by Zane Grey
“All right,” said Tine, shouldering the bags. “Seven o’clock tomorrow. I’ll be waitin’.”
That night, long after Sue had fallen asleep, with her curly head nestled low on the pillow, Patricia lay wide awake, thinking, listening to the strange sough of the wind in the pines.
In the semi-darkness, for moonlight was shining in the window, the New York girl could see Sue’s little head and sweet face; and if she had yielded to her yearning, she would have slipped closer and drawn the girl into her arms. Patricia knew she was going to love this western girl, if she did not already do so. And the knowledge hurt. Love had cost her a great deal. But she found she was neither bitter nor cynical any more. She had discovered the uplifting, all-satisfying, mellowing power of love. Yet she did not yield to it easily. Sue was shy with her, a little afraid of her. And Patricia’s long habit of restraint made it hard for her to unbend.
But she knew that this acquaintance, so casually begun, would grow into a lasting friendship. Patricia experienced real happiness in dreaming of what she would like to do for Sue. It had been her good or bad fortune to have more money than she knew what to do with. She gave herself credit for having always been charitable. Yet if she had ever done any good in the past, it had not brought happiness to her such as the thought of helping Sue now brought her. But Sue Warren did not want charity. She needed work, independence, freedom from worry, and a home. The New York girl began to formulate plans to achieve these for the Texan without hurting her independent spirit. If Sue really loved this keen-eyed cowboy Nels, which was something Patricia had begun to suspect, and if Nels turned out to be a man!—“I’d buy a ranch and have Nels manage it,” mused Patricia, and was charmed with the thought.
The trip to the North Rim would decide a great deal for this western girl and her cowboy; and Patricia had a premonition that it would be well for them. Then she wondered what the trip might decide for Patricia Edgerton. Almost mockingly she recalled Sue’s playful words about the deer stalker. But in the silence of the night, with the sleeping girl so close and warm beside her, Patricia could not think long of self. She found it now for the first time in her life easier to think of giving instead of getting. And she found it pleasant.
Shadows of branches moved across the moonlit bed. The moan of the wind was sad, but it did not fill her with loneliness. The unknown future called out of the sound of the wind in the forest. It began there in that silent room—her future—and it stretched across the canyon, and then wherever she might go. But she could not evade it, and for the first time in years she did not want to. In fact, she was eager now to hurry toward it and meet it!
“Good mawnin’,” the soft southern voice penetrated Patricia’s dreams. She stirred; she awoke. Sue was standing beside her, gently shaking her. “Shore thought you’d never wake. It’s six o’clock. And the boys will be rarin’ to go.”
Not since girlhood had Patricia awakened with the zest and thrill that stirred in her this morning. As she took her bath she wondered when she would again be able to enjoy the luxury of a warm bath. Bath tubs were apt to be rare on the Northern Rim! They hurried down to breakfast, and at the appointed hour were at the head of the trail. Tine awaited them with small, staunch, gentle horses saddled and a cheerful grin on his face.
The sun was tipping the long cedared escarpment to the east of El Tovar. Golden bars and shafts, yellow fan shapes of light streamed slantingly down into the canyon. Through these streaked veils, transparent as amber, slumbered the chasm, purple in hue, mystic in line, deceptive in depth.
Patricia rode down the trail, under the golden rays, into the shade beyond, with the beauty of the morning stirring her heart.
The horses Tine had selected were fast-gaited and sure-footed. They were at home on the steep trails. Patricia, after her ten days of training, could ride with ease and pleasure. Only once did she dismount on the way down to the plateau. By the end of two hours they had passed Indian Gardens and had reached the fork of the trail, where the way on the right led down to the river.
The new trail seemed to plunge headlong into a rugged bronze-hued crack. It wound, wove, zigzagged down, down into narrow gorges, vastly different from the open country above. All was iron-bound rock, dull, dark, burned by some mighty cataclysm of fire in ages past. The air grew hot and oppressive. Tine lost no time on this descent, and Sue kept close to him, and Patricia a dozen yards behind. This lower trail was a surprise. It followed narrow passages that certainly were canyons, yet none such as she had seen before. The trail was steeper, more difficult, more restricted as to view, and it curled under cliffs that reached to the heavens. Patricia gazed aloft to see a narrow winding stream of blue which was the sky.
At last the canyon opened, so that she could view looming walls, bottomless depths. Patricia saw Sue dismount at what appeared the end of an iron-red ridge.
“Devil’s Corkscrew!” she called. “Get down and walk.”
Patricia was glad to comply. When she reached the point, it was well indeed she stood on her feet. The descent from that ridge dropped almost perpendicularly. Far below she could make out a narrow winding sandy floor, with a stream of water in the middle. She let her horse go ahead.
That corkscrew descent dropped a thousand feet, it seemed to the New York girl, and when she reached the bottom and gazed back upward, she marveled at its apparently unscalable height.
Mounting again she spurred her horse forward in order that she would not get too far behind the others. Though cottonwood trees and willows, exquisitely green, and long grasses and ferns and flowers relieved the stark barrenness of that canyon, Patricia felt imprisoned.
The stream bed was sandy, gravelly, and the water ran over it clear and shallow, welcome to eye and ear. For a brief moment Patricia felt the hot summer sun on her back. As the canyon wound on, stretches of dark shade alternated with the sunlit ones.
Then, suddenly, she became conscious of a deep, low roar. It swelled in her ears. Soon she recognized it as the sound of a swift-running river. A moment later the trail turned sharply left, and Patricia saw that she was riding into the black Y-shaped chasm she had seen from above—the Marble Canyon of the Colorado.
Tine and Sue dismounted on a sand bar, and while Sue waited, the cowboy gathered up her bridle and turned to meet Patricia.
“Get down an’ come in,” he drawled, with his ruddy smile. “You’re at the foot of Bright Angel, an’ there’s the river.”
Patricia saw it, sullen, dark red in color, gliding, hurrying, leaping, chafing its black, ragged shores, roaring around a bend in the canyon beyond her sight. She gazed up. The black, scarred slope led her bewildered gaze to far-towering sun-tinted peaks and crags and spires and walls. She could not speak. Sue met her and led her across the sand bar and onto the edge of the black shore, beyond which the reddish water swirled greedily.
“Here’s your black archaic Rock,” said Sue, pointing to the marble under their feet. “And there, my lady from New York, is our cage—our bus line across the river, our automobile by cable.”
It was then that Patricia saw a dark cable sagging across the river, quite high up, and a boxlike cage of slabs slung on wires and pulleys. She also espied Nelson Stackhouse sitting on a stone, his sombrero in his hands, with a grin on his tanned face for the approaching Tine.
“Yes. I see Nels, too,” replied Patricia, suddenly remembering the rest of their party.
“Why, shore. So do I, now,” drawled Sue, with her low, lazy laugh, tantalizing and sweet. “Come on, lady, heah’s where you take your medicine.”
“Oh, Sue, you mean I’ll need chloroform,” cried the eastern girl. viewing rather doubtfully that apparently flimsy vehicle in which she was supposed to cross.
“Mawnin’, folks,” was Nels’s greeting. “Reckon you made fast time. Only eleven o’clock! That’s sure fine, ’cause if we’re lucky we’ll get on top before dark.”
“Where do we eat?” queried Sue jokingly.
“Over there. Nice shad
y, sandy place. Reckon we can spare an hour for rest an’ lunch…. Climb up to the cage an’ I’ll shoot you across.”
It was quite a little step up to the place where the cage rested, one edge tilted on the rock. Patricia entered first, aware of Sue and Tine bantering about something behind her. But what it was she did not hear. Perhaps the roar of the river deadened their voices. Sue stepped in beside her and took hold of her with firm hands.
“Hang on to the pommel. Shore she may pitch with us,” cried Sue gaily.
Nels closed the gate and took his position above her. “Shove her off,” he yelled.
“Adios!” shouted Tine with a look of glee at Patricia.
There was a lurch. Then the cage shot away from the shore. It swayed from side to side, creaking, groaning. Patricia shut her eyes in instinctive terror. She clung to Sue. Wind and motion and the roar of the river quite robbed her of her sense of bearing. Then she grew aware of a lessening speed and sway, but the frightful river underneath still roared on. Thus she stood for what seemed endless moments, which at last were broken by a violent bump.
“Change for the North Rim,” cheerily called Nels.
Patricia opened her eyes, to see rather dimly that they were across and that Sue was leading her out onto the sand.
“Whew! If that wasn’t the limit, Nels Stackhouse,” declared Sue indignantly. “Why didn’t you—you prepare us?”
“I—I’m all right, ” spoke up Patricia. “Just surprised—and scared.”
“Reckoned you’d both get an awful kick out of that,” said Nels disappointedly.
“You reckoned correctly, Mr. Stackhouse,” returned Patricia.
“Now, Sue, didn’t you get one too?” queried Nels.
Sue vouchsafed him no answer and led the New York girl into a shady spot where clean red sand invited rest.
“Did it make you sick?” asked Sue solicitously, bending over her.
“Yes, a little.”
“It did me, too. But I’m aboot over it. I’ve heard of Bass’s cage, down the river twenty-five miles. They say that it’s hundreds of feet above the river and the cable sags far down. It must be awful to cross there. We got off easy.”
Patricia soon recovered from the momentary nausea and dizziness, but her heart did not at once recover its normal beat. She watched the cowboys cross with the horses, one at a time.
“I wonder why those boys didn’t let us come last,” she murmured. “If I had seen the horses cross first, I’m sure I wouldn’t have minded it—so much.”
“Shore, I don’t wonder,” retorted Sue, “but I suspect that Nels Stackhouse did it on purpose.”
“Well, evidently he thinks I want thrills and you need them,” laughed Patricia. “Don’t be angry, Sue. We’ll think up a trick to play on them.”
“That should be easy,” agreed Sue.
They did not have long to enjoy the spot they had selected, for the cowboys soon had their horses in motion and led them into a side canyon, high-walled and sheer which widened presently and merged into an intersecting canyon. Here the deep roar of the Colorado River was replaced by the shallow rush of a brook over stones. Patricia cried out with pleasure when she espied a green-white, swift stream tearing and foaming down along a deep-cut channel. A halt was made in another shady place, where the sand was white and clean and warm.
Then Patricia became aware of several pack-mules and the last addition to their party, a fat, jocund-looking individual, who obviously was the cook. When presently he spread a piece of clean canvas upon the sand and deftly heaped a generous lunch thereon, the New York girl was willing to concede that he was a welcome member of the party.
“Ladies, this here is Bill Little, who come all the way from Winslow to cook for us,” introduced Tine grandiloquently. “Reckon he has only one fault. His grub tastes so good you never eat enough an’ jest naturoolly get gastromeetis.”
Tine’s speech struck a gay keynote for the meal, and it turned out to be a merry occasion. Sue was on her good behavior. She did not address Nels with any of her bantering remarks, though her big eyes, excited and dark, often flashed over him. Nels appeared quiet and somehow subdued. The good fortune of being on the trip with the little Texas girl seemed to leave the cowboy tongue-tied. Tine, however, made up for his quiet friend. All too soon this pleasant interlude ended.
“Reckon we got to rustle,” warned Tine, consulting his watch. “Half after twelve. I’ll say we’re a swift outfit. But it’s step out pert now, folks, an’ no laggin’. An’ ladies, don’t fuss if you get your feet wet.”
“Do we ford that stream?”
“Miss, that’s Bright Angel Creek, an’ we ford it, swim it, ride in it jest nine hundred an’ forty-six times.”
“You’re not serious?” queried Patricia, smiling.
“Most as serious as Nels, if you’ve noticed him. Jest you count the times we pile into that creek.”
Bill and his pack-mules headed the advance up the canyon. Patricia failed to see any trail such as had made travel easy on the other side of the river. When she rode up ahead beside Sue, she saw that the cook was driving his mules across the creek. With their heavy packs they had no easy job of it. The water looked deep and swift.
“Reckon it’s lower than I ever saw it at this time of year,” observed Nels. “Not much snow last winter. We’re pretty lucky.”
Tine beckoned to Patricia. “Pile in after me, an’ keep on comin’. If your hoss slips, yell to me. Better shake loose from your stirrups when the water’s deep.”
Single file they rode into the foaming water, Nels leading, with Sue close behind, then Tine and Patricia. The horses splashed in as if they enjoyed it. Patricia felt cold, sweet water on her hot face. The sensations that followed were not as pleasant. She had to lift her boots high to keep them dry. The hoofs of the horses clattered upon the submerged rocks. The green-white water swirled up to the breast of her mount, but sturdily he stemmed the current and crossed without so much as a slip. Patricia gathered courage, and when she faced the next ford, she essayed it with less trepidation. The time came when she thrilled at the many crossings, unmindful of rush and roar, welcoming the splashing.
The canyon opened wider, allowing the afternoon sun to pour its warmth down upon the riders. The sand and stone and walls of rock reflected the heat. Sue’s tanned cheeks took on a tinge of red. Patricia felt the burn on her own face and through her blouse. They rode on and on, winding, climbing, fording, never far from the creek, always working back to it, and sometimes riding straight up the channel.
Patricia found that every rider had to fare for himself. Tine, observing how well she got along, paid her the compliment of letting her alone, though at bad places he always had an eye on her. Nels rode ahead of Sue; and they all kept yards apart, seldom speaking, each absorbed in the business of the moment.
The wild, ragged, iron-red canyon gradually became for Patricia a stubborn obstacle to be overcome. By midafternoon the creek had become a torrent pouring in tiny cascades down the steep gorge. Now and then a waterfall with rainbows of mist and golden veils, like gilded cobweb lace, blocked their way, and they had to climb around it. The trail zigzagged more, bit deeper into the red earth, grew steeper and steeper; and the dim, lofty parapets began to look less unattainable.
As the afternoon wore on, Patricia grew tired. She kept the others in sight, though how she accomplished it was a puzzle to her. She became less and less interested in the scenery. The trail climbed steadily upward. Fording the stream no longer intrigued her. And late in the afternoon, when she wearily rode out of a notch in the gray limestone to join her waiting companions at the edge of a forest, it was none too soon for her. Evidently, Bright Angel Canyon cut far into the rim, for the main canyon seemed a smoky void far back toward the south.
“Now to find a snowbank where we can camp,” remarked Nels, leading the way into the forest.
“Looks awful dry to me, cowboy,” rejoined Tine.
They entered a magnificent fore
st of majestic pines and stately spear-pointed spruces with spreading silvery branches. As Patricia rode over the pine needles that deadened the hoofbeats of the horses, she soon recovered her enthusiasm and, weary though she was, realized with a thrill that this dark forest was the black band she had seen from the canyon rim days before.
“Buckskin Forest,” called Sue, “and heah’s your deer!”
Sleek, graceful gray forms appeared ahead, some standing quietly with ears alert, others bounding away with their white flags raised. A whole troop of wild deer! Little spotted fawns, slender does, sturdy bucks trotted to one side of the glade and stood motionless.
The sun was westering, almost ready to sink, and shadows were creeping along the forest floor. Nels peered intently on both sides of the trail, manifestly searching for a snowbank on some sheltered north side of a ravine. Finally Nels and Tine separated, the better to search. Bill appeared to be having trouble with the pack-train. The mules seemed uneasy in this deer country. Suddenly Patricia heard a crashing of brush. She wheeled in time to see a big buck leap out of a thicket right in front of the mules. They broke into a run, turning back on their trail, and quickly disappeared, with Bill galloping behind them.
Some moments passed before the cowboys rode back, attracted by the noise. Nels spurred his horse and sped away through the forest.
“Think of that!” ejaculated Tine. “Them mules stampeded. I jest knowed Bill couldn’t drive them.”
“They shore bolted,” declared Sue seriously.
“Reckon they’ll run clear back to the canyon an’ down, by gosh, if they get there first! But mebbe Nels will head them.”
“Tine, you’d better help Nels,” suggested Sue. “It’s after sundown, and if we’re going to make camp before dark there’ll have to be some rustling. We’ll get off and tie our horses heah.”
Tine rode off at a swinging gallop.
“You look worried,” remarked Patricia, glancing at Sue.
