Arizona Nights

A series of stories loosely connected by the narrative device of different speakers swapping yarns around the campfire at the end of each trail-riding day."A series of spirited tales emphasizing some phase of the life of the ranch, plains and desert, and all, taken together, forming a single sharply-cut picture of life in the far Southwest. All the tonic of the West is in this masterpiece of Stewart Edward White.Show Excerpt right. They rose by slopes and ledges, steep and rough, and at last ended in the thousand-foot cliffs of the buttes, running sheer and unbroken for many miles. During all the rest of our trip they were to be our companions, the only constant factors in the tumult of lesser peaks, precipitous canons, and twisted systems in which we were constantly involved. The sky was sun-and-shadow after the rain. Each and every Arizonan predicted clearing. "Why, it almost never rains in Arizona," said Jed Parker. "And when it does it quits before it begins." Nevertheless, about noon a thick cloud gathered about the tops of the Galiuros above us. Almost immediately it was dissipated by the wind, but when the peaks again showed, we stared with astonishment to see that they were white with snow. It was as though a magician had passed a sheet before them the brief instant necessary to work his great transformation. Shortly the sky thickened again, and it began to rain. Travel had been precarious befo