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He said he supposed it was so in all our lives, that the immediate present filled the whole view of the future until we came to something else; and the look in his eyes made her turn from the landscape and wonder about him and his life. Then he stooped and pointed to a clump of soapweed, and idly broke off a bit of another bush, handing it to her.
I'd pointed out the range of the Chiracahuas, and Cochise's Stronghold, and the peaks of the Galiuros and other natural sceneries; I had showed him mesquite and yucca, and mescal and soapweed, and sage, and sacatone and niggerheads and all the other known vegetables of the region.
Where now are miles upon miles of yellow-fruited orange and lemon groves, betraying the care and knowledge of a later generation of scientific farmers, were then only dreary, barren wastes, with only the mountains and clumps of sagebrush, soapweed, cacti, creosote bushes and mesquite to break the everlasting monotony of the prospect.
A few small drinks cheered him up amazingly. After a big soapweed was touched off for a signal fire, he was able to tell his story. "Naw, I ain't hurt none to speak of; but I'm some tired. I hit a high lope and catched up with them in the aidge of the sandhills," he said. "I got 'em all unhobbled but old Heck; and then that ornery Nig horse kicked me in the head damn him!
We kept parallel with the course of the river, and soon stopped at the foot of a high sandhill. From here I knew I could get a view of the whole country. I told White to remain there until I came back, and, jumping off old Joe, I cautiously climbed the hill. From behind a big soapweed a plant sometimes called Spanish Dagger I got a view of the Dismal River, for several miles.
And Tom on Ginger seemed to gain, then lose and lose, when in an hour the long decline of Alamosa came. And there a freshly mounted lad took up the chase and turned it west, and on they went past towns of prairie dogs, through soapweed tracts and cactus brakes by scores, and pricked and wrenched rode on. With dust and sweat the Black was now a dappled brown, but still he stepped the same.
Dimly I was conscious of soapweed, sacatone, mesquite, as we passed them. They were abreast and gone before I could think of them or how they were to be dodged. Two antelope bounded away to the left; birds rose hastily from the grasses. A sudden chirk, chirk, chirk, rose all about me.
Thus we were living on the fat of many lands and on the choicest fat of this. And what a region it is for pasture. At this place it reminds one of Texas. Open, grassy plains, sparser reaches of sand, long slopes of mesquite, mesas dotted with cedars and stretches of chapparal and soapweed.
The Pacer took alarm at half a mile, and led his band away out of sight on the soapweed mesa to the southeast. Jo followed at a gallop till he once more sighted them, then came back and instructed the cook, who was also teamster, to make for Alamosa Arroyo in the south. Then away to the southeast he went after the mustangs.
We had ridden, up to this time, directly away from camp, now we rode a circumference of which headquarters was the centre. The country was pleasantly rolling and covered with grass. Here and there were clumps of soapweed. Far in a remote distance lay a slender dark line across the plain. This we knew to be mesquite; and once entered, we knew it, too, would seem to spread out vastly.
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