Page:The Valley of Adventure (1926).pdf/123

 There is a wind that comes down from the desert places of southern California in the autumn of the year, sweeping over mountain and hill, bearing its mysterious way out to sea. It is a searing wind, that seems to pierce the eyeballs, to strike to the core of the brain, yet a beguiling wind, rustling the curtains of memory, not lifting them to reveal the thing that charges it with such a yearning that starts the sutures of the heart. It is of things that were, and are not; of the beginning, which has left but a rudimentary recollection; of old dreams and old songs, and long wanderings. It comes at sunrise, when fog lies over the land like a cool hand upon a pulsing wound, working a transformation in a breath. Clouds are consumed by it, fog vanishes in its fiery contact, not blown away, but eaten as if this wind were a dragon which sucked it through flaming nostrils.

Such a wind began blowing this morning before the travelers had been more than two hours on their way. It seemed that the sun was almost instantly revealed in a hazy sky, wool-fragments of fog melting away in its untempered glare. Far ahead Gertrudis could see the hills which made the nearer wall of the valley in which the Mission San Fernando lay. Low-lying they seemed, at that distance, shreds of fog-cloud resting over them, the desert haze carried by the growing wind making them dim and far away.

A sullenness had come into the day, changing the kindly aspect of the country which had been so allur-