Erle Stanley Gardner (1889-1970)

Sand Whispering

From Blood-Red Gold, 1930

It's easy to ignore a shouted message, but everyone pays attention to a whispered one, especially if you're alone in the California desert.

In his 1930 novella Blood-Red Gold, lawyer-turned-writer Erle Stanley Gardner describes the lullaby of whispers that you only hear in the desert when you're half asleep.

Now desert whispers are funny things. . . .

It's at night when the desert's still and calm and the steady stars blaze down like torches that you can hear the whispers best. Then you'll lie in your blankets with your head pillowed right on the surface of the desert, and you'll hear the dry sagebrush swish in the wind. It sounds as though the leaves are whispering. Then you'll hear the sand rattling against the cactus, and it'll sound like a different kind of whisper, a finer more stealthy whisper.

And then, usually just before you're getting to sleep, you'll hear that finest whisper of all, the sand whispering to the sand. . . .

The creator of fictional Los Angeles attorney Perry Mason, Erle Stanley Gardner began writing for pulp magazines in the 1920s.