Morning came swiftly over the Gloriettas. Darkness
turned to gray; shapeless masses took on distinctness; the night chill
softened to the crisp breeze of dawn. Then came the rare June day in
whose bright opening hour the crystal skies of New Mexico hung above us,
and about us lay a landscape with radiant lights on the rich green of
the mesa slopes, and gray levels atint with mother-of-pearl and gold.
The Indian pueblos were astir. Mexican faces showed now and then at the
doorways of far-scattered groups of adobe huts. Outside of these all was
silence--a motionless land full of wild, rugged beauty, and thrilling
with the spell of mystery and glamour of romance. And overbrooding all,
the spirit of the past, that made each winding trail a footpath of the
centuries; each sheer cliff a watch-tower of the ages; each wide sandy
plain, a rallying-ground for the tribes long ago gone to dust; each
narrow valley a battle-field for the death-struggle between the dusky
sovereigns of a wilderness kingdom and the pale-faced conquerors of the
coat of mail and the dominant soul. The sense of danger lessened with
distance and no knight of old Spain ever rode more proudly in the days
of chivalry than Beverly Clarenden and I rode that morning, fearing
nothing, sure of our power to protect the golden-haired girl, thrilled
by this strange flight through a land of strange scenes fraught with the
charm of daring and danger.
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