Page:Weird Tales Volume 8 Number 3 (1926-09).djvu/5



By Everil Worrell

"Before Alison's eyes the flashlight cut an oblong passage in the rock, as cleanly as a knife could cut cheese."

USK lay on the desolate land. Have you crossed the great North American continent, from ocean to ocean? If you have, you know where the desolate land lies, going east and west. Down south, in Arizona and New Mexico and the country thereabouts, you can not look at it without thinking of the days of the Indian fighting, when barbs of death were hidden in the sharp-cut arroyos and behind the mesas, and lurked among fantastic spears of cactus. Going through Montana and the Dakotas, where the Bad Lands are, things are on a grander scale. A Norse saga might be staged where the great, somber foothills rise steadily toward the mountain ranges. Beings of another world, gnomes and pixies, might in-as the contorted deformities of the Earth.

But farther north, east of the Great Divide in Canada, where the train is stopped so that you can dip one hand in a westward and the other in an eastward flowing stream, and make a wish that is sure to come true, the mighty grandeur of the desolate land beggars all description. Through it the Canadian Pacific rushes down toward the east like a comet rushing through the vast distances of space. The long train with its luxurious cars shrinks to a tiny thing encompassed by tremendous, jutting forms of ancient rock. Falling behind, the long, straight track narrowing to a point, shining in the dull red of the afterglow; to the left, peaks of a range dim with distance, yet high and clear against the sky; to the right, Castle Rock.

This trip was not new to Frank Alison, but it was always a real 292