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At that time there was no map of the country between California, Oregon and Nevada, but finally he decided to cross over the Beckwith Pass. After we had crossed the mountains we turned north, crossing the Truckee river where Reno now stands. From here we traveled across the sagebrush plain to Honey Lake.
To this day I never hear of some new frontier being developed without pricking up my ears and quivering like a circus horse when he hears a band play. There are some desert products that can't be rooted out sagebrush and cactus and the hold of the open spaces. The Rosebud Opening was one of the most famous lotteries of them all.
It was, somehow, an honest country, and there was a new song in that blue air which had never been sung in the world before. It was hard to tell about it, for it had nothing to do with words; it was like the light of the desert at noon, or the smell of the sagebrush after rain; intangible but powerful.
Airplane observation placed its exact position on the west bank of the Shoshone River, about four miles southwest of Byron and the same distance southeast of Garland. The country here is typically that of the Wyoming desert sand and sagebrush slightly rolling in some places, with occasional hills and buttes.
The tumbleweed banked high wherever, in the mysterious dispensations of Providence, a call for tumbleweed had made itself heard. The tumbleweed is a curious vegetable. It grows and flourishes amain, and becomes great even as a sagebrush, and puts forth its blossoms and seeds, and finally turns brown and brittle.
That brilliant constellation which seems to hang just over one's head in the high altitude of our sagebrush states, held hypnotically the sleepy gaze of Pink, whose duty it was to go on guard when the others turned in for the night.
This was probably a mercy, since Dixie kept stepping on them! I began to run to "keep out from in under," and she kept pace until we were almost galloping down the trail. When we got below the snow line, my excuse wouldn't work, and I had to ride again. There was sagebrush and sand and cactus. Then sand and cactus and sagebrush.
As it grew dark I drew nearer, and when it was about as dark as it was likely to be that night, I crept up to within a few yards of them. They had a little fire made of sagebrush and did not lie down until very late.
In the shade of a rock, perhaps, lurked a lizard, in the filmy mesquite that drooped and curled in the stifling heat slid a rattler, in the shelter of the sagebrush the sage hen might have nestled her eggs in the hot sand. But these were fixtures. Calumet, his pony, and the eagle, were not.
Keith found himself in a small, neat room, with heavy beams, fireplace, and deep embrasured windows. An iron bed, two chairs, a table, a screen, a shelf of books, and a wardrobe were its sole furnishings. In the fireplace had been laid, but not lighted, a fire of sagebrush roots. Krafft touched a match to the roots, which instantly leaped into eager and aromatic flames.
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