But to see the morning slip off its night clothes and step out into
daylight, or watch day don her night-wraps and snuggle down into
twilight on the quiet sand-ocean! In summer it is a scene of splendor,
often coming after a day or an evening of sandy wrath.
At early dawn, lining the eastern horizon, are the soft pencils of
bashful day over-topping the jagged sawteeth of the yet sleeping
mountains, fifty or more miles away. A faint hinting of the lightening
of the sky only deepens the blackness of the snow-streaked peaks. The
cowardly coyote's yelp comes more and more faintly, the burrowing
owl's "to-whit, to-whoo" falls dying on the moveless air, and the
white sparrow of the sagebrush starts up as if to catch the early worm
he is almost sure not to find. The loping jack rabbit slips softly to
his greasewood shelter and the prairie dog bounces barking from his
snake-infested haunt, noisily preparing for his day's digging and
foraging.
The stubborn mountains begin to let the sun's forerunning rays glide
between them; the sky, now old gold, is fast transforming into
kaleidoscopic crimsons and other reds, while the swift arms of the
day-painter are reaching from between the peaks of the precipitous
crags and dyeing the scales of the mackerel sky with hues and tints
the rainbow would covet.
In the opposite direction a morning mirage inverts an image of a
stretch of trees along the far-away river and blends them top to
top till they seem greenish-black columns supporting the dun clouds
of the west, while the belated moon peers through the half-unreal
corridors.