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Show CLOUDBURST Chapter XII Father had an unwavering will. But in the Escalante he had an unconquerable enemy. He clung to his hope for a quarter of a century without recognizing the prevailing power of his foe. When I say I felt an unfriendliness of nature that first evening as I stood on the steps of the "local" passenger train, I may give myself more credit for wisdom than an eight-year-old could deserve. Probably that vast emptiness of wasteland was too sudden a shock after the California palms and orange groves and the cool Pacific. Here I saw none of the romantic wild horses and deer Father had glowingly described, only scraggly brush and sand. Then I jumped off onto the gravel and Shep launched himself upon me. His affection and boundless zest could not be resisted. In his way he had the same dau^n-less courage, the delight in new adventure that Father had. I gladly yielded myself to his enthusiasm. Always, however, there brooded over the desert a hostility to mankind. Sometimes it was masked in the flaming sunsets, the crisp dawns. But the wild winds, whether file-edged with snow or sand, voiced that grim unfriendliness. One trouble was that the Escalante was not above lying. Yes, downright lying. The rainfall changed in cycles. When the land-locaters picked 1912 and '13 to advertise this "Future Garden of Eden" and bring in hundreds of land-hungry settlers, they chose a wet phase of the cycle. Snows that winter were heavy, likewise the spring rainfall. So the rank grass, the spring flowers, the pools of water were signs of nature's deceptiveness. |