Over the Border

Over the Border by Herman Whitaker. Herman Whitaker (1867–1919) was a Californian writer. Whitaker and his family moved to the Piedmont hills in 1902 and took up residence in "The Bug House," which is now Blair Avenue. His family became part of the Bohemian group including Jack and Bess London and George and Carrie Sterling. Novel about three bandits. The Hideout was “situated itself” midway of the desert, the great Mexican desert that is more varied in its heated monotony than a land of woods and fields and streams. Here it runs to sparse grass land under upland piñon; there spreads over wide, clean sands that reflect like burnished brass the intolerable glare of the sun. Now it marches for leagues with the yuccas that fling crazed arms and shrunken limbs like posturing dwarfs; again it is dotted with lonely mesas, monolithic masses that raise orange and vermilion facades out of a violet mirage.