TALES OF LONELY TRAILS
BY ZANE GREY
1922
[Illustration: Zane Grey]
CONTENTS
CHAPTER
I. NONNEZOSHE
II. COLORADO TRAILS
III. ROPING LIONS IN THE GRAND CANYON
IV. TONTO BASIN
V. DEATH VALLEY
ILLUSTRATIONS
ZANE GREY
Z.G. AFTER TWO MONTHS IN THE WILDS
THERE WAS SOMETHING BEYOND THE WHITE PEAKED RANGES
WEIRD AND WONDERFUL MONUMENTS IN MONUMENT VALLEY
SUNSET ON THE DESERT
CAVE OF THE CLIFF DWELLERS
THIS IMMENSE CAVE WOULD HOLD TRINITY CHURCH. IN IT LIES THE RUINED
CLIFF DWELLING CALLED BETATAKIN
THE WIND-WORN TREACHEROUS SLOPES ON THE WAY TO NONNEZOSHE
FIRST SIGHT OF THE GREAT NATURAL BRIDGE
NONNEZOSHE
PACK HORSES ON A SAGE SLOPE IN COLORADO
THE GRASSY UPLANDS, WITH WHITELEY'S PEAK IN THE DISTANCE
A SPRUCE-SHADED, FLOWER-SKIRTED LAKE
LOOKING DOWN UPON CLOUD-FILLED VALLEYS
SEARCHING BURNED-OVER RANGES FOR GAME
A HUNTER'S CABIN ON A FROSTY MORNING
THE TROUBLESOME COUNTRY, NOTED FOR GRIZZLY BEARS
UNDER THE SHADOW OF THE FLATTOP MOUNTAINS
WHITE ASPEN TREE SHOWING MARKS OF BEAR CLAWS
A BLACK BEAR TREED
CROSSING THE COLORADO RIVER AT THE BOTTOM OF THE GRAND CANYON
WHERE ROLLS THE COLORADO
DOWN THE SHINUMO TRAIL OF THE NORTH RIVER
CAMP AT THE SADDLE
BUCKSKIN FOREST
BUFFALO JONES WITH SOUNDER AND RANGER
JONES ABOUT TO LASSO A MOUNTAIN LION
REMAINS OF A DEER KILLED BY LIONS
A LION TIED
FIGHTING WEETAHS (BUFFALO BULLS) ON BUFFALO JONES'S DESERT RANCH
TREED LION
TREED LION
TREED LION
HIDING
A DRINK OF COLD GRANITE WATER UNDER THE RIM
WHICH IS THE PIUTE
WILD HORSES DRINKING ON A PROMONTORY IN THE GRAND CANYON
JONES AND EMETT PACKING LION ON HORSE
JONES CLIMBING UP TO LASSO LION
TWO LIONS IN ONE TREE
JONES, EMETT, AND THE NAVAJO WITH THE LIONS
BILLY IN CAMP
LION LICKING SNOWBALL
SOME OF OUR MENAGERIE IN BUCKSKIN FOREST
WHITE MUSTANG STALLION WITH HIS BUNCH OF BLACKS IN SNAKE GULCH
ON THE WAY HOME
RIDING WITH A NAVAJO
THE AUTHOR AND HIS MEN
ROMER-BOY ON HIS FAVORITE STEED
THE TONTO BASIN
LISTENING FOR THE HOUNDS
ZANE GREY ON DON CARLOS
WILD TURKEY
WILD TURKEYS
THE WHITE QUAKING ASPS
THE SKUNK, A FREQUENT AND RATHER DANGEROUS VISITOR IN CAMP
ON THE RIM
WHERE ELK, DEER, AND TURKEY DRINK
WHERE BEAR CROSS THE RIDGE FROM ONE CANYON TO ANOTHER
CLIMBING OVER THE TOUGH MANZANITA
BEAR IN SIGHT ACROSS CANYON
Z.G.'S CINNAMON BEAR
R.C.'S BIG BROWN BEAR
ANOTHER BEAR
MEAT IN CAMP
BURROS PACKED FOR THE TRAIL
THE DEADLY CHOLLA, MOST POISONOUS AND PAIN INFLICTING OF THE CACTUS
THE COLORED CALICO MOUNTAINS
DOWN THE LONG WINDING WASH TO DEATH VALLEY
DESOLATION AND DECAY. LOOKING DOWN OVER THE DENUDED RIDGES TO THE
STARK VALLEY OF DEATH
DESERT GRAVES
THE GHASTLY SWEEP OF DEATH VALLEY
IN THE CENTER OF THE SALT-INCRUSTED FLOOR OF DEATH VALLEY, THREE
HUNDRED FEET BELOW SEA LEVEL
TALES OF LONELY TRAILS
CHAPTER I
NONNEZOSHE
John Wetherill, one of the famous Wetherill brothers and trader at
Kayenta, Arizona, is the man who discovered Nonnezoshe, which is
probably the most beautiful and wonderful natural phenomenon in
the world. Wetherill owes the credit to his wife, who, through her
influence with the Indians finally after years succeeded in getting
the secret of the great bridge.
After three trips to Marsh Pass and Kayenta with my old guide, Al
Doyle of Flagstaff, I finally succeeded in getting Wetherill to take
me in to Nonnezoshe. This was in the spring of 1913 and my party was
the second one, not scientific, to make the trip. Later this same
year Wetherill took in the Roosevelt party and after that the Kolb
brothers. It is a safe thing to say that this trip is one of the most
beautiful in the West. It is a hard one and not for everybody. There
is no guide except Wetherill, who knows how to get there. And after
Doyle and I came out we admitted that we would not care to try to
return over our back trail. We doubted if we could find the way. This
is the only place I have ever visited which I am not sure I could find
again alone.
My trip to Nonnezoshe gave me the opportunity to see also Monument
Valley, and the mysterious and labyrinthine Canyon Segi with its great
prehistoric cliff-dwellings.
The desert beyond Kayenta spread out impressively, bare red flats
and plains of sage leading to the rugged vividly-colored and
wind-sculptured sandstone heights typical of the Painted Desert of
Arizona. Laguna Creek, at that season, became flooded after every
thunderstorm; and it was a treacherous red-mired quicksand where I
convinced myself we would have stuck forever had it not been for
Wetherill's Navajos.
We rode all day, for the most part closed in by ridges and bluffs, so
that no extended view was possible. It was hot, too, and the sand blew
and the dust rose. Travel in northern Arizona is never easy, and this
grew harder and steeper. There was one long slope of heavy sand that
I made sure would prove too much for Wetherill's pack mules. But they
surmounted it apparently less breathless than I was. Toward sunset a
storm gathered ahead of us to the north with a promise of cooling and
sultry air.
At length we turned into a long canyon with straight rugged red
walls, and a sandy floor with quite a perceptible ascent. It appeared
endless. Far ahead I could see the black storm-clouds; and by and bye
began to hear the rumble of thunder. Darkness had overtaken us by the
time we had reached the head of this canyon; and my first sight of
Monument Valley came with a dazzling flash of lightning. It revealed
a vast valley, a strange world of colossal shafts and buttes of rock,
magnificently sculptored, standing isolated and aloof, dark, weird,
lonely. When the sheet lightning flared across the sky showing the
monuments silhouetted black against that strange horizon the effect
was marvelously beautiful. I watched until the storm died away.
[Illustration: Z. G. AFTER TWO MONTHS IN THE WILDS]
Dawn, with the desert sunrise, changed Monument Valley, bereft it of
its night gloom and weird shadow, and showed it in another aspect of
beauty. It was hard for me to realize that those monuments were not
the works of man. The great valley must once have been a plateau of
red rock from which the softer strata had eroded, leaving the gentle
league-long slopes marked here and there by upstanding pillars and
columns of singular shape and beauty. I rode down the sweet-scented
sage-slopes under the shadow of the lofty Mittens, and around and
across the valley, and back again to the height of land. And when I
had completed the ride a story had woven itself into my mind; and
the spot where I stood was to be the place where Lin Slone taught
Lucy Bostil to ride the great stallion Wildfire.
[Illustration: THERE WAS SOMETHING BEYOND THE WHITE-PEAKED RANGES]
Two days' ride took us across country to the Segi. With this wonderful
canyon I was familiar, that is, as familiar as several visits could
make a man with such a bewildering place. In fact I had named it
Deception Pass. The Segi had innumerable branches, all more or less
the same size, and sometimes it was difficult to tell the main canyon
from one of its tributaries. The walls were rugged and crumbling, of a
red or yellow hue, upward of a thousand feet in height, and indented
by spruce-sided notches.
There were a number of ruined cliff-dwellings, the most accessible of
which was Keet Seel. I could imagine no more picturesque spot. A
huge wind-worn cavern with a vast slanted stained wall held upon a
projecting ledge or shelf the long line of cliff-dwellings. These
silent little stone houses with their vacant black eye-like windows
had strange power to make me ponder, and then dream.
Next day, upon resuming our journey, it pleased me to try to find the
trail to Betatakin, the most noted, and surely the most wonderful and
beautiful ruin in all the West. In many places there was no trail at
all, and I encountered difficulties, but in the end without much loss
of time I entered the narrow rugged entrance of the canyon I had named
Surprise Valley. Sight of the great dark cave thrilled me as I thought
it might have thrilled Bess and Venters, who had lived for me their
imagined lives of loneliness here in this wild spot. With the sight
of those lofty walls and the scent of the dry sweet sage there rushed
over me a strange feeling that "Riders of the Purple Sage" was true.
My dream people of romance had really lived there once upon a time.
I climbed high upon the huge stones, and along the smooth red walls
where Pay Larkin once had glided with swift sure steps, and I entered
the musty cliff-dwellings, and called out to hear the weird and
sonorous echoes, and I wandered through the thickets and upon the
grassy spruce-shaded benches, never for a moment free of the story I
had conceived there. Something of awe and sadness abided with me. I
could not enter into the merry pranks and investigations of my party.
Surprise Valley seemed a part of my past, my dreams, my very self.
I left it, haunted by its loneliness and silence and beauty, by the
story it had given me.
That night we camped at Bubbling Spring, which once had been a geyser
of considerable power. Wetherill told a story of an old Navajo who had
lived there. For a long time, according to the Indian tale, the old
chief resided there without complaining of this geyser that was wont
to inundate his fields. But one season the unreliable waterspout made
great and persistent endeavor to drown him and his people and horses.
Whereupon the old Navajo took his gun and shot repeatedly at the
geyser, and thundered aloud his anger to the Great Spirit. The geyser
ebbed away, and from that day never burst forth again.
[Illustration: WEIRD AND WONDERFUL MONUMENTS IN MONUMENT VALLEY]
[Illustration: SUNSET ON THE DESERT]
[Illustration: CAVE OF THE CLIFF DWELLERS]
Somewhere under the great bulge of Navajo Mountain I calculated that we
were coming to the edge of the plateau. The white bobbing pack-horses
disappeared and then our extra mustangs. It is no unusual thing for a
man to use three mounts on this trip. Then two of our Indians
disappeared. But Wetherill waited for us and so did Nas ta Bega, the
Piute who first took Wetherill down into Nonnezoshe Boco. As I came up I
thought we had indeed reached the end of the world.
"It's down in there," said Wetherill, with a laugh.
Nas ta Bega made a slow sweeping gesture. There is always something so
significant and impressive about an Indian when he points anywhere. It
is as if he says, "There, way beyond, over the ranges, is a place I
know, and it is far." The fact was that I looked at the Piute's dark,
inscrutable face before I looked out into the void.
My gaze then seemed impelled and held by things afar, a vast yellow
and purple corrugated world of distance, apparently now on a level
with my eyes. I was drawn by the beauty and grandeur of that scene;
and then I was transfixed, almost by fear, by the realization that
I dared to venture down into this wild and upflung fastness. I kept
looking afar, sweeping the three-quarter circle of horizon till my
judgment of distance was confounded and my sense of proportion dwarfed
one moment and magnified the next.
Wetherill was pointing and explaining, but I had not grasped all he
said.
"You can see two hundred miles into Utah," he went on. "That bright
rough surface, like a washboard, is wind-worn rock. Those little lines
of cleavage are canyons. There are a thousand canyons down there, and
only a few have we been in. That long purple ragged line is the Grand
Canyon of the Colorado. And there, that blue fork in the red, that's
where the San Juan comes in. And there's Escalante Canyon."
I had to adopt the Indian's method of studying unlimited spaces in the
desert--to look with slow contracted eyes from near to far.
The pack-train and the drivers had begun to zigzag down a long slope,
bare of rock, with scant strips of green, and here and there a cedar.
Half a mile down, the slope merged in what seemed a green level. But I
knew it was not level. This level was a rolling plain, growing darker
green, with lines of ravines and thin, undefined spaces that might be
mirage. Miles and miles it swept and rolled and heaved, to lose its
waves in apparent darker level. Round red rocks stood isolated.
They resembled huge grazing cattle. But as I gazed these rocks were
strangely magnified. They grew and grew into mounds, castles, domes,
crags, great red wind-carved buttes. One by one they drew my gaze
to the wall of upflung rock. I seemed to see a thousand domes of a
thousand shapes and colors, and among them a thousand blue clefts,
each of which was a canyon.
Beyond this wide area of curved lines rose another wall, dwarfing the
lower; dark red, horizon-long, magnificent in frowning boldness, and
because of its limitless deceiving surfaces incomprehensible to the
gaze of man. Away to the eastward began a winding ragged blue line,
looping back upon itself, and then winding away again, growing wider
and bluer. This line was San Juan Canyon. I followed that blue line
all its length, a hundred miles, down toward the west where it joined
a dark purple shadowy cleft. And this was the Grand Canyon of the
Colorado. My eye swept along with that winding mark, farther and
farther to the west, until the cleft, growing larger and closer,
revealed itself as a wild and winding canyon. Still farther westward
it split a vast plateau of red peaks and yellow mesas. Here the canyon
was full of purple smoke. It turned, it closed, it gaped, it lost
itself and showed again in that chaos of a million cliffs. And then it
faded, a mere purple line, into deceiving distance.
I imagined there was no scene in all the world to equal this. The
tranquillity of lesser spaces was here not manifest. This happened to
be a place where so much of the desert could be seen and the effect
was stupendous Sound, movement, life seemed to have no fitness here.
Ruin was there and desolation and decay. The meaning of the ages
was flung at me. A man became nothing. But when I gazed across that
sublime and majestic wilderness, in which the Grand Canyon was only a
dim line, I strangely lost my terror and something came to me across
the shining spaces.
Then Nas ta Bega and Wetherill began the descent of the slope, and the
rest of us followed. No sign of a trail showed where the base of the
slope rolled out to meet the green plain. There was a level bench a
mile wide, then a ravine, and then an ascent, and after that, rounded
ridge and ravine, one after the other, like huge swells of a monstrous
sea. Indian paint brush vied in its scarlet hue with the deep magenta
of cactus. There was no sage. Soap weed and meager grass and a bunch
of cactus here and there lent the green to that barren, and it was
green only at a distance.
Nas ta Bega kept on at a steady gait. The sun climbed. The wind rose
and whipped dust from under the mustangs. There is seldom much talk
on a ride of this nature. It is hard work and everybody for himself.
Besides, it is enough just to see; and that country is conducive to
silence. I looked back often, and the farther out on the plain we rode
the higher loomed the plateau we had descended; and as I faced ahead
again, the lower sank the red-domed and castled horizon to the fore.
It was a wild place we were approaching. I saw piñon patches under
the circled walls. I ceased to feel the dry wind in my face. We were
already in the lee of a wall. I saw the rock squirrels scampering to
their holes. Then the Indians disappeared between two rounded corners
of cliff.
I rode round the corner into a widening space thick with cedars. It
ended in a bare slope of smooth rock. Here we dismounted to begin the
ascent. It was smooth and hard, though not slippery. There was not
a crack. I did not see a broken piece of stone. Nas ta Bega and
Wetherill climbed straight up for a while and then wound round a
swell, to turn this way and that, always going up. I began to see
similar mounds of rock all around me, of every shape that could be
called a curve. There were yellow domes far above and small red domes
far below. Ridges ran from one hill of rock to another. There were
no abrupt breaks, but holes and pits and caves were everywhere, and
occasionally deep down, an amphitheater green with cedar and piñon. We
found no vestige of trail on those bare slopes.
Our guides led to the top of the wall, only to disclose to us another
wall beyond, with a ridged, bare, and scalloped depression between.
Here footing began to be precarious for both man and beast. Our
mustangs were not shod and it was wonderful to see their slow, short,
careful steps. They knew a great deal better than we what the danger
was. It has been such experiences as this that have made me see in
horses something besides beasts of burden. In the ascent of the second
slope it was necessary to zigzag up, slowly and carefully, taking
advantage of every bulge and depression.
Then before us twisted and dropped and curved the most dangerous
slopes I had ever seen. We had reached the height of the divide and
many of the drops on this side were perpendicular and too steep for us
to see the bottom.
[Illustration: THIS IMMENSE CAVE WOULD HOLD TRINITY CHURCH. IN IT LIES
THE RUINED CLIFF DWELLING CALLED BETATAKIN]
At one bad place Wetherill and Nas ta Bega, with Joe Lee, a Mormon
cowboy with us, were helping one of the pack-horses named Chub. On the
steepest part of this slope Chub fell and began to slide. His momentum
jerked the rope from the hands of Wetherill and the Indian. But Joe
Lee held on. Joe was a giant and being a Mormon he could not let go of
anything he had. He began to slide with the horse, holding back with
all his might.
[Illustration: THE WIND-WORN TREACHEROUS SLOPES ON THE WAY TO
NONNEZOSHE]
It seemed that both man and beast must slide down to where the slope
ended in a yawning precipice. Chub was snorting or screaming in
terror. Our mustangs were frightened and rearing. It was not a place
to have trouble with horses.
I had a moment of horrified fascination, in which Chub turned clear
over. Then he slid into a little depression that, with Joe's hold on
the lasso, momentarily checked his descent. Quick as thought Joe ran
sidewise and down to the bulge of rock, and yelled for help. I got
to him a little ahead of Wetherill and Nas ta Bega; and together we
pulled Chub up out of danger. At first we thought he had been choked
to death. But he came to, and got up, a bloody, skinned horse, but
alive and safe. I have never seen a more magnificent effort than Joe
Lee's. Those fellows are built that way. Wetherill has lost horses on
those treacherous slopes, and that risk is the only thing about the
trip which is not splendid.
We got over that bad place without further incident, and presently
came to a long swell of naked stone that led down to a narrow green
split. This one had straight walls and wound away out of sight. It was
the head of a canyon.
"Nonnezoshe Boco," said the Indian.
This then was the Canyon of the Rainbow Bridge. When we got down into
it we were a happy crowd. The mode of travel here was a selection of
the best levels, the best places to cross the brook, the best places
to climb, and it was a process of continual repetition. There was no
trail ahead of us, but we certainly left one behind. And as Wetherill
picked out the course and the mustangs followed him I had all freedom
to see and feel the beauty, color, wildness and changing character of
Nonnezoshe Boco.
My experiences in the desert did not count much in the trip down this
strange, beautiful lost canyon. All canyons are not alike. This one
did not widen, though the walls grew higher. They began to lean and
bulge, and the narrow strip of sky above resembled a flowing blue
river. Huge caverns had been hollowed out by water or wind. And when
the brook ran close under one of these overhanging places the running
water made a singular indescribable sound. A crack from a hoof on a
stone rang like a hollow bell and echoed from wall to wall. And the
croak of a frog--the only living creature I noted in the canyon--was a
weird and melancholy thing.
"We're sure gettin' deep down," said Joe Lee.
"How do you know?" I asked.
"Here are the pink and yellow sego lilies. Only the white ones are
found above."
I dismounted to gather some of these lilies. They were larger than
the white ones of higher altitudes, of a most exquisite beauty and
fragility, and of such rare pink and yellow hues as I had never seen.
"They bloom only where it's always summer," explained Joe.
That expressed their nature. They were the orchids of the summer
canyons. They stood up everywhere star-like out of the green. It was
impossible to prevent the mustangs treading them under foot. And as
the canyon deepened, and many little springs added their tiny volume
to the brook, every grassy bench was dotted with lilies, like a green
sky star-spangled. And this increasing luxuriance manifested itself
in the banks of purple moss and clumps of lavender daisies and
great mounds of yellow violets. The brook was lined by blossoming
buck-brush; the rocky corners showed the crimson and magenta of
cactus; and there were ledges of green with shining moss that sparkled
with little white flowers. The hum of bees filled the fragrant, dreamy
air.
But by and bye, this green and colorful and verdant beauty, the almost
level floor of the canyon, the banks of soft earth, the thickets and
clumps of cottonwood, the shelving caverns and bulging walls--these
features were gradually lost, and Nonnezoshe began to deepen in bare
red and white stone steps. The walls sheered away from one another,
breaking into sections and ledges, and rising higher and higher, and
there began to be manifested a dark and solemn concordance with the
nature that had created this old rent in the earth.
There was a stretch of miles where steep steps in hard red rock
alternated with long levels of round boulders. Here, one by one, the
mustangs went lame and we had to walk. And we slipped and stumbled
along over these loose, treacherous stones. The hours passed; the toil
increased; the progress diminished; one of the mustangs failed and was
left. And all the while the dimensions of Nonnezoshe Boco magnified
and its character changed. It became a thousand-foot walled canyon,
leaning, broken, threatening, with great yellow slides blocking
passage, with huge sections split off from the main wall, with immense
dark and gloomy caverns. Strangely it had no intersecting canyons. It
jealously guarded its secret. Its unusual formations of cavern and
pillar and half-arch led me to expect any monstrous stone-shape left
by avalanche or cataclysm.
Down and down we toiled. And now the stream-bed was bare of boulders
and the banks of earth. The floods that had rolled down that canyon
had here borne away every loose thing. All the floor, in places, was
bare red and white stone, polished, glistening, slippery, affording
treacherous foothold. And the time came when Wetherill abandoned the
stream-bed to take to the rock-strewn and cactus-covered ledges above.
The canyon widened ahead into a great ragged iron-lined amphitheater,
and then apparently turned abruptly at right angles. Sunset rimmed the
walls.
I had been tired for a long time and now I began to limp and lag. I
wondered what on earth would make Wetherill and the Indians tired. It
was with great pleasure that I observed the giant Joe Lee plodding
slowly along. And when I glanced behind at my straggling party it was
with both admiration for their gameness and glee for their disheveled
and weary appearance. Finally I got so that all I could do was to drag
myself onward with eyes down on the rough ground. In this way I kept
on until I heard Wetherill call me. He had stopped--was waiting for
me. The dark and silent Indian stood beside him, looking down the
canyon.
I saw past the vast jutting wall that had obstructed my view. A mile
beyond, all was bright with the colors of sunset, and spanning the
canyon in the graceful shape and beautiful hues of the rainbow was a
magnificent natural bridge.
"Nonnezoshe," said Wetherill, simply.
This rainbow bridge was the one great natural phenomenon, the one
grand spectacle which I had ever seen that did not at first give vague
disappointment, a confounding of reality, a disenchantment of contrast
with what the mind had conceived.
But this thing was glorious. It absolutely silenced me. My body and
brain, weary and dull from the toil of travel, received a singular and
revivifying freshness. I had a strange, mystic perception that this
rosy-hued, tremendous arch of stone was a goal I had failed to reach in
some former life, but had now found. Here was a rainbow magnified even
beyond dreams, a thing not transparent and ethereal, but solidified, a
work of ages, sweeping up majestically from the red walls, its iris-hued
arch against the blue sky.
[Illustration: FIRST SIGHT OF THE GREAT NATURAL BRIDGE]
[Illustration: NONNEZOSHE]
Then we plodded on again. Wetherill worked around to circle the huge
amphitheater. The way was a steep slant, rough and loose and dragging.
The rocks were as hard and jagged as lava, and cactus hindered
progress. Soon the rosy and golden lights had faded. All the walls
turned pale and steely and the bridge loomed dark.
We were to camp all night under the bridge. Just before we reached it
Nas ta Bega halted with one of his singular motions. He was saying his
prayer to this great stone god. Then he began to climb straight up the
steep slope. Wetherill told me the Indian would not pass under the
arch.
When we got to the bridge and unsaddled and unpacked the lame mustangs
twilight had fallen. The horses were turned loose to fare for what
scant grass grew on bench and slope. Firewood was even harder to
find than grass. When our simple meal had been eaten there was gloom
gathering in the canyon and stars had begun to blink in the pale strip
of blue above the lofty walls. The place was oppressive and we were
mostly silent.
Presently I moved away into the strange dark shadow cast by the
bridge. It was a weird black belt, where I imagined I was invisible,
but out of which I could see. There was a slab of rock upon which I
composed myself, to watch, to feel.
A stiffening of my neck made me aware that I had been continually
looking up at the looming arch. I found that it never seemed the same
any two moments. Near at hand it was too vast a thing for immediate
comprehension. I wanted to ponder on what had formed it--to reflect
upon its meaning as to age and force of nature. Yet it seemed that all
I could do was to see. White stars hung along the dark curved
line. The rim of the arch appeared to shine. The moon was up there
somewhere. The far side of the canyon was now a blank black wall. Over
its towering rim showed a pale glow. It brightened. The shades in the
canyon lightened, then a white disk of moon peeped over the dark line.
The bridge turned to silver.
It was then that I became aware of the presence of Nas ta Bega. Dark,
silent, statuesque, with inscrutable face uplifted, with all that was
spiritual of the Indian suggested by a somber and tranquil knowledge
of his place there, he represented to me that which a solitary figure
of human life represents in a great painting. Nonnezoshe needed life,
wild life, life of its millions of years--and here stood the dark and
silent Indian.
Long afterward I walked there alone, to and fro, under the bridge. The
moon had long since crossed the streak of star-fired blue above, and
the canyon was black in shadow. At times a current of wind, with all
the strangeness of that strange country in its moan, rushed through
the great stone arch. At other times there was silence such as I
imagined might have dwelt deep in the center of the earth. And again
an owl hooted, and the sound was nameless. It had a mocking echo. An
echo of night, silence, gloom, melancholy, death, age, eternity!
The Indian lay asleep with his dark face upturned, and the other
sleepers lay calm and white in the starlight. I seemed to see in them
the meaning of life and the past--the illimitable train of faces
that had shone under the stars. There was something nameless in that
canyon, and whether or not it was what the Indian embodied in the
great Nonnezoshe, or the life of the present, or the death of the
ages, or the nature so magnificently manifested in those silent,
dreaming, waiting walls--the truth was that there was a spirit.
I did sleep a few hours under Nonnezoshe, and when I awoke the tip of
the arch was losing its cold darkness and beginning to shine. The sun
had just risen high enough over some low break in the wall to reach
the bridge. I watched. Slowly, in wondrous transformation, the gold
and blue and rose and pink and purple blended their hues, softly,
mistily, cloudily, until once more the arch was a rainbow.
I realized that long before life had evolved upon the earth this
bridge had spread its grand arch from wall to wall, black and mystic
at night, transparent and rosy in the sunrise, at sunset a flaming
curve limned against the heavens. When the race of man had passed it
would, perhaps, stand there still. It was not for many eyes to see.
The tourist, the leisurely traveler, the comfort-loving motorist would
never behold it. Only by toil, sweat, endurance and pain could any
man ever look at Nonnezoshe. It seemed well to realize that the great
things of life had to be earned. Nonnezoshe would always be alone,
grand, silent, beautiful, unintelligible; and as such I bade it a
mute, reverent farewell.