The three men stared at each other in the fire glow. Suddenly Enoch burst into a hearty laugh, in which the others joined.
"What was the queerest thing you've ever seen in the desert, Mack?" asked Enoch, when they had sobered down.
Mack sat in silence for a time. "That's hard to judge," he said finally. "Once, in the Death Valley country, I saw a blind priest riding a burro fifty miles from anywhere. He had no pack, just a canteen. He said he was doing a penance and if I tried to help him, he'd curse me. So I went off and left him. And once I saw a fat woman in a kimono and white satin high heeled slippers chasing her horse over the trackless desert. Lord!"
"Was that any queerer sight than Just Smith chasing Pablo this morning?" demanded Curly.
"Or than Field tying a stone to Mamie's tail to keep her from braying to-night?" asked Enoch.
"You're improving!" exclaimed Curly, "Dignity's an awful thing to take into the desert for a vacation."
"Let's go to bed," suggested Mack, and in the fewest possible minutes the camp was at rest.
The trail for the next two days grew rougher and rougher, while the brilliancy of color in rock and sand increased in the same ratio as the aridity. Enoch, pounding along at the rear of the parade, hour after hour, was still in too anguished and abstracted a frame of mind to heed details. He knew only that the vast loveliness and the naked austerity of the desert were fit backgrounds, the first for this thought of Diana, the second for his bitter retrospects.
Mid-morning on the third day, after several hours of silent trekking, Curly turned in his saddle:
"Just, have you noticed the mirage?" pointing to the right.
Far to the east where the desert was most nearly level appeared the sea, waters of brilliant cobalt blue lapping shores clad in richest verdure, waves that broke in foam and ran softly up on quiet shores. Upon the sea, silhouetted against the turquoise sky were ships with sails of white, of crimson, of gold. Then, as the men stared with parted lips, the picture dimmed and the pitiless, burning desert shimmered through.
The unexpected vision lifted Enoch out of himself for a little while and he listened, interested and amused, while Curly, half turned in his saddle, discanted on mirages and their interpretations. Nor did Enoch for several hours after meditate on his troubles. Not an hour after the mirage had disappeared the sky darkened almost to black, then turned a sullen red. Lightning forked across the zenith and the thunder reverberated among the thousand mesas, the entangled gorges, until it seemed almost impossible to endure the uproar. Rain did not begin to fall until noon. There was not a place in sight that would provide shelter, so the men wrapped their Navajos about them and forced the reluctant animals to continue the journey. The storm held with fury until late in the afternoon. The wind, the lightning and the rain vied with one another in punishing the travelers. Again and again, the burros broke from trail.
"Get busy, Just!" Curly would roar. "Come out of your trance!" and Enoch would ride Pablo after the impish Mamie with a skill that developed remarkably as the afternoon wore on. Enoch could not recall ever having been so wretchedly uncomfortable in his life. He was sodden to the skin, aching with weariness, shivering with cold. But he made no murmur of protest. It was Curly who, about five o'clock, called:
"Hey, Mack! I've gone my limit!"
Mack pulled up and seemed to hesitate. As he did so, the storm, with a suddenness that was unbelievable, stopped. A last flare of lightning seemed to blast the clouds from the sky. The rain ceased and the sun enveloped mesas, gorges, trail in a hundred rainbows.
"How about a fire?" asked Mack, grinning, with chattering teeth.
"It must be done somehow," replied Curly. "Come on, Just, shake it up!"
"Look here, Curly," exclaimed Mack, pausing in the act of throwing his leg over the saddle, "I think you ought to treat Mr. Smith with more respect. He ain't your hired help."
"The dickens he isn't!" grinned Curly.
"It's all right, Mack! I enjoy it," said Enoch, dismounting stiffly.
"If you do," Mack gave him a keen look, "you aren't enjoying it the way Curly thinks you do."
Enoch returned Mack's gaze, smiled, but said nothing further. Mack, however, continued to grumble.
"I'm as good as the next fellow, but I don't believe in giving everybody a slap on the back or a kick in the pants to prove it. You may be a lawyer, all right, Mr. Smith, but I'll bet you're on the bench. You've got that way with you. Not that it's any of my business!"
He was leading the way, as he spoke, toward the face of a mesa that abutted almost on the trail. Curly apparently had not paid the slightest attention to the reproof. He was already hobbling his horse.
They made no attempt to look for a spring. The hollows of the rocks were filled with rain water. But the search for wood was long and arduous. In fact, it was nearly dusk before they had gathered enough to last out the evening. But here and there a tiny cedar or mesquite yielded itself up and at last a good blaze flared up before the mesa. The men shifted to dry underwear, wrung out their outer clothing and put it on again, and drank copiously of the hot coffee. In spite of damp clothing and blankets Enoch slept deeply and dreamlessly, and rose the next day none the worse for the wetting. Even in this short time his physical tone was improving and he felt sure that his mind must follow.
CHAPTER VIII
THE COLORADO
"We had a particularly vile place to raid to-day, and as I listened with sick heart to the report of it, suddenly I saw the Canyon and F.'s broad back on his mule and the glorious line of the rim lifting from opalescent mists."--_Enoch's Diary_.
They had been a week on the trail when they made camp one night at a spring surrounded by dwarf junipers. Mack, who had taken the trip before, greeted the spring with a shout of satisfaction.
"Ten miles from the river, boys! To-morrow afternoon should see us panning gold."
And to-morrow did, indeed, bring the river. There was a wide view of the Colorado as they approached it. The level which had gradually lifted during the entire week, making each day cooler, rarer, as it came, now sloped downward, while mesa and headland grew higher, the way underfoot more broken, the trail fainter and fainter, and the thermometer rose steadily.
By now deep fissures appeared in the desert floor, and to the north lifted great mountains that were banded in multi-colored strata, across which drifted veils of mist, lavender, blue and gauzy white. Enoch's heart began to beat heavily. It was the Canyon country, indeed! The country of enchantment to which his spirit had returned for so many years.
They ate lunch in a little canyon opening north and south.
"At the north end of this," said Mack, "we make our first sharp drop a thousand feet straight down. She's a devil of a trail, made by Indians nobody knows when. Then we cross a plateau, about a mile wide, as I remember, then it's an easy grade to the river. We've got to go over the girths careful. If anything slips now it's farewell!"
The trail was a nasty one, zig-zagging down the over-hanging face of the wall. Enoch, to his deep-seated satisfaction, felt no sense of panic, although in common with Mack and Curly, he was apprehensive and at times a little giddy. It required an hour to compass the drop. At the bottom was a tiny spring where men and beasts drank deeply, then started on.
The plateau was rough, deep covered with broken rock, but the trail, though faint, held to the edge. At this edge the men paused. The Colorado lay before them.
Fifty feet below them was a wide stretch of sand. Next, the river, smooth brown, slipping rapidly westward. Beyond the water, on the opposite side, a chaos of rocks greater than any Enoch had yet seen, a pile huge as if a mountain had fallen to pieces at the river's edge. Behind the broken rock rose the canyon wall, sheer black, forbidding, two thousand feet into the air. Its top cut straight and sharp across the sky line, the sky line unbroken save where rising behind the wall a mountain peak, snow capped, flecked with scarlet and gold, towered in the sunlight.
"There you are, Curly!" exclaimed
Mack. "There's a spring in the cave beneath us. There's drift wood, enough to run a factory with. Have I delivered the goods, or not?"
"Everything is as per advertisement except the gold," replied Curly.
"Oh, well, I don't vouch for the gold!" said Mack. "I just said the Indians claim they get it here. There's some grazing for the critters up here on the plateau, you see, and not a bit below. So we'll drive 'em back up here and leave 'em. With a little feed of oats once in a while, they'll do. Come ahead! It'll be dark in the Canyon inside of two hours."
The cave proved to be a hollow overhang of the plateau ten or fifteen feet deep, and twice as wide. The floor was covered with sand.
"All ready to go to housekeeping!" exclaimed Curly. "Judge, you wrangle firewood while Mack and I just give this placer idea a ten minutes' trial, will you?"
"Go ahead!" said Enoch, "all the gold in the Colorado couldn't tempt me like something to eat. If you aren't ready by the time the fire's going, Mack, I shall start supper."
"Go to it! I can stand it if you can!" returned Mack, who had already unpacked his pan.
From that moment Enoch became the commissary and steward for the expedition. Curly and Mack, whom he had known as mild and jovial companions of many interests and leisurely manners, changed in a twinkling to monomaniacs who during every daylight hour except for the short interim which they snatched for eating, sought for gold. At first Enoch laughed at them and tried to get them to take an occasional half day off in which to explore with him. But they curtly refused to do this, so he fell back on his own resources. And he discovered that the days were all too short. Curly had a gun. There was plenty of ammunition. Quail and cottontails were to be found on the plateau where the stock was grazing. Sometimes on Pablo, sometimes afoot, Enoch with the gun, and sometimes with the black diary rolled in his coat, scoured the surrounding country.
One golden afternoon he edged his way around the shoulder of a gnarled and broken peak, in search of rabbits for supper. Just at the outermost point of the shoulder he came upon a cedar twisting itself about a broad, flat bowlder. Enoch instantly stopped the search for game and dropped upon the rock, his back against the cedar. Lighting his pipe, he gave himself up to contemplation of the view. Below him yawned blue space, flecked with rose colored mists. Beyond this mighty blue chasm lay a mountain of purest gold, banded with white and silhouetted against a sky of palest azure. An eagle dipped lazily across the heavens.
When he had gazed his fill, Enoch put his pipe in his pocket, unrolled the diary and, balancing it oh his knee, began to write:
"Oh, Diana, no wonder you are lovely! No wonder you are serene and pure and reverent!
'And her's shall be the breathing balm And her's the silence and the calm'--
"You remember how it goes, Diana.
"I heard Curly curse yesterday. A thousand echoes sent his words back to him and he looked at the glory of the canyon walls and was ashamed. I saw shame in his eyes.
"It was not cowardice that drove me away for this interval, Diana. Never believe that of me! I was afraid, yes, but of myself, not of the newspapers. If I had stayed on the train, I would have returned at once to Washington and have shot the reporter who wrote the stuff. Perhaps I shall do it yet. But if I do, it will be after the Canyon and I have come to agreement on the subject. I am very sure I shall shoot Brown. Some one should have done it, long ago.
"I wonder what you are doing this afternoon. Somewhere between a hundred and a hundred and fifty miles we are from Bright Angel, Mack says, via the river. And only a handful of explorers, you told me, ever have completed the trip down the Colorado. I would like to try it.
"Diana, you look at me with your gentle, faithful eyes, the corners of your lips a little uncertain as if you want to tell me that I am disappointing you and yet, because you are so gentle, you did not want to hurt me. Diana, don't be troubled about me. I shall go back, long enough at least to discharge my pressing duties. After that, who knows or cares! Oh, Diana! Diana! What is the use? There is nothing left in my life. I am empty--empty!
"Even all this is make believe, for, as soon as you saw that I was beginning to care for you,--beginning is a good word here!--you went away.
"Good-by, Diana."
Enoch's gun made no contribution to the larder that night. Curly uttered loud and bitter comment on the fact.
"You're getting spoiled by high living," said Enoch severely. "What would you have done if I hadn't come along and taken pity on you? Why, you and Mack would have starved to death here in the Canyon, for it's morally certain neither of you would have stopped panning gold long enough to prepare your food."
"Right you are, Judge," replied Curly meekly. "I'm going to try to get Mack to rebate two bits a day on your board, as a token of our appreciation."
"Not when his biscuits have to be broken open with a stone," objected Mack, as he sopped in his coffee one of the gray objects Enoch had served as rolls.
"They say when a woman that's done her own cooking first gets a hired girl, she becomes right picky about her food," rejoined Curly.
"I'd give notice if I had any place to go," said Enoch. "What was the luck to-day, boys?"
"Well, I've about come to the conclusion," replied Mack, "that by working eight hours a day you can just about wash wages out of this sand, and that's all."
"You aren't going to give it up now, are you, Mack?" asked Curly, in alarm.
"No, I'll stay this week out, if you want to, and then move on up to Devil's Canyon."
They were silently smoking around the fire, a little later, when Curly said:
"I have a hunch that you and I're not going to get independent wealth out of this expedition, Mack."
"What would you do with it, if you had it, Curly?" asked Enoch.
"A lot of things!" Curly ruminated darkly for a few moments, then he looked at Enoch long and keenly. "Smith, you're a lawyer, but I believe you're straight. There's something about you a man can't help trusting, and I think you've been successful. You have that way with you. Do you know what I'd do if I was taken suddenly rich? Well, I'd hire you, at your own price, to give all your time to breaking two men, Fowler and Brown."
"Easy now, Curly!" Mack spoke soothingly. "Don't get het up. What's the use?"
"I'm not het up. I want to get the Judge's opinion of the matter."
"Go ahead. I'm much interested," said Enoch.
"By Brown, I mean the fellow that owns the newspapers. When my brother and Fowler were in law together--"
"You should make an explanation right there," interrupted Mack. "You said all lawyers was crooks."
"My brother Harry was straight and I've just given my opinion of Smith here. I never liked Fowler, but he had great personal charm and Harry never would take any of my warnings about him. Brown was a short-legged Eastern college boy who worked on the local paper for his health. How he and Fowler ever met up, I don't know, but they did, and the law office was Brown's chief hang-out. Now all three of 'em were as poor as this desert. Nobody was paying much for law in Arizona in those days. Our guns was our lawyers. But by some fluke, Harry was made trustee of a big estate--a smelting plant that had been left to a kid. After a few years, the courts called for an accounting, and it turned out that my brother was short about a hundred thousand dollars. He seemed totally bewildered when this was discovered, swore he knew nothing about it and was terribly upset. And this devil of a Fowler turns round and says Harry made way with it and produces Brown as a witness. And, by the lord, the court believed them! My brother killed himself." Curly cleared his throat. "It wasn't six months after that that Fowler and Brown, who left the state right after the tragedy, bought a couple of newspapers. They claimed they got the money from some oil wells they'd struck in Mexico."
"How is it the country at large doesn't know of Fowler's association with Brown?" asked Enoch.
"Oh, they didn't stay pardners as far as the public knows, but a few years. They were too clever! They gave out that they'd had a spl
it and they say nobody ever sees them together. All the same, even when they were seeming to ignore him, the Brown papers have been making Fowler."
"And you want to clear your brother's name," said Enoch thoughtfully. "That ought not to be difficult. You could probably do it yourself, if you could give the time, and were clever at sleuthing. The papers in the case should be accessible to you."
"Shucks!" exclaimed Curly. "I wouldn't go at it that way at all. I got something real on Fowler and Brown and I want to use it to make them confess."
"Sounds like blackmail," said Enoch.
"Sure! That's where I need a lawyer! Now, I happen to know a personal weakness of Fowler's--"
"Don't go after him on that!" Enoch's voice was peremptory. "If he's done evil to some one else, throw the light of day on his crime, but if by his weakness you mean only some sin he commits against himself, keep off. A man, even a crook, has a right to that much privacy."
"Did Brown ever have decency toward a man's seclusion?" demanded Curly.
"No!" half shouted Enoch. "But to punish him don't turn yourself into the same kind of a skunk he is. Kill him if you have to. Don't be a filthy scandal monger like Brown!"
"You speak as if you knew the gentleman," grunted Mack.
"I don't know him," retorted Enoch, "except as the world knows him."
"Then you don't know him, or Fowler either," said Curly. "But I happen to have discovered something that both those gentlemen have been mixed up in, in Mexico, something--oh, by Jove, but it's racy!"
"You've managed to keep it to yourself, so far," said Mack.
"Meaning I'd better continue to do so! Only so long as it serves my purpose, Mack. When I get ready to raise hell about Fowler's and Brown's ears, no consideration for decency will stop me. I'll be just as merciful to them as they were to Harry. No more! I'll string their dirty linen from the Atlantic to the Pacific. His and Brown's! But I want money enough to do it right. No little piker splurge they can buy up! I'll have those two birds weeping blood!"
The Enchanted Canyon Page 15