 'Bunt, 'Idaho, Estorijo and myself were jogging on to the southward and had just come up out of the dry bed of some water-hole the alkali was white as snow in the crevices when Idaho pointed them out to us, three to the rear, two on one side, one on the other and very far away two ahead.
And perhaps ahead a little shadow blotted the face of the alkali, which, being reached and entered, spread like fire until it, too, filled the whole plain, until it, too, arrogated to itself the right of typifying Soda Springs Valley as a shimmering prairie of mesquite.
Durham died, Hereford lived through, and turned up after the first rains wiry, lean, and active. Then came the round-up. From the hidden defiles, the buttes and ranges, the hills and plains, the cowboys drew their net to the centre. Each "drive" brought together on some alkali flat thousands of the restless, milling, bawling cattle. The white dust rose in a cloud against the very blue sky.
He was perhaps only one of a hundred that tried to cross the plains and had to be abandoned when they reached the upper Platte, where the alkali dust made their feet so sore they could not travel, and as they could not be hauled on wagons they were left behind.
The crowd fled for their lives with Grace unable now to do more than stay on the saddle. The black had not gone far before he stopped as suddenly as he had started, stopped stiff-legged, braced himself and slid on his feet through the alkali for several yards. Grace Harlowe had been alert for this very thing, but just the same the suddenness of the move had nearly unhorsed her.
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