The Enchanted Canyon

by Honoré Willsie Morrow

  Nucky gazed and gazed, shuddering, yet enthralled. Another sharp twist in the trail and his knee scraped against the wall. He cried out sharply. Frank turned to look but he did not stop the mules.

  "Spoons thinks it's better to amputate your leg, once in a while than to risk getting too close to the outer edge of the trail in all this snow. He's an old warrior, is Spoons! He could carry a grand piano down this trail and never scrape the varnish. Look up, Enoch! We'll soon reach a broad bench where I'll let you rest."

  "Don't you think I'll ever get off this brute till we reach bottom!" shuddered Nucky.

  The guide laughed and silence fell again. The mules moved as silently through the snow as the mists across the mountain tops. In careful gradation the trail zigzagged downward. The snow lessened in depth with each foot of drop. The bitter cold began to give way to the increasing warmth of the sun. Sensation crept back into Nucky's feet and hands. By a supreme effort for many moments he managed to fix his eyes firmly on Frank's broad back, and though he could not give up his hold on the pommel, he sat a little straighter. Then, of a sudden, Spoons stopped in his tracks, and as suddenly a little avalanche of snow shot down the canyon wall, catching the mule's forelegs. Spoons promptly threw himself inward, against the wall. Nucky gave a startled look at the sickening depths below and when Frank turned in his saddle, Nucky had fainted, half clinging to Spoons' neck, half supported against the wet, rocky wall.

  With infinite care, and astonishing speed, Frank slid from his mule and made his way back to the motionless Spoons.

  "Always said you were more than human, old chap," said Allen, kicking the snow away from the mule's fore legs. "Easy now! Don't lose your passenger!" The mule regained his balance and stepped carefully forward out of the drift, while the guide, balanced perilously on the outer edge of the trail, kept a supporting hand on Nucky's shoulders.

  But there was no need of the flask Frank pulled from his pocket. Nucky opened his eyes almost immediately. Whatever emotion Frank may have felt, he kept to himself. "I told you Spoons was better than a life insurance policy, Enoch."

  Enoch slowly pushed himself erect. He looked from Frank's quizzical eyes to Spoons' twitching ears, then at his own shaking hands.

  "I fainted, didn't I?" he asked.

  Allen nodded, and something in the twist of the man's lips maddened Nucky. He burst forth wildly:

  "You think I'm a blank blank sissy! Well, maybe I am. But if New York couldn't scare me, this blank blank hole out here in this blank blank jumping off place can't. I'm going on down this trail and if I fall and get killed, it's up to you and Mr. Seaton."

  "Good work, New York!" responded Allen briefly. He edged his way carefully back to his mule and the cavalcade moved onward. Perhaps five minutes afterward, as they left the snow line, the guide looked back. Nucky was huddled in the saddle, his eyes closed tight, but his thin lips were drawn in a line that caused Allen to change his purpose. He did not speak as he had planned, but led the way on for a long half hour, in silence, his eyes thoughtful.

  But Nucky did not keep his eyes closed long. The pull of horror, of mystery, of grandeur was too great. And after the avalanche, his confidence in Spoons was established. He was little more than a child and under his bravado and his watchfulness there was a child's recklessness. If he were to fall, at least he must see whither he was to fall. He forced himself to look from time to time into the depths below. The trail dropped steadily, while higher and higher soared canyon wall and mountain peak. It was still early when the trail met the plateau on which lie the Indian gardens.

  Frank's mule suddenly quickened his stride as did Spoons. But Nucky, although he was weary and saddle sore had no intention of crying a halt, now that the trail was level. His pulse began to subside and once more he sat erect in the saddle. When the mules rushed forward to bury their noses in a cress-grown spring, he grinned at Frank.

  "Well, here I am, after all!"

  Frank grinned in return. "If I could put through a few more stunts like this, you'd look almost like a boy, instead of a potato sprout. Get down and limber up."

  Nucky half scrambled, half fell off his mule. "Must be spring down here," he cried, staring about at grass and cottonwood.

  "Just about. And it'll be summer when we reach the river."

  "That was some trail, wasn't it, Frank! Do many kids take it?"

  "Lots of 'em, but only with guides, and you were the worst case of scared boy I've ever seen."

  Nucky flushed. "Well, you might give me credit for hanging to it, even if I was scared."

  "I'll give you a lot of credit for that, old man. But if the average New York boy has nerves like yours, I'm glad many of them don't come to the Canyon, that's all. Your nerves would disgrace a girl."

  "The guys I gamble with never complained of my lack of nerves," cried Nucky, angrily.

  "Gambling! Thunder! What nerve does it take to stack the cards against a dub? But this country out here, let me tell you, it takes a man to stand up to it."

  "And I've been through police raids too, and never squealed and I know two gunmen and they say I'm as hard as steel."

  "They should have seen you with your arms around Spoons' neck, back up the trail there," said Allen dryly. "Come! Mount again, Enoch! I want to have lunch at the river."

  Enoch was sullen as they started on but his sullenness did not last long. As his fear receded, his curiosity increased. He gazed about him with absorbed interest, and he began to bombard the guide with questions in genuine boy fashion.

  "How far is it to the river? Do we have any steeper trails than the ones we've been on, already? Did any one ever swim across the river? Was any one ever killed when he minded what the guide told him? What guys camp in the Indian gardens? How much does it cost? Did any one ever climb up the side of the Canyon, say like one yonder where it looked like different colored stair steps going up? Did any one ever find gold in the canyon? How did they know it when they found it? Did Frank ever do any mining? What was placer mining?" And on and on, only the intermittently returning fear of the trail silencing him until Frank ordered him to dismount in a narrow chasm within sight of the roaring, muddy Colorado.

  "One of the ways Seaton employed to persuade me to take care of you for a week was by telling me you were a very silent kid," added the guide.

  Nucky grinned sheepishly, and turned to stare wonderingly at the black walls that here closed in upon them breathlessly. Their lunch had been prepared at the hotel. Frank fed the mules, then handed Nucky his box lunch and proceeded to open his own.

  "Does it make you sore to have me ask you questions?" asked the boy.

  "No! I guess it's more natural for a kid than the sulks you've been keeping up with Seaton."

  "I'm not such a kid. I'm going on fifteen and I've earned my own way since I was twelve. And I earn it with men, too." Nucky jerked his head belligerently.

  Frank ate a hard boiled egg before speaking. Then, with one eyebrow raised, he grunted, "What'd you work at?"

  "Cards and dice!" this very proudly.

  "You poor nut!" Frank's voice was a mixture of contempt and compassion. Nucky immediately turned sulky and the meal was finished in silence. When the last doughnut had been devoured, Frank stretched himself in the warm sand left among the rocks by the river at flood.

  "Must be eighty degrees down here," he yawned. "We'll rest for a half hour, then we'll make the night camp. It's after two now and it will be dark in this narrow rift by four."

  Nucky looked about him apprehensively. The Canyon here was little more than a gorge whose walls rose sheer and menacing toward the narrow patch of blue sky above. He could not make up his mind to lie down and relax as Frank had done. All was too new and strange.

  "Are there snakes round here?" he demanded.

  Frank's grunt might have been either yes or no. Nucky glanced impatiently at the guide's closed eyes, then he began to clamber aimlessly and languidly over the rocks to the river edge. At a distance of perhaps a hundred
feet from Frank he stopped, looked at the bleak, blank wall of the river opposite, bit his nails and shuddering turned back. He crouched on a rock, near the guide, smoking one cigarette after another until Frank jumped to his feet.

  "Three o'clock, New York! Time to get ready for the night."

  "I don't want to stay in this hole all night!" protested Nucky, "I couldn't sleep."

  "You'll like it. You've no idea how comfortable I'm going to make you. Now, your job is to gather drift wood and pile it on that flat topped rock yonder. Keep piling till I tell you to quit. The nights are cold and I'll keep a little blaze going late, for you."

  "What's the idea?" demanded Nucky. "Why stay down here, like lost dogs, when there's a first class hotel back up there?"

  Frank sighed. "Well, the idea is this! A real he man likes camping in the wilds better'n he likes anything on earth. Seaton thought maybe somewhere in that pindling carcass of yours there was the making of a he man and that you'd like the experience. I promised him I'd try you out and I'm trying you, hang you for an ungrateful, cowardly cub."

  Nucky turned on his heel and began to pick up drift wood. He was in poor physical trim but the pile, though it grew slowly, grew steadily. By the time Frank announced the camp ready, Nucky's fuel pile was of really imposing dimensions. And dusk was thickening in the gorge.

  Before a great flat faced rock that looked toward the river, was a stretch of clean dry sand. Against this rock, the guide had placed a rubber air-mattress and a plentiful supply of blankets. A small folding table stood before a rough stone fire place. A canvas shelter stretched vertically on two strips of driftwood, shut off the night wind that was beginning to sweep through the Canyon. The mules were tethered close to the camp.

  "Where'd that mattress come from?" exclaimed Nucky.

  "Partly off old Funny Face's back and part out of a bicycle pump. Didn't want to risk your sickly bones on the ground until you harden up a bit. Pretty good pile of timber for an amateur, New York." Frank looked up from the fire he was kindling into Nucky's thin, tired face. "Now, son, you sit down on the end of your bed and take it easy. I'm an old hand at this game and before we've had our week together I'm banking on you being glad to help me. But to-day you've had enough."

  "Thanks," mumbled Nucky, as he eagerly followed the guide's suggestions.

  The early supper tasted delicious to the boy although every muscle in his body ached. Bacon and flap jacks, coffee and canned peaches he devoured with more appetite than he ever had brought to ministrone and red wine. A queer and inexplicable sense of comfort and a desire to talk came over him after the meal was finished, the camp in order, and the fire replenished.

  "This ain't so bad," he said. "I wish some of the guys that used to come to Luigi's could see me now."

  "And who was Luigi?" asked Frank, lighting his pipe and stretching himself on a blanket before the fire.

  "He was the guy I lived with after my mother died. He ran a gambling joint, and we was fixing the place up for women, too, when we all got pinched." This very boastfully.

  "Who were your folks, Enoch?"

  "Never heard of none of 'em. Luigi's a Dago. He wouldn't have been so bad if he didn't pinch the pennies so. Were you ever in New York, Frank?" This in a patronizing voice.

  "Born there," replied the guide.

  Nucky gasped with surprise. "How'd you ever happen to come out here?"

  "I can't live anywhere else because of chronic asthma. I don't know now that I'd want to live anywhere else. I used to kick against the pricks, but you get more sense as you grow older--after it's too late."

  "I should think you'd rather be dead," said Nucky sincerely. "If I thought I couldn't get back to MacDougal Street I'd want to die."

  "MacDougal Street and the dice, I suppose, eh? Enoch, you're on the wrong track and I know, because that's the track I tried myself. And I got stung."

  "But--" began Nucky.

  "No but about it. It's the wrong track and you can't get to decency or happiness or contentment on it. There's two things a man can never make anything real out of; cards or women."

  "I didn't want to make anything out of women. I want to get even with 'em, blank blank 'em all," cried Nucky with sudden fury. And he burst into an obscene tirade against the sex that utterly astonished the guide. He lay with his chin supported on his elbow, staring at the boy, at his thin, strongly marked features, and at the convulsive working of his throat as he talked.

  "Here! Dry up!" Frank cried at last. "I'll bet these canyon walls never looked down on such a rotten little cur as you are in all their history. You gambling, indecent little gutter snipe, isn't there a clean spot in you?"

  "You were a gambler yourself!" shrieked Nucky.

  "Yes, sir, I know cards and I know women, and that's why I know just what a mess of carrion your lovely young soul is. Any kid that can see the glory o' God that you've seen to-day and then sit down and talk like an overflowing sewer isn't fit to live. I didn't know that before I came out to this country, but I know it now. You get to bed. I don't want to hear another word out of you to-night. Pull your boots off. That's all."

  Half resentful, half frightened, Nucky obeyed. For a while, with nerves and over-tired muscles twitching, he lay watching the fire. Then he fell asleep.

  It was about midnight when he awoke. He had kicked the blankets off and was cold. The fire was out but the full moon sailed high over the gorge. Frank, rolled in his blankets, his feet to the dead fire, slept noisily. Nucky sat up and pulled his blankets over him, but he did not lie down again. He sat staring at the wonder of the Canyon. For a long half hour he was motionless save for the occasional moistening of his lips and turning of his head as he followed the unbelievable contour of the distant silvered peaks. Then of a sudden he jumped from his bed and, stooping over Frank, shook him violently.

  "Wake up!" he cried. "Wake up! I gotta tell somebody or the Canyon'll drive me crazy. I'll tell you why I'm bad. It's because my mother was bad before me. She was Luigi's mistress. She was a bad lot. It was born in me."

  Frank sat up, instantly on the alert. "How old were you when she died?" he demanded.

  "Six," replied Nucky.

  "Shucks! you don't know anything about it, then! Who told you she was bad?"

  "Luigi! I guess he'd know, wouldn't he?"

  "Maybe he did and maybe he didn't. At any rate, I wouldn't take the oath on his deathbed of a fellow who ran a joint like Luigi's and taught a kid what he's taught you. He told you that, of course, to keep a hold on you."

  "But she lived with him. I remember that myself."

  "I can't help that. I'll bet you my next year's pay, she wasn't your mother!"

  "Not my mother?" Nucky drew himself up with a long breath. "Certainly she was my mother."

  Frank uncovered some embers from the ashes and threw on wood. "I'll bet she wasn't your mother," he repeated firmly. "Seaton told me that that policeman friend of yours said she might and might not be your mother. Seaton and the policeman both think she wasn't, and I'm with 'em."

  "But why? Why?" cried Nucky in an agony of impatience.

  "For the simple reason that a fellow with a face like your's doesn't have a bad mother."

  In the light of the leaping flames Nucky's face fell. "Aw, what you giving us! Sob stuff?"

  "I'm telling you something that's as true as God. You can't see Him or talk to Him, but you know He made this Canyon, don't you?"

  Nucky nodded quickly.

  "All right, then I'm telling you, every line of your face and head says you didn't come of a breed like the woman that lived with Luigi. I'll bet if you show you have any decent promise, Seaton will clear that point up. A good detective could do it."

  "I never thought of such a thing," muttered Nucky. He continued to stare at Frank, his pale boy's face tense with conflicting hope and fear. The guide picked up his blanket, but Nucky cried out:

  "Don't go to sleep for a minute, please! I can't stand it alone in this moonlight. I never thought suc
h thoughts in my life as I have down here, about God and who I am and what a human being is. I tell you, I'm going crazy."

  Frank nodded, and began to fill his pipe. "Sit down close to the fire, son. That's what the Canyon does to anybody that's thin skinned. I went through it too. I tell you, Nucky, this life here in the Canyon and the thoughts you think here, are the only real things. New York and all that, is just the outer shell of living. Understand me?"

  The boy nodded, his eyes fixed on Frank's with pitiful eagerness.

  "It's clean out here. This country isn't all messed up with men and women's badness. Everybody starts even and with a clean slate. Lord knows, I was a worthless bunch when I struck here, fifteen years ago. I'd been expelled from Yale in my senior year for gambling. I'd run through the money my father'd left me. I'd gotten into a woman scrape and I'd alienated every member of my family. Just why I thought a deck of cards was worth all that, I can't tell you. But I did. Then I came down here to see what the Canyon could do for my asthma and it cured that, and by the Eternal, it cured my soul, too. Now listen to me, son! You go back and lie down and put yourself to sleep thinking about your real mother. Boys are apt to take their general build from their mothers, so she was probably a big woman, not pretty, but with an intellectual face full of character. Go on, now, Enoch! You need the rest and we've got a full day to-morrow."

  Nucky passed his hand unsteadily over his eyes, but rose without a word, and Frank tucked him into his blankets, then sat quietly waiting by the fire. It was not long before deep breaths that were pathetically near to sobs told the guide that Nucky was asleep. Then he rolled himself in his own blankets. The moon passed the Canyon wall and utter darkness enwrapped the Canyon and the river which murmured harshly as it ran.

  Nucky wakened the next morning to the smell of coffee. He sat up and eyed Frank soberly.

  "Hello, New York! This is the Grand Canyon!" Frank grinned as he lifted the coffee pot from the fire.

  Nucky grinned in response. Shortly after, when he sat down to his breakfast the grin had disappeared, but with it had gone the look of sullenness that had seemed habitual.