hill, emerging from the canyon, and took the short cut straight
across the Quien Sabe ranch, leaving Guadalajara far to his left.
He tramped steadily on through the wheat stubble, walking fast,
his head in a whirl.

Never had he so nearly grasped his inspiration as at that moment
on the hilltop. Even now, though the sunset was fading, though
the wide reach of valley was shut from sight, it still kept him
company. Now the details came thronging back--the component
parts of his poem, the signs and symbols of the West. It was
there, close at hand, he had been in touch with it all day. It
was in the centenarian's vividly coloured reminiscences--De La
Cuesta, holding his grant from the Spanish crown, with his power
of life and death; the romance of his marriage; the white horse
with its pillion of red leather and silver bridle mountings; the
bull-fights in the Plaza; the gifts of gold dust, and horses and
tallow. It was in Vanamee's strange history, the tragedy of his
love; Angele Varian, with her marvellous loveliness; the Egyptian
fulness of her lips, the perplexing upward slant of her violet
eyes, bizarre, oriental; her white forehead made three cornered
by her plaits of gold hair; the mystery of the Other; her death
at the moment of her child's birth. It was in Vanamee's flight
into the wilderness; the story of the Long Trail, the sunsets
behind the altar-like mesas, the baking desolation of the
deserts; the strenuous, fierce life of forgotten towns, down
there, far off, lost below the horizons of the southwest; the
sonorous music of unfamiliar names--Quijotoa, Uintah, Sonora,
Laredo, Uncompahgre. It was in the Mission, with its cracked
bells, its decaying walls, its venerable sun dial, its fountain
and old garden, and in the Mission Fathers themselves, the