three tents, or rather three canvas houses, with wooden half-walls; and
they were spick-and-span inside and out, and had glass windows in them
and doors and matched wooden floors. The one that was a bedroom had gay
Navajo blankets on the floor, and a stove in it, and a little bureau,
and a washstand with white towels and good lathery soap. And there were
two beds--not cots or bunks, but regular beds--with wire springs and
mattresses and white sheets and pillowslips. They were not veteran
sheets and vintage pillowslips either, but clean and spotless ones. The
mess tent was provided with a table with a clean cloth to go over it,
and there were china dishes and china cups and shiny knives, forks and
spoons. Every scrap of this equipment had been brought down from the top
on burro packs. The Grand Canon is scenically artistic, but it is a
non-producing district. And outside there was a corral for the mules; a
canvas storehouse; hitching stakes for the burros; a Dutch oven, and a
little forge where the guides sometimes shoe a mule. They aren't
blacksmiths; they merely have to be. Bill was in charge of the camp--a
dark, rangy, good-looking young leading man of a cowboy, wearing his
blue shirt and his red neckerchief with an air. He spoke with the soft
Texas drawl and in his way was as competent as Johnny.
The sun, which had been winking farewells to us over the rim above,
dropped out of sight as suddenly as though it had fallen into a well.
From the bottom the shadows went slanting along the glooming walls of
the gorges, swallowing up the yellow patches of sunlight that still
lingered near the top like blacksnakes swallowing eggs. Every second the
colors shifted and changed; what had been blue a moment before was now
purple and in another minute would be a velvety black. A little lost
ghost of an echo stole out of a hole and went straying up and down,
feebly mocking our remarks and making them sound cheap and tawdry.
Then the new moon showed as a silver fish, balancing on its tail and
arching itself like a hooked skipjack. In a purpling sky the stars
popped out like pinpricks and the peace that passes all understanding
came over us. I wish to take advantage of this opportunity to say that,
in my opinion, David Belasco has never done anything in the way of
scenic effects to beat a moonrise in the Grand Canon.
I reckon we might have been there until now--my companion and I--soaking
our souls in the unutterable beauty of that place, only just about that
time we smelled something frying. There was also a most delectable
sputtering sound as of fat meat turning over on a hot skillet; but just
the smell alone was a square meal for a poor family. The meeting
adjourned by acclamation. Just because a man has a soul is no reason he
shouldn't have an appetite.
That Johnny certainly could cook! Served on china dishes upon a
cloth-covered table, we had mounds of fried steaks and shoals of fried
bacon; and a bushel, more or less, of sheepherder potatoes; and green
peas and sliced peaches out of cans; and sourdough biscuits as light as
kisses and much more filling; and fresh butter and fresh milk; and
coffee as black as your hat and strong as sin. How easy it is for
civilized man to become primitive and comfortable in his way of eating,
especially if he has just ridden ten miles on a buckboard and nine more
on a mule and is away down at the bottom of the Grand Canon--and there
is nobody to look on disapprovingly when he takes a bite that would be a
credit to a steam shovel!
[Illustration: BECAUSE A MAN HAS A SOUL IS NO REASON HE SHOULDN'T HAVE
AN APPETITE]
Despite all reports to the contrary, I wish to state that it is no
trouble at all to eat green peas off a knifeblade--you merely mix them
in with potatoes for a cement; and fried steak--take it from an old
steak-eater--tastes best when eaten with those tools of Nature's own
providing, both hands and your teeth. An hour passed--busy, yet
pleasant--and we were both gorged to the gills and had reared back with
our cigars lit to enjoy a third jorum of black coffee apiece, when
Johnny, speaking in an offhand way to Bill, who was still hiding away
biscuits inside of himself like a parlor prestidigitator, said:
"Seen any of them old hydrophobies the last day or two?"
"Not so many," said Bill casually. "There was a couple out last night
pirootin' round in the moonlight. I reckon, though, there'll be quite a
flock of 'em out tonight. A new moon always seems to fetch 'em up from
the river."
Both of us quit blowing on our coffee and we put the cups down. I think
I was the one who spoke.
"I beg your pardon," I asked, "but what did you say would be out
tonight?"
"We were just speakin' to one another about them Hydrophoby Skunks,"
said Bill apologetically. "This here Canon is where they mostly hang out
and frolic 'round."
I laid down my cigar, too. I admit I was interested.
"Oh!" I said softly--like that. "Is it? Do they?"
"Yes," said Johnny. "I reckin there's liable to be one come shovin' his
old nose into that door any minute. Or probably two--they mostly travels
in pairs--sets, as you might say."
"You'd know one the minute you saw him, though," said Bill. "They're
smaller than a regular skunk and spotted where the other kind is
striped. And they got little red eyes. You won't have no trouble at all
recognizin' one."
It was at this juncture that we both got up and moved back by the stove.
It was warmer there and the chill of evening seemed to be settling down
noticeably.
"Funny thing about Hydrophoby Skunks," went on Johnny after a moment of
pensive thought--"mad, you know!"
"What makes them mad?" The two of us asked the question together.
"Born that way!" explained Bill--"mad from the start, and won't never do
nothin' to get shut of it."
"Ahem--they never attack humans, I suppose?"
"Don't they?" said Johnny, as if surprised at such ignorance. "Why,
humans is their favorite pastime! Humans is just pie to a Hydrophoby
Skunk. It ain't really any fun to be bit by a Hydrophoby Skunk neither."
He raised his coffee cup to his lips and imbibed deeply.
"Which you certainly said something then, Johnny," stated Bill. "You
see," he went on, turning to us, "they aim to catch you asleep and they
creep up right soft and take holt of you--take holt of a year
usually--and clamp their teeth and just hang on for further orders. Some
says they hang on till it thunders, same as snappin' turtles. But that's
a lie, I judge, because there's weeks on a stretch down here when it
don't thunder. All the cases I ever heard of they let go at sun-up."
"It is right painful at the time," said Johnny, taking up the thread of
the narrative; "and then in nine days you go mad yourself. Remember that
fellow the Hydrophoby Skunk bit down here by the rapids, Bill? Let's
see now--what was that hombre's name?"
"Williams," supplied Bill--"Heck Williams. I saw him at Flagstaff when
they took him there to the hospital. That guy certainly did carry on
regardless. First he went mad and his eyes turned red, and he got so he
didn't have no real use for water--well, them prospectors don't never
care much about water anyway--and then he got to snappin' and bitin' and
foamin' so's they had to strap him down to his bed. He got loose
though."
"Broke loose, I suppose?" I said.
"No, he bit loose," said Bill with the air of one who would not deceive
you even in a matter of small details.
"Do you mean to say he bit those leather straps in two?"
"No, sir; he couldn't reach them," explained Bill, "so he bit the bed in
two. Not in one bite, of course," he went on. "It took him several. I
saw him after he was laid out. He really wasn't no credit to himself as
a corpse."
I'm not sure, but I think my companion and I were holding hands by now.
Outside we could hear that little lost echo laughing to itself. It was
no time to be laughing either. Under certain circumstances I don't know
of a lonelier place anywhere on earth than that Grand Canon.
Presently my friend spoke, and it seemed to me his voice was a mite
husky. Well, he had a bad cold.
"You said they mostly attack persons who are sleeping out, didn't you?"
"That's right, too," said Johnny, and Bill nodded in affirmation.
"Then, of course, since we sleep indoors everything will be all right,"
I put in.
"Well, yes and no," answered Johnny. "In the early part of the evening a
hydrophoby is liable to do a lot of prowlin' round outdoors; but toward
mornin' they like to get into camps--they dig up under the side walls or
come up through the floor--and they seem to prefer to get in bed with
you. They're cold-blooded, I reckin, same as rattlesnakes. Cool nights
always do drive 'em in, seems like."
"It's going to be sort of coolish to-night," said Bill casually.
It certainly was. I don't remember a chillier night in years. My teeth
were chattering a little--from cold--before we turned in. I retired with
all my clothes on, including my boots and leggings, and I wished I had
brought along my earmuffs. I also buttoned my watch into my lefthand
shirt pocket, the idea being if for any reason I should conclude to move
during the night I would be fully equipped for traveling. The door would
not stay closely shut--the doorjamb had sagged a little and the wind
kept blowing the door ajar. But after a while we dozed off.
It was one-twenty-seven A.M. when I woke with a violent start. I know
this was the exact time because that was when my watch stopped. I peered
about me in the darkness. The door was wide open--I could tell that.
Down on the floor there was a dragging, scuffling sound, and from almost
beneath me a pair of small red eyes peered up phosphorescently.
"He's here!" I said to my companion as I emerged from my blankets; and
he, waking instantly, seemed instinctively to know whom I meant. I used
to wonder at the ease with which a cockroach can climb a perfectly
smooth wall and run across the ceiling. I know now that to do this is
the easiest thing in the world--if you have the proper incentive behind
you. I had gone up one wall of the tent and had crossed over and was in
the act of coming down the other side when Bill burst in, his eyes
blurred with sleep, a lighted lamp in one hand and a gun in the other.
I never was so disappointed in my life because it wasn't a Hydrophobic
Skunk at all. It was a pack rat, sometimes called a trade rat, paying us
a visit. The pack or trade rat is also a denizen of the Grand Canon. He
is about four times as big as an ordinary rat and has an appetite to
correspond. He sometimes invades your camp and makes free with your
things, but he never steals anything outright--he merely trades with
you; hence his name. He totes off a side of meat or a bushel of meal and
brings a cactus stalk in; or he will confiscate your saddlebags and
leave you in exchange a nice dry chip. He is honest, but from what I
can gather he never gets badly stuck on a deal.
Next morning at breakfast Johnny and Bill were doing a lot of laughing
between them over something or other. But we had our revenge! About
noon, as we were emerging at the head of the trail, we met one of the
guides starting down with a couple that, for the sake of convenience, we
had christened Clarence and Clarice. Shorty hailed us.
"How's everything down at the camp?" he inquired.
"Oh, all right!" replied Bill--"only there's a good many of them
Hydrophoby Skunks pesticatin' about. Last night we seen four."
Clarence and Clarice crossed startled glances, and it seemed to me that
Clarice's cheek paled a trifle; or it may have been Clarence's cheek
that paled. He bent forward and asked Shorty something, and as we
departed full of joy and content we observed that Shorty was composing
himself to unload that stock horror tale. It made us very happy.
By common consent we had named them Clarence and Clarice on their
arrival the day before. At first glance we decided they must have come
from Back Bay, Boston--probably by way of Lenox, Newport and Palm Beach;
if Harvard had been a co-educational institution we should have figured
them as products of Cambridge. It was a shock to us all when we learned
they really hailed from Chicago. They were nearly of a height and a
breadth, and similar in complexion and general expression; and
immediately after arriving they had appeared for the ride down the
Bright Angel in riding suits that were identical in color, cut and
effect--long-tailed, tight-buttoned coats; derby hats; stock collars;
shiny top boots; cute little crops, and form-fitting riding trousers
with those Bartlett pear extensions midships and aft--and the prevalent
color was a soft, melting, misty gray, like a cow's breath on a frosty
morning. Evidently they had both patronized the same tailor.
He was a wonder, that tailor. Using practically the same stage effects,
he had, nevertheless, succeeded in making Clarence look feminine and
Clarice look masculine. We had gone down to the rim to see them off. And
when they passed us in all the gorgeousness of their city bridle-path
regalia, enthroned on shaggy mules, behind a flock of tourists in
nondescript yet appropriate attire, and convoyed by a cowboy who had no
reverence in his soul for the good, the sweet and the beautiful, but
kept sniggering to himself in a low, coarse way, we felt--all of
us--that if we never saw another thing we were amply repaid for our
journey to Arizona.
The exactly opposite angle of this phenomenon was presented by a certain
Eastern writer, a member, as I recall, of the Jersey City school of Wild
West story writers, who went to Arizona about two years ago to see if
the facts corresponded with his fiction; if not he would take steps to
have the facts altered--I believe that was the idea. He reached El Tovar
at Grand Canon in the early morning, hurried at once to his room and
presently appeared attired for breakfast. Competent eyewitnesses gave
me the full details. He wore a flannel shirt that was unbuttoned at the
throat to allow his Adam's apple full sweep, a hunting coat, buckskin
pants and high boots, and about his waist was a broad belt supporting on
one side a large revolver--one of the automatic kind, which you start in
to shooting by pulling the trigger merely and then have to throw a
bucket of water on it to make it stop--and on the other side, as a
counterpoise, was a buck-handled bowie knife such as was so universally
not used by the early pioneers of our country.
As he crossed the lobby, jangling like a milk wagon, he created a
pronounced impression upon all beholders. The hotel is managed by an
able veteran of the hotel business, assisted by a charming and
accomplished wife; it is patronized by scientists, scholars and
cosmopolitans, who come from all parts of the world to see the Grand
Canon; and it is as up-to-the-minute in its appointments and service as
though it fronted on Broadway, or Chestnut Street, or Pennsylvania
Avenue.
Our hero careened across the intervening space. On reaching the dining
room he snatched off his coat and, with a gesture that would have turned
Hackett or Faversham as green with envy as a processed stringbean, flung
it aside and prepared to enter. It was plain that he proposed to put on
no airs before the simple children of the desert wilds. He would eat his
antelope steak and his grizzly b'ar chuck in his shirt-sleeves, the way
Kit Carson and Old Man Bridger always did.
[Illustration: HE WAS A REGULAR MOVING PICTURE COWBOY AND GAVE GENERAL
SATISFACTION]
The young woman who presides over the dining room met him at the door.
In the cool, clarified accents of a Wellesley graduate, which she is,
she invited him to have on his things if he didn't mind. She also
offered to take care of his hardware for him while he was eating. He
consented to put his coat back on, but he clung to his weapons--there
was no telling when the Indians might start an uprising. Probably at the
moment it would have deeply pained him to learn that the only Indian
uprising reported in these parts in the last forty years was a carbuncle
on the back of the neck of Uncle Hopi Hooligan, the gentle
copper-colored floorwalker of the white-goods counter in the Hopi House,
adjacent to the hotel!
However, he stayed on long enough to discover that even this far west
ordinary human garments make a most excellent protective covering for
the stranger. Many of the tourists do not do this. They arrive in the
morning, take a hurried look at the Canon, mail a few postal cards, buy
a Navajo blanket or two and are out again that night. Yet they could
stay on for a month and make every hour count. To begin with, there is
the Canon, worth a week of anybody's undivided attention. Within easy
reach are the Painted Desert and the Petrified Forests--thousands of
acres of trees turned to solid agate. If these things were in Europe
they would be studded thick with hotels and Americans by the thousand
would flock across the seas to look at them. There are cliff-dwellers'
ruins older than ancient Babylon and much less expensive.
The reservations of the Hopis and the Navajos, most distinctive of all
the Southern tribes, are handy, while all about stretches a big
Government reserve full of natural wonders and unnatural ones,
too--everything on earth except a Lover's Leap. There are unexcelled
facilities for Lover's Leaps, too--thousands of appropriate places are
within easy walking distance of the hotel; but no lover ever yet cared
to leap where he would have to drop five or six thousand feet before he
landed. He'd be such a mussy lover; no satisfaction to himself then--or
to the undertaker, either.
However, as I was saying, most of the tourists run in on the morning
train and out again on the evening train. To this breed belonged a youth
who dropped in during our stay; I think he must have followed the crowd
in. As he came out from breakfast I chanced to be standing on the side
veranda and I presume he mistook me for one of the hired help. This
mistake has occurred before when I was stopping at hotels.
"My friend," he said to me in the patronizing voice of an experienced
traveler, "is there anything interesting to see round here at this time
of day?"
Either he had not heard there was a Grand Canon going on regularly in
that vicinity or he may have thought it was open only for matinees and
evenings. So I took him by the hand and led him over to the curio store
and let him look at the Mexican drawnwork. It seemed to satisfy him,
too--until by chance he glanced out of a window and discovered that the
Canon was in the nature of a continuous performance.
The same week there arrived a party of six or eight Easterners who
yearned to see some of those real genuine Wild Western characters such
as they had met so often in a film. The manager trotted out a troupe of
trail guides for them--all ex-cowboys; but they, being merely half a
dozen sunburned, quiet youths in overalls, did not fill the bill at all.
The manager hated to have his guests depart disappointed. Privately he
called his room clerk aside and told him the situation and the room
clerk offered to oblige.
The room clerk had come from Ohio two years before and was a mighty
accommodating young fellow. He slipped across to the curio store and put
on a big hat and some large silver spurs and a pair of leather chaps
made by one of the most reliable mail-order houses in this country. Thus
caparisoned, he mounted a pony and came charging across the lawn,
uttering wild ki-yis and quirting his mount at every jump. He steered
right up the steps to the porch where the delighted Easterners were
assembled, and then he yanked the pony back on his haunches and held him
there with one hand while with the other he rolled a brown-paper
cigarette--which was a trick he had learned in a high-school frat at
Cincinnati--and altogether he was the picture of a regular
moving-picture cowboy and gave general satisfaction.
If the cowboys are disappointing in their outward aspect, however,
Captain Jim Hance is not. The captain is the official prevaricator of
the Grand Canon. It is probably the only salaried job of the sort in the
world--his competitors in the same line of business mainly work for the
love of it. He is a venerable retired prospector who is specially
retained by the Santa Fe road for the sole purpose of stuffing the
casual tourist with the kind of fiction the casual tourist's system
seems to crave. He just moons round from spot to spot, romancing as he
goes.
Two of the captain's standbys have been advertised to the world. One of
them deals with the sad fate of his bride, who on her honeymoon fell off
into the Canon and lodged on a rim three hundred feet below. "I was two
days gettin' down to the poor little thing," he tells you, "and then I
seen both her hind legs was broke." Here the captain invariably pauses
and looks out musingly across the Canon until the victim bites with an
impatient "What happened then?" "Oh, I knew she wouldn't be no use to me
any more as a bride--so I shot her!" The other tale he saves up until
some tenderfoot notices the succession of blazes upon the treetrunks
along one of the forest trails and wants to know what made those
peculiar marks upon the bark all at the same height from the earth.
Captain Hance explains that he himself did it--with his elbows and
knees--while fleeing from a war party of Apaches.
His newest one, though--the one he is featuring this year--is, in the
opinion of competent judges, the gem of the Hance collection. It
concerns the fate of one Total Loss Watkins, an old and devoted friend
of the captain. As a preliminary he leads a group of wide-eared,
doe-eyed victims to the rim of the Canon. "Right here," he says
sorrowfully, "was where poor old Total slipped off one day. It's two
thousand feet to the first ledge and we thought he was a gone fawnskin,
sure! But he had on rubber boots, and he had the presence of mind to
light standing up. He bounced up and down for two days and nights
without stoppin', and then we had to get a wingshot to kill him in order
to keep him from starvin' to death."
The next stop will be Southern California, the Land of Perpetual
Sunshine--except when it rains!
_HOW DO YOU LIKE THE CLIMATE?_
[Illustration]
_How Do You Like the Climate?_
ONCE upon a time a stranger went to Southern California; and when he was
asked the customary question--to wit: "How do you like the climate?" he
said: "No, I don't like it!" So they destroyed him on the spot. I have
forgotten now whether they merely hanged him on the nearest tree or
burned him at the stake; but they destroyed him utterly and hid his
bones in an unmarked grave.
History, that lying jade, records that when Balboa first saw the Pacific
he plunged breast-deep into the waves, drew his sword and waved it on
high, probably using for that purpose the Australian crawl stroke; and
then, in that generous and carefree way of the early discoverers,
claimed the ocean and all points west in the name of his Catholic
Majesty, Carlos the Cutup, or Pedro the Impossible, or whoever happened
to be the King of Spain for the moment. Personal investigation convinces
me that the current version of the above incident was wrong.
What Balboa did first was to state that he liked the climate better than
any climate he'd ever met; was perfectly crazy about it, in fact, and
intended to sell out back East and move West just as soon as he could
get word home to his folks; after which, still following the custom of
the country, he bought a couple of Navajo blankets and some moccasins
with blue beadwork on the toes, mailed a few souvenir postcards to close
friends, and had his photograph taken showing him standing in the midst
of the tropical verdure, with a freshly picked orange in his hand. And
if he waved his sword at all it was with the idea of forcing the
real-estate agents to stand back and give him air. I am sure that these
are the correct details, because that is what every round-tripper does
upon arriving in Southern California; and, though Balboa finished his
little jaunt of explorations at a point some distance below the
California state line, he was still in the climate belt. Life out there
in that fair land is predicated on climate; out there climate is
capitalized, organized and systematized. Every native is a climate
booster; so is every newcomer as soon as he has stuck round long enough
to get the climate habit, which is in from one to three days. They talk
climate; they think climate; they breathe it by day; they snore it by
night; and in between times they live on it. And it is good living,
too--especially for the real-estate people and the hotel-keepers.
Southern Californians brag of their climate just as New York brags of
its wickedness and its skyscrapers, and as Richmond brags of its cooking
and its war memories. I don't blame them either; the California climate
is worth all the brags it gets. Back East in the wintertime we have
weather; out in Southern California they never have weather--nothing but
climate. For hours on hours a native will stand outdoors, with his hat
off and his head thrown back, inhaling climate until you can hear his
nostrils smack. And after you've been on the spot a day or two you're
doing the same thing yourself, for, in addition to being salubrious, the
California climate is catching.
[Illustration: THE BOY WHO SELLS YOU A PAPER AND THE YOUTH WHO BLACKENS
YOUR SHOES BOTH SHOW SOLICITUDE]