THE NIGHT CAMP
"Well, what do you know about that?" exclaimed Nort, as he turned to
look at his brother, when the vision of the city on the river bank had
disappeared.
"Were we dreaming, or did we really see something?" asked Dick, passing
his hand over his eyes in dazed fashion.
"We saw something all right," asserted Nort, "and I'm wondering if I
saw the same thing you did--a city--the steamer and----"
"I saw it, too," declared Dick, interrupting his brother's recital.
"But where did it go? A fog must have rolled up between us and it.
But now we know which way to ride. I don't know what town that was,
but they can tell us how to get back to Diamond X ranch."
"It's queer," murmured Nort, as Dick urged his horse in the direction
of the vision they had just beheld.
"What's queer?" asked Dick.
"Seeing that town," his brother went on. "Bud never said anything
about the ranch being so near a place where they had a river steamer.
There isn't a boat of that size on the river around here."
"No," assented Dick. "This must be farther down. Anyhow, let's hit
the trail for there. We aren't lost any more, I reckon."
"Doesn't seem," murmured Nort. But, even as the two brothers urged
their tired, broncos forward, another strange thing happened. In the
very same place where they had seen the vision of the town and the
steamer, only to witness it vanish, there appeared in sharp detail a
large ranch, with its corrals, its bunk house and main buildings.
"There! Look!" cried Dick. "There's Diamond X!"
Nort shaded his eyes with his hands, and peered long and earnestly.
"Diamond X!" he murmured. "That isn't our ranch! Our bunk house isn't
so near the corral, and, besides----"
Then, even as he spoke, this vision vanished as had the other, being
wiped out of sight; fading slowly as if some unseen operator in a movie
booth had cut off his light.
The brothers turned and stared at one another. Suddenly the truth
dawned upon them.
"A _mirage_!" exclaimed Nort.
"That's what!" assented Dick. "Two mirages! We saw one after the
other, a city and a ranch in the same place!"
And that is what the visions had been--mirages, those strange phenomena
of the west--of desert places--natural occurrences in localities where
the air is abnormally clear, and where conditions combine to transpose
distant scenes.
Of course the explanation is simple enough. Of the mirage the
dictionary says it is "an optical illusion arising from an unequal
refraction in the lower strata of the atmosphere, causing images of
remote objects to be seen double, distorted or inverted as if reflected
in a mirror, or to appear as if suspended in the air."
The word comes from a Latin one, meaning "to look at," and that is
about all you can do to a mirage--look at it. It is as unsubstantial
as the air in which it is formed.
There are many varieties of mirages seen in the West, and if the boys
had seen a double one, or had the vision of the city and ranch been
inverted, they might have sooner guessed the secret of it. But the
particular mirages they had viewed had, through some trick of air
refraction, been imposed on their eyesight rightside up, and
wonderfully clear.
I do not suppose all the stories that have been written of mirages are
true, but it is certain that many strange tricks have been played on
the eyesight of observers by these phenomena, and more than one
luckless prospector, or cattleman, has followed these visions, only to
be tantalized in the end by finding, just as Nort and Dick did, that
they merely vanished, dissolving into nothing.
Telling of their experiences afterward, Nort and Dick declared that
when they had visualized the steamer moving up to her dock, they had
actually seen figures disembarking.
"That _couldn't_ be!" declared Bud. "Your eyes must have been blinking
and you _thought_ you saw figures. I've been fooled by mirages myself,
but though you might make out something as large as a steamer moving, I
never yet saw one of these visions clear enough so that you could make
out people moving about. You can see a town, or a ranch, sometimes
right side up, and sometimes upside down, but you can't make out
people. I won't say that it is impossible, but I've never seen it, nor
heard of anyone who has," the boy rancher concluded.
"Well, it was wonderful enough as it was," declared Nort, and even
those who have seen many mirages will agree with this, I think.
"Well, that sure was queer!" exclaimed Nort, rubbing his eyes again.
"And to think we might have ridden off, and tried to get to that ranch,
or city."
"I thought sure it was Diamond X," declared Dick.
"Well, I knew it wasn't, as soon as I saw how the buildings were
located. But I thought it was some ranch. Bud told me about these
mirages, though I never thought they were as plain as that."
"They sure do fool you!" laughed Dick. "And now, before we get led
astray by any more, let's get settled for the night. It looks as if
we'd have to stay here."
"Yes, it does," agreed Nort. He looked in the direction where the
strange images had appeared in the air, seemingly suspended between the
heaven and the earth. There were no more of the visions, the declining
sun doubtless being in such a position as no longer to produce the
necessary refraction, or bending of the light rays.
"Here's water," spoke Nort, pointing to a spring bubbling out of the
side of the hill. "We'll make a fire, and cook what we have."
"But not all of it," stipulated Dick. "We've got to save some for
to-morrow. No telling how long we may be out on our own."
"That's right," agreed Nort. "Though when our bacon and flour give out
we can get one of those fellows--maybe," and he pointed to a big jack
rabbit, almost as large as a dog, loping away.
"Yes, Bud says they're good eating," assented Dick. "The only thing
is, can we knock one over with our guns?"
"I'm not much of a shot, yet, but then a fellow ought to hit one of
those jacks--when he isn't running," qualified Nort, for the speed of
these rabbits of the plains is almost beyond belief. Indeed they put
the speediest horse on his mettle, and a greyhound, or a similar breed
of dog, is the only canine that can compete with them.
"Yes, no use shooting when they start racing," agreed Dick.
The lads slipped from their ponies, taking off the saddles which,
later, they would use as pillows. And immediately the cow horses were
relieved of their back burdens, they started to roll. This is the
ideal recreation for the steeds of ranch or plain, for they get little
of the rubbing down or care bestowed on other horses. Their daily roll
in the grass and dust keeps their coat in good condition.
The ponies were pegged out by means of the lariats, which allowed them
to graze or roll as they pleased. They were tied near a water hole,
formed below the spring, so the animals had the three most desirable
requisites--food, water and a place to disport themselves.
Nort and Dick proceeded to make their camp. It was a simple operation.
All they had to do was to gather some greasewood for the fire, and
start to cook. Later they would roll in their tarpaulins, with their
heads on the saddles, and get what rest they could.
Fortunately the two boys had with them some cooking utensils, and also
some bacon and flour with a supply of coffee. The flour was of the
"prepared" variety. Mixing it with water gave them batter for
flapjacks, which were baked in the same skillet in which the bacon had
first been fried. Water for the coffee was at hand, and they had sugar
for that beverage, though no milk, which might seem strange so near a
ranch on which were many cattle. But ranches are for the raising of
beef, and are not dairies, so milkless coffee was no hardship to the
boys, though at Diamond X milk was plentiful enough.
The smell of the burning greasewood, the aroma of the bacon and coffee,
not to mention that of the flapjacks, added zest to the appetites of
the boys, if zest were needed, and soon they were eagerly eating.
Then, as night settled down they gathered a quantity of wood for the
fire, looked to the fastenings of their ponies and stretched out under
the light of the bright stars. They were--except for their
ponies--alone amid the foothills, how far from Diamond X ranch they
could only guess.