The clash of steel-shod soles against the rocks began to be heard, and the man’s voice grew louder.  It was raised in a sort of chant and became distinct with nearness, so that the words could be heard: 

    “Turn around an’ tu’n yo’ face
    Untoe them sweet hills of grace
      (D’ pow’rs of sin yo’ am scornin’!). 
    Look about an’ look aroun’,
    Fling yo’ sin-pack on d’ groun’
      (Yo’ will meet wid d’ Lord in d’ mornin’!).”

A sound of scrambling accompanied the song, and the spirit of the place fled away on the heels of the red-coated buck.  The green screen was burst asunder, and a man peered out at the meadow and the pool and the sloping side-hill.  He was a deliberate sort of man.  He took in the scene with one embracing glance, then ran his eyes over the details to verify the general impression.  Then, and not until then, did he open his mouth in vivid and solemn approval: 

“Smoke of life an’ snakes of purgatory!  Will you just look at that!  Wood an’ water an’ grass an’ a side-hill!  A pocket-hunter’s delight an’ a cayuse’s paradise!  Cool green for tired eyes!  Pink pills for pale people ain’t in it.  A secret pasture for prospectors and a resting-place for tired burros, by damn!”

He was a sandy-complexioned man in whose face geniality and humor seemed the salient characteristics.  It was a mobile face, quick-changing to inward mood and thought.  Thinking was in him a visible process.  Ideas chased across his face like wind-flaws across the surface of a lake.  His hair, sparse and unkempt of growth, was as indeterminate and colorless as his complexion.  It would seem that all the color of his frame had gone into his eyes, for they were startlingly blue.  Also, they were laughing and merry eyes, within them much of the naivete and wonder of the child; and yet, in an unassertive way, they contained much of calm self-reliance and strength of purpose founded upon self-experience and experience of the world.

From out the screen of vines and creepers he flung ahead of him a miner’s pick and shovel and gold-pan.  Then he crawled out himself into the open.  He was clad in faded overalls and black cotton shirt, with hobnailed brogans on his feet, and on his head a hat whose shapelessness and stains advertised the rough usage of wind and rain and sun and camp-smoke.  He stood erect, seeing wide-eyed the secrecy of the scene and sensuously inhaling the warm, sweet breath of the canyon-garden through nostrils that dilated and quivered with delight.  His eyes narrowed to laughing slits of blue, his face wreathed itself in joy, and his mouth curled in a smile as he cried aloud: 

“Jumping dandelions and happy hollyhocks, but that smells good to me!  Talk about your attar o’ roses an’ cologne factories!  They ain’t in it!”

He had the habit of soliloquy.  His quick-changing facial expressions might tell every thought and mood, but the tongue, perforce, ran hard after, repeating, like a second Boswell.