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This fellow had bought a string from the witch that carried him to the Cape Verdes and back to America, but when he had cut off all the knots, except two or three, he feared that he might run out of winds altogether; so he put upon certain servants of the Lord the task for which he had paid the servant of the devil.
At midday a wind from gulfward roared up the arroyo, and now only palos verdes and the few saguaros were green. Every day the water in the lava hole sank an inch. The Yaqui alone spent the waiting time in activity. He made trips up on the lava slope, and each time he returned with guns or boots or sombreros, or something belonging to the bandits that had fallen.
On either side of the stream the banks rise in benches, each a little higher and broader and more heavily covered: the first pure sand, laid on by the last freshet; the next grown over with grass and weeds; the next bushed up with baby willows and arrow weed; and then, the high bench, studded with mesquite and palo verdes; and at the base of the solid rim perhaps a higher level, strewn with the rocks which time and the elements have hurled down from the cliff, and crested with ancient trees.
As it swirled past, Hardy beheld a tangled wreckage of cottonwoods and sycamores, their tops killed by the drought, hurried away on this overplus of waters; the bare limbs of palo verdes, felled by his own axe; and sun-dried skeletons of cattle, light as cork, dancing and bobbing as they drifted past the ranch.
On all sides the vast Rancho Los Palos Verdes cleft the horizon: Don Mateo Castanada was one of the wealthiest grandees in the Californias, and his sons could gallop all day without crossing the boundary line of their future possessions. The rancho was as level as mid-ocean in a calm; here and there a wood or river broke the sweep; thousands of cattle grazed.
Once more Hardy took his ax and went out in search of palo verdes, high or low, young or old. There was a gnarled trunk, curling up against a rocky butte and protected by two spiny sahuaros that stood before it like armed guards, and he climbed up the rock to reach it. Chopping away the first sahuaro he paused to watch it fall.
All the desert trees that grew near the town the iron-woods and palo verdes and cat-claws and mesquite and salt-bushes had been uprooted by the Mexicans in their search for wood; but in every low swale the grass was still green and the cactus was crowned with gorgeous blossoms. "Isn't it glorious?" she sighed as she breathed the warm air and Rimrock looked up from studying his clutches.
This perhaps may be attributed, in part, to the sediment brought down by the many rivers debouching on that coast, and to the extensive mud-banks, which line great part of it. But the islands of St. Helena, Ascension, the Cape Verdes, St.
But farther down this stream bed spread out. There was every indication that at flood seasons the water covered the floor of the arroyo. The farther Gale went the thicker and larger grew the gnarled mesquites and palo verdes, the more cactus and greasewood there were, and other desert growths. Patches of gray grass grew everywhere. Gale began to wonder where the horses were.
On the twenty-fifth June he discovered the island de Sal, one of the Cape Verdes, and passing it he came to another very improperly named Bona vista, which signifies good prospect, yet the place is dull and wretched. Here he cast anchor in a channel near a small island in which there are six or seven houses appointed for persons who are afflicted with the leprosy, who come there to be cured.
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