The Last of the Plainsmen

by Zane Grey

  CHAPTER 13.

  SINGING CLIFFS

  Old Tom had rolled two hundred yards down the canyon, leaving a redtrail and bits of fur behind him. When I had clambered down to thesteep slide where he had lodged, Sounder and Jude had just decided hewas no longer worth biting, and were wagging their tails. Frank wasshaking his head, and Jones, standing above the lion, lasso in hand,wore a disconsolate face.

  "How I wish I had got the rope on him!"

  "I reckon we'd be gatherin' up the pieces of you if you had," saidFrank, dryly.

  We skinned the old king on the rocky slope of his mighty throne, andthen, beginning to feel the effects of severe exertion, we cut acrossthe slope for the foot of the break. Once there, we gazed up indisarray. That break resembled a walk of life--how easy to slip down,how hard to climb! Even Frank, inured as he was to strenuous toil,began to swear and wipe his sweaty brow before we had made one-tenth ofthe ascent. It was particularly exasperating, not to mention the dangerof it, to work a few feet up a slide, and then feel it start to move.We had to climb in single file, which jeopardized the safety of thosebehind the leader. Sometimes we were all sliding at once, like boys ona pond, with the difference that we were in danger. Frank forged ahead,turning to yell now and then for us to dodge a cracking stone. Faithfulold Jude could not get up in some places, so laying aside my rifle, Icarried her, and returned for the weapon. It became necessary,presently, to hide behind cliff projections to escape the avalanchesstarted by Frank, and to wait till he had surmounted the break. Jonesgave out completely several times, saying the exertion affected hisheart. What with my rifle, my camera and Jude, I could offer him noassistance, and was really in need of that myself. When it seemed as ifone more step would kill us, we reached the rim, and fell panting withlabored chests and dripping skins. We could not speak. Jones had worn apair of ordinary shoes without thick soles and nails, and it seemedwell to speak of them in the past tense. They were split into ribbonsand hung on by the laces. His feet were cut and bruised.

  On the way back to camp, we encountered Moze and Don coming out of thebreak where we had started Sounder on the trail. The paws of bothhounds were yellow with dust, which proved they had been down under therim wall. Jones doubted not in the least that they had chased a lion.

  Upon examination, this break proved to be one of the two which Clarkeused for trails to his wild horse corral in the canyon. According tohim, the distance separating them was five miles by the rim wall, andless than half that in a straight line. Therefore, we made for thepoint of the forest where it ended abruptly in the scrub oak. We gotinto camp, a fatigued lot of men, horses and dogs. Jones appearedparticularly happy, and his first move, after dismounting, was tostretch out the lion skin and measure it.

  "Ten feet, three inches and a half!" he sang out.

  "Shore it do beat hell!" exclaimed Jim in tones nearer to excitementthan any I had ever heard him use.

  "Old Tom beats, by two inches, any cougar I ever saw," continued Jones."He must have weighed more than three hundred. We'll set about curingthe hide. Jim, stretch it well on a tree, and we'll take a hand inpeeling off the fat."

  All of the party worked on the cougar skin that afternoon. The gristleat the base of the neck, where it met the shoulders, was so tough andthick we could not scrape it thin. Jones said this particular spot wasso well protected because in fighting, cougars were most likely to biteand claw there. For that matter, the whole skin was tough, tougher thanleather; and when it dried, it pulled all the horseshoe nails out ofthe pine tree upon which we had it stretched.

  About time for the sun to set, I strolled along the rim wall to lookinto the canyon. I was beginning to feel something of its character andhad growing impressions. Dark purple smoke veiled the clefts deep downbetween the mesas. I walked along to where points of cliff ran out likecapes and peninsulas, all seamed, cracked, wrinkled, scarred and yellowwith age, with shattered, toppling ruins of rocks ready at a touch togo thundering down. I could not resist the temptation to crawl out tothe farthest point, even though I shuddered over the yard-wide ridges;and when once seated on a bare promontory, two hundred feet from theregular rim wall, I felt isolated, marooned.

  The sun, a liquid red globe, had just touched its under side to thepink cliffs of Utah, and fired a crimson flood of light over thewonderful mountains, plateaus, escarpments, mesas, domes and turrets orthe gorge. The rim wall of Powell's Plateau was a thin streak of fire;the timber above like grass of gold; and the long slopes below shadedfrom bright to dark. Point Sublime, bold and bare, ran out toward theplateau, jealously reaching for the sun. Bass's Tomb peeped over theSaddle. The Temple of Vishnu lay bathed in vapory shading clouds, andthe Shinumo Altar shone with rays of glory.

  The beginning of the wondrous transformation, the dropping of the day'scurtain, was for me a rare and perfect moment. As the golden splendorof sunset sought out a peak or mesa or escarpment, I gave it a name tosuit my fancy; and as flushing, fading, its glory changed, sometimes Irechristened it. Jupiter's Chariot, brazen wheeled, stood ready to rollinto the clouds. Semiramis's Bed, all gold, shone from a tower ofBabylon. Castor and Pollux clasped hands over a Stygian river. The Spurof Doom, a mountain shaft as red as hell, and inaccessible,insurmountable, lured with strange light. Dusk, a bold, black dome, wasshrouded by the shadow of a giant mesa. The Star of Bethlehem glitteredfrom the brow of Point Sublime. The Wraith, fleecy, feathered curtainof mist, floated down among the ruins of castles and palaces, like theghost of a goddess. Vales of Twilight, dim, dark ravines, mystic homesof specters, led into the awful Valley of the Shadow, clothed in purplenight.

  Suddenly, as the first puff of the night wind fanned my cheek, astrange, sweet, low moaning and sighing came to my ears. I almostthought I was in a dream. But the canyon, now blood-red, was there inoverwhelming reality, a profound, solemn, gloomy thing, but real. Thewind blew stronger, and then I was to a sad, sweet song, which lulledas the wind lulled. I realized at once that the sound was caused by thewind blowing into the peculiar formations of the cliffs. It changed,softened, shaded, mellowed, but it was always sad. It rose from low,tremulous, sweetly quavering sighs, to a sound like the last woeful,despairing wail of a woman. It was the song of the sea sirens and themusic of the waves; it had the soft sough of the night wind in thetrees, and the haunting moan of lost spirits.

  With reluctance I turned my back to the gorgeously changing spectacleof the canyon and crawled in to the rim wall. At the narrow neck ofstone I peered over to look down into misty blue nothingness.

  That night Jones told stories of frightened hunters, and assuaged mymortification by saying "buck-fever" was pardonable after the dangerhad passed, and especially so in my case, because of the great size andfame of Old Tom.

  "The worst case of buck-fever I ever saw was on a buffalo hunt I hadwith a fellow named Williams," went on Jones. "I was one of the scoutsleading a wagon-train west on the old Santa Fe trail. This fellow saidhe was a big hunter, and wanted to kill buffalo, so I took him out. Isaw a herd making over the prairie for a hollow where a brook ran, andby hard work, got in ahead of them. I picked out a position just belowthe edge of the bank, and we lay quiet, waiting. From the direction ofthe buffalo, I calculated we'd be just about right to get a shot at novery long range. As it was, I suddenly heard thumps on the ground, andcautiously raising my head, saw a huge buffalo bull just over us, notfifteen feet up the bank. I whispered to Williams: 'For God's sake,don't shoot, don't move!' The bull's little fiery eyes snapped, and hereared. I thought we were goners, for when a bull comes down onanything with his forefeet, it's done for. But he slowly settled back,perhaps doubtful. Then, as another buffalo came to the edge of thebank, luckily a little way from us, the bull turned broadside,presenting a splendid target. Then I whispered to Williams: 'Now's yourchance. Shoot!' I waited for the shot, but none came. Looking atWilliams, I saw he was white and trembling. Big drops of sweat stoodout on his brow his teeth chattered, and his hands shook. He hadforgotten he carried a rifle."

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p; "That reminds me," said Frank. "They tell a story over at Kanab on aDutchman named Schmitt. He was very fond of huntin', an' I guess hadpretty good success after deer an' small game. One winter he was out inthe Pink Cliffs with a Mormon named Shoonover, an' they run into alammin' big grizzly track, fresh an' wet. They trailed him to a clumpof chaparral, an' on goin' clear round it, found no tracks leadin' out.Shoonover said Schmitt commenced to sweat. They went back to the placewhere the trail led in, an' there they were, great big silver tiptracks, bigger'n hoss-tracks, so fresh thet water was oozin' out of'em. Schmitt said: 'Zake, you go in und ged him. I hef took sick rightnow.'"

  Happy as we were over the chase of Old Tom, and our prospects forSounder, Jude and Moze had seen a lion in a tree--we sought ourblankets early. I lay watching the bright stars, and listening to theroar of the wind in the pines. At intervals it lulled to a whisper, andthen swelled to a roar, and then died away. Far off in the forest acoyote barked once. Time and time again, as I was gradually sinkinginto slumber, the sudden roar of the wind startled me. I imagined itwas the crash of rolling, weathered stone, and I saw again that hugeoutspread flying lion above me.

  I awoke sometime later to find Moze had sought the warmth of my side,and he lay so near my arm that I reached out and covered him with anend of the blanket I used to break the wind. It was very cold and thetime must have been very late, for the wind had died down, and I heardnot a tinkle from the hobbled horses. The absence of the cowbell musicgave me a sense of loneliness, for without it the silence of the greatforest was a thing to be felt.

  This oppressiveness, however, was broken by a far-distant cry, unlikeany sound I had ever heard. Not sure of myself, I freed my ears fromthe blanketed hood and listened. It came again, a wild cry, that mademe think first of a lost child, and then of the mourning wolf of thenorth. It must have been a long distance off in the forest. An intervalof some moments passed, then it pealed out again, nearer this time, andso human that it startled me. Moze raised his head and growled low inhis throat and sniffed the keen air.

  "Jones, Jones," I called, reaching over to touch the old hunter.

  He awoke at once, with the clear-headedness of the light sleeper.

  "I heard the cry of some beast," I said, "And it was so weird, sostrange. I want to know what it was."

  Such a long silence ensued that I began to despair of hearing the cryagain, when, with a suddenness which straightened the hair on my head,a wailing shriek, exactly like a despairing woman might give in deathagony, split the night silence. It seemed right on us.

  "Cougar! Cougar! Cougar!" exclaimed Jones.

  "What's up?" queried Frank, awakened by the dogs.

  Their howling roused the rest of the party, and no doubt scared thecougar, for his womanish screech was not repeated. Then Jones got upand gatherered his blankets in a roll.

  "Where you oozin' for now?" asked Frank, sleepily.

  "I think that cougar just came up over the rim on a scouting hunt, andI'm going to go down to the head of the trail and stay there tillmorning. If he returns that way, I'll put him up a tree."

  With this, he unchained Sounder and Don, and stalked off under thetrees, looking like an Indian. Once the deep bay of Sounder rang out;Jones's sharp command followed, and then the familiar silenceencompassed the forest and was broken no more.

  When I awoke all was gray, except toward the canyon, where the littlebit of sky I saw through the pines glowed a delicate pink. I crawledout on the instant, got into my boots and coat, and kicked thesmoldering fire. Jim heard me, and said:

  "Shore you're up early."

  "I'm going to see the sunrise from the north rim of the Grand Canon," Isaid, and knew when I spoke that very few men, out of all the millionsof travelers, had ever seen this, probably the most surpassinglybeautiful pageant in the world. At most, only a few geologists,scientists, perhaps an artist or two, and horse wranglers, hunters andprospectors have ever reached the rim on the north side; and these men,crossing from Bright Angel or Mystic Spring trails on the south rim,seldom or never get beyond Powell's Plateau.

  The frost cracked under my boots like frail ice, and the bluebellspeeped wanly from the white. When I reached the head of Clarke's trailit was just daylight; and there, under a pine, I found Jones rolled inhis blankets, with Sounder and Moze asleep beside him. I turned withoutdisturbing him, and went along the edge of the forest, but back alittle distance from the rim wall.

  I saw deer off in the woods, and tarrying, watched them throw upgraceful heads, and look and listen. The soft pink glow through thepines deepened to rose, and suddenly I caught a point of red fire. ThenI hurried to the place I had named Singing Cliffs, and keeping my eyesfast on the stone beneath me, trawled out to the very farthest point,drew a long, breath, and looked eastward.

  The awfulness of sudden death and the glory of heaven stunned me! Thething that had been mystery at twilight, lay clear, pure, open in therosy hue of dawn. Out of the gates of the morning poured a light whichglorified the palaces and pyramids, purged and purified the afternoon'sinscrutable clefts, swept away the shadows of the mesas, and bathedthat broad, deep world of mighty mountains, stately spars of rock,sculptured cathedrals and alabaster terraces in an artist's dream ofcolor. A pearl from heaven had burst, flinging its heart of fire intothis chasm. A stream of opal flowed out of the sun, to touch each peak,mesa, dome, parapet, temple and tower, cliff and cleft into thenew-born life of another day.

  I sat there for a long time and knew that every second the scenechanged, yet I could not tell how. I knew I sat high over a hole ofbroken, splintered, barren mountains; I knew I could see a hundredmiles of the length of it, and eighteen miles of the width of it, and amile of the depth of it, and the shafts and rays of rose light on amillion glancing, many-hued surfaces at once; but that knowledge was nohelp to me. I repeated a lot of meaningless superlatives to myself, andI found words inadequate and superfluous. The spectacle was too elusiveand too great. It was life and death, heaven and hell.

  I tried to call up former favorite views of mountain and sea, so as tocompare them with this; but the memory pictures refused to come, evenwith my eyes closed. Then I returned to camp, with unsettled, troubledmind, and was silent, wondering at the strange feeling burning withinme.

  Jones talked about our visitor of the night before, and said the trailnear where he had slept showed only one cougar track, and that led downinto the canyon. It had surely been made, he thought, by the beast wehad heard. Jones signified his intention of chaining several of thehounds for the next few nights at the head of this trail; so if thecougar came up, they would scent him and let us know. From which it wasevident that to chase a lion bound into the canyon and one bound outwere two different things.

  The day passed lazily, with all of us resting on the warm, fragrantpine-needle beds, or mending a rent in a coat, or working on some camptask impossible of commission on exciting days.

  About four o'clock, I took my little rifle and walked off through thewoods in the direction of the carcass where I had seen the gray wolf.Thinking it best to make a wide detour, so as to face the wind, Icircled till I felt the breeze was favorable to my enterprise, and thencautiously approached the hollow were the dead horse lay. Indianfashion, I slipped from tree to tree, a mode of forest travel notwithout its fascination and effectiveness, till I reached the height ofa knoll beyond which I made sure was my objective point. On peeping outfrom behind the last pine, I found I had calculated pretty well, forthere was the hollow, the big windfall, with its round, starfish-shapedroots exposed to the bright sun, and near that, the carcass. Sureenough, pulling hard at it, was the gray-white wolf I recognized as my"lofer."

  But he presented an exceedingly difficult shot. Backing down the ridge,I ran a little way to come up behind another tree, from which I soonshifted to a fallen pine. Over this I peeped, to get a splendid view ofthe wolf. He had stopped tugging at the horse, and stood with his nosein the air. Surely he could not have scented me, for the wind wasstrong from him to me; neit
her could he have heard my soft footfalls onthe pine needles; nevertheless, he was suspicious. Loth to spoil thepicture he made, I risked a chance, and waited. Besides, though Iprided myself on being able to take a fair aim, I had no great hopethat I could hit him at such a distance. Presently he returned to hisfeeding, but not for long. Soon he raised his long, fine-pointed head,and trotted away a few yards, stopped to sniff again, then went back tohis gruesome work.

  At this juncture, I noiselessly projected my rifle barrel over the log.I had not, however, gotten the sights in line with him, when he trottedaway reluctantly, and ascended the knoll on his side of the hollow. Ilost him, and had just begun sourly to call myself a mollycoddlehunter, when he reappeared. He halted in an open glade, on the verycrest of the knoll, and stood still as a statue wolf, a white,inspiriting target, against a dark green background. I could not stiflea rush of feeling, for I was a lover of the beautiful first, and ahunter secondly; but I steadied down as the front sight moved into thenotch through which I saw the black and white of his shoulder.

  Spang! How the little Remington sang! I watched closely, ready to sendfive more missiles after the gray beast. He jumped spasmodically, in ahalf-curve, high in the air, with loosely hanging head, then dropped ina heap. I yelled like a boy, ran down the hill, up the other side ofthe hollow, to find him stretched out dead, a small hole in hisshoulder where the bullet had entered, a great one where it had comeout.

  The job I made of skinning him lacked some hundred degrees theperfection of my shot, but I accomplished it, and returned to camp intriumph.

  "Shore I knowed you'd plunk him," said Jim very much pleased. "I shotone the other day same way, when he was feedin' off a dead horse. Nowthet's a fine skin. Shore you cut through once or twice. But he's onlyhalf lofer, the other half in plain coyote. Thet accounts fer hisfeedin' on dead meat."

  My naturalist host and my scientific friend both remarked somewhatgrumpily that I seemed to get the best of all the good things. I mighthave retaliated that I certainly had gotten the worst of all the badjokes; but, being generously happy over my prize, merely remarked: "Ifyou want fame or wealth or wolves, go out and hunt for them."

  Five o'clock supper left a good margin of day, in which my thoughtsreverted to the canyon. I watched the purple shadows stealing out oftheir caverns and rolling up about the base of the mesas. Jones cameover to where I stood, and I persuaded him to walk with me along therim wall. Twilight had stealthily advanced when we reached the SingingCliffs, and we did not go out upon my promontory, but chose a morecomfortable one nearer the wall.

  The night breeze had not sprung up yet, so the music of the cliffs washushed.

  "You cannot accept the theory of erosion to account for this chasm?" Iasked my companion, referring to a former conversation.

  "I can for this part of it. But what stumps me is the mountain rangethree thousand feet high, crossing the desert and the canyon just abovewhere we crossed the river. How did the river cut through that withoutthe help of a split or earthquake?"

  "I'll admit that is a poser to me as well as to you. But I supposeWallace could explain it as erosion. He claims this whole westerncountry was once under water, except the tips of the Sierra Nevadamountains. There came an uplift of the earth's crust, and the greatinland sea began to run out, presumably by way of the Colorado. In sodoing it cut out the upper canyon, this gorge eighteen miles wide. Thencame a second uplift, giving the river a much greater impetus towardthe sea, which cut out the second, or marble canyon. Now as to themountain range crossing the canyon at right angles. It must have comewith the second uplift. If so, did it dam the river back into anotherinland sea, and then wear down into that red perpendicular gorge weremember so well? Or was there a great break in the fold of granite,which let the river continue on its way? Or was there, at thatparticular point, a softer stone, like this limestone here, whicherodes easily?"

  "You must ask somebody wiser than I."

  "Well, let's not perplex our minds with its origin. It is, and that'senough for any mind. Ah! listen! Now you will hear my Singing Cliffs."

  From out of the darkening shadows murmurs rose on the softly risingwind. This strange music had a depressing influence; but it did notfill the heart with sorrow, only touched it lightly. And when, with thedying breeze, the song died away, it left the lonely crags lonelier forits death.

  The last rosy gleam faded from the tip of Point Sublime; and as if thatwere a signal, in all the clefts and canyons below, purple, shadowyclouds marshaled their forces and began to sweep upon the battlements,to swing colossal wings into amphitheaters where gods might havewarred, slowly to enclose the magical sentinels. Night intervened, anda moving, changing, silent chaos pulsated under the bright stars.

  "How infinite all this is! How impossible to understand!" I exclaimed.

  "To me it is very simple," replied my comrade. "The world is strange.But this canyon--why, we can see it all! I can't make out why peoplefuss so over it. I only feel peace. It's only bold and beautiful,serene and silent."

  With the words of this quiet old plainsman, my sentimental passionshrank to the true appreciation of the scene. Self passed out to therecurring, soft strains of cliff song. I had been reveling in a speciesof indulgence, imagining I was a great lover of nature, buildingpoetical illusions over storm-beaten peaks. The truth, told by one whohad lived fifty years in the solitudes, among the rugged mountains,under the dark trees, and by the sides of the lonely streams, was thesimple interpretation of a spirit in harmony with the bold, thebeautiful, the serene, the silent.

  He meant the Grand Canyon was only a mood of nature, a bold promise, abeautiful record. He meant that mountains had sifted away in its dust,yet the canyon was young. Man was nothing, so let him be humble. Thiscataclysm of the earth, this playground of a river was not inscrutable;it was only inevitable--as inevitable as nature herself. Millions ofyears in the bygone ages it had lain serene under a half moon; it wouldbask silent under a rayless sun, in the onward edge of time.

  It taught simplicity, serenity, peace. The eye that saw only thestrife, the war, the decay, the ruin, or only the glory and thetragedy, saw not all the truth. It spoke simply, though its words weregrand: "My spirit is the Spirit of Time, of Eternity, of God. Man islittle, vain, vaunting. Listen. To-morrow he shall be gone. Peace!Peace!"