It was a fine windy morning in March and Dixie Lee, of Chula Vista, Arizona, was leaving staid New York at the gate marked "Western Limited." A slight difference with the gatekeeper, who seemed to doubt every word she said, cast no cloud upon her spirits, and she was cheerfully searching for her ticket when a gentleman came up from behind. At sight of the trim figure at the wicket, he too became suddenly happy, and it looked as if the effete East was losing two of its merriest citizens.

Dane Coolidge was a Western writer and photographer. He grew up on a citrus ranch in Riverside County, California, and knew old-time cowboys first hand. "The languid quiet of midday lay upon the little road-house that stood guard by Verde Crossing. Old Crit and his wild Texas cowboys had left the corral at dawn, riding out mysteriously with their running irons in their chaps; the dogs had crawled under Jose Garcia's house and gone to sleep; to the north the Tonto trail stretched away vacant and only the brawling of the Verde as it rushed over the rocky ford suggested the savage struggle that...

The peace of midday lay upon Gunsight, broken only by the distant chang, chang of bells as a ten-mule ore-team came toiling in from the mines. In the cool depths of the umbrella tree in front of the Company's office a Mexican ground-dove crooned endlessly his ancient song of love, but Gunsight took no notice. Its thoughts were not of love but of money.

Under the rim of Shadow Mountain, embraced like a pearl of great price by the curve of Bonanza Point and the mined-out slope of Gold Hill, the deserted city of Keno lay brooding and silent in the sun. A dry, gusty wind, swooping down through the northern pass, slammed the great iron fire-doors that hung creaking from the stone bank building, caught up a cloud of sand and dirt and, whirling it down past empty stores and assay offices, deposited it in the doorways of gambling houses and dance halls, long since abandoned to the rats. An old man, pottering about among the ruins, gathered up some...

The day had dawned on the summit of Apache Leap and a golden eagle, wheeling high above the crags, flashed back the fire of the sun from his wings; but in the valley below where old Pinal lay sleeping the heat had not begun. A cool wind drew down from the black mouth of Queen Creek Canyon, stirring the listless leaves of the willows, and the shadow of the great cliff fell like a soothing hand on the deserted town at its base.

After many long, brooding days of sunshine, when the clean-cut mountains gleamed brilliantly against the sky and the grama grass curled slowly on its stem, the rain wind rose up suddenly out of Papagueria and swooped down upon the desolate town of Bender, whirling a cloud of dust before it; and the inhabitants, man and horse, took to cover. New-born clouds, rushing out of the ruck of flying dirt, cast a cold, damp shadow upon the earth and hurried past; white-crested thunder-caps, piling-up above the Four Peaks, swept resolutely down to meet them; and the storm wind, laden with the smell of...

The heat hung like smoke above Panamint Sink, it surged up against the hills like the waves of a great sea that boiled and seethed in the sun; and the mountains that walled it in gleamed and glistened like polished jet where the light was struck back from their sides. They rose up in solid ramparts, unbelievably steep and combed clean by the sluicings of cloudbursts; and where the black canyons had belched forth their floods a broad wash spread out, writhing and twisting like a snake-track, until at last it was lost in the Sink.