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Updated: May 13, 2025
From the high summit of the butte all the world lay spread out like a panorama, the slopes and cañons of Bronco Mesa, picketed with giant sahuaros; the silvery course of the river flowing below; the unpeopled peaks and cliffs of the Superstitions; and a faint haze-like zephyr, floating upon the eastern horizon.
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.
As Hardy climbed along the rocky bluffs felling the giant sahuaros down into the ravines for his cattle, the sweat poured from his face in a stream. A sultry heaviness hung over the land, and at night as he lay beneath the ramada he saw the lightning, hundreds of miles away, twinkling and playing along the northern horizon. It was a sign the promise of summer rain!
But on the third day, when the sprouts began to show on the twining stick-cactus, the great herd that had dogged his steps for months left the bitter sahuaros and scattered across the mesa like children on a picnic, nipping eagerly at every shoot. In a week the flowers were up and every bush was radiant with new growth.
The two letters lay charred to ashes among the glowing coals, but their words, even the kindest meant, were seared deep in his heart, fresh hurts upon older scars, and as he sat staring at the gaunt sahuaros on the hilltops he meditated gloomily upon his reply. Then, depositing Tommy on the bed, he sat down at his desk before the iron-barred window and began to write.
He was fresh from a moist climate, and the Gila monster poison had put him into a feverish condition. Hard as he tried, he could not resist drinking. His canteen was emptied even sooner than Carmena's. This was little past mid-afternoon. They had left the sahuaros behind and were coming down among widely scattered salt bushes to the border of an utterly barren alkali flat.
Upon that great mesa where the bronco mustangs from the Peaks still defied the impetuosity of men, the giant sahuaros towered in a mighty forest as far as the eye could see, yet between each stalk there lay a wide space, studded here and there with niggerheads of bristling spines, and fuzzy chollas, white as the backs of sheep and thorny beyond reason.
Nor was this all: in the immensity of distance there was room for sahuaros and niggerheads and chollas, and much besides.
So ended the great flood; and in the morning the sun rose up clean and smiling, making a diamond of every dew-drop. Then once more the cattle gathered about the house, waiting to be fed, and Hardy went out as before to cut sahuaros. On the second day the creek went down and the cattle from the other bank came across, lowing for their share.
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