Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 6, 2025
It was a pair of black eagles, come down from the Panamints to throw a fateful circle above him, and in all his wanderings it had never happened before that an eagle had circled his camp. A superstitious chill made Wunpost shudder and draw back, for the Shoshones had told him that the eagles loved men's battles and came from afar to watch.
But the Jayhawkers turned to the north, seeking some outlet through the Panamints at that end of the range. One family followed them. J. W Brier, a minister from a little frontier community in the Middle West, left the other section with his wife and three children in the hope that the young men might find a route to safety.
Lonely, melancholy, nameless graves upon the windy desert slope! By this time the long shadows had begun to fall. Sunset over Death Valley! A golden flare burned over the Panamints long tapering notched mountains with all their rugged conformation showing. Above floated gold and gray and silver-edged clouds below shone a whorl of dusky, ruddy bronze haze, gradually thickening.
It was the curse of the Panamints that the veins all pinched out or ran into hungry ore; and for the second time, when he had esteemed himself rich, he had found the bottom of the hole. He had built roads and piped water and set up a mill and settled down to make his pile; and then, with that strange fatality which seemed to pursue him, he had seen his profits fail.
He was heading across the Valley to the Grapevine Range, and the hateful imp of evil which had dogged him through the Panamints would have to come down and leave a trail. And once he found his tracks Wunpost would know who he was fighting, and he could govern himself accordingly.
There were but two clouds in the sky, all the rest was blazing light; and these two clouds were moving slowly together, or rather, towards a common center. One came on from the southeast, the other from the west, and some invisible force seemed to be drawing them towards the peaks which marked the summit of the Panamints.
From beneath them flowed the plains of Owen's Valley, so far down that the white roads showed like gossamer threads, the ranches like tiny squares of green. Eight thousand feet almost straight down the precipice fell away. Across the valley rose the White Mountains and the Panamints, and beyond them dimly could be guessed Death Valley and the sombre Funeral Ranges.
In the morning they started late, resting in the shade of the Gateway until the sun had swung to the west; and then, as the shadow of the Panamints stretched out across the Valley, they repacked and started down the slope.
The Panamints stood out clean in the brilliant November light and each purple canyon seemed to invite him to its shelter, so sweetly did they lie in the sun. And yet, as that thin smoke bellied up and was smothered back again in the smoke-talk that the Apaches know so well, Wunpost wondered if its message was only a call for help it might be a warning to Lynch.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking