The Enchanted Canyon

by Honoré Willsie Morrow

  About four o'clock the river widened and the walls were broken by lateral canyons that led back darkly and mysteriously into the bowels of the desert. For half an hour more Milton guided the Ida onward. Then Enoch cried, "Milton, see that brook!" and he pointed to a tumbling little stream that issued from one of the side canyons.

  Milton at once called for a landing on the grassy shore beside the brook. Never was there a sweeter spot than this. Willows bent over the brook and long grass mirrored itself within its pebbly depths for a moment before the crystal water joined the muddy Colorado. The Canyon no longer overhung the river suffocatingly, but opened widely, showing behind the fissured white granite peaks, crimson and snow capped and appalling in their bigness.

  "Here's where we put in a day, boys!" exclaimed Milton. "I'm sure we can scramble to the top here, somehow, and get a general idea of the country."

  His crew cheered this statement enthusiastically. The landing was easily made and the boats were beached and unloaded.

  "Never thought I could unload a boat again without bursting into tears," said Enoch, grunting under three bed rolls he was carrying up to the willows, "but here I am, full of enthusiasm!"

  "You need a lot of it down here, I can tell you," growled Forrester, who had skinned his chin badly in a fall that morning.

  "You look like a goat, Forr," said Harden, sympathetically, as he set a folding table close to the spot where Jonas was kindling a fire.

  "I'd rather look like a goat than a jack-ass," returned Forrester with an edge to his voice.

  "Forr," said Milton, "don't you want to try your luck at some fish for supper? The salmon ought to be interested in a spot like this."

  Forrester's voice cleared at once. "Sure! I'd be glad to," he said, and went off to unload his fishing tackle. When he was out of hearing, Milton said sharply to Harden:

  "Why can't you let him alone, Hard! You know how touchy he is when anything's the matter with him."

  "I'm sorry," replied Harden shortly.

  Enoch glanced with interest from one man to the other, but said nothing, not even when, Milton's back being turned, Harden winked at him. And when Forrester returned with a four-pound river salmon, there was no sign of irritation in his face or manner.

  This night, for the first time, they sat around the fire, luxuriating in the thought that for the next twenty-four hours they were free of the terrible demands of the river. Forrester possessed a good tenor voice and sang, Jonas joining with his mellow baritone. Harden, lying close to the flames, read a chapter from "David Harum," the one book of the expedition. Agnew, on request, told a long and involved story of a Chinese laundryman and a San Francisco broker which evoked much laughter. Then Milton, as master of ceremonies, turned to Enoch:

  "Now then, Judge, do your duty!"

  "I haven't a parlor trick to my name," protested Enoch.

  "I like what you call our efforts!" cried Harden. "Hit him for me, Ag! He's closest to you."

  "Not after the way he wallops the Ida," grunted Agnew. "Let Milt do it."

  "Boss," said Jonas suddenly, "tell 'em that poem about mercy I heard you give at--at that banquet at our house."

  Enoch smiled, took his pipe from his lips, and began:

  "'The quality of mercy is not strained, It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven, Upon the place beneath--'"

  Enoch paused a moment. The words held a new and soul-shattering significance for him. Then as the others waited breathlessly, he went on. His beautiful, mellow voice, his remarkable enunciation, the magnetism of his personality stirred his little audience, just as thousands of greater audiences had been stirred by these same qualities.

  When he had finished, there was a profound silence until Milton said:

  "That's the only thing I have heard said in the Canyon that didn't sound paltry."

  "If any of the rest of us had repeated it, though, it might have sounded so." Harden's tone was dry.

  "Shakespeare couldn't sound paltry anywhere!" exclaimed Enoch.

  "Hum!" sniffed Agnew. "Depends on what and when you're quoting. Give us another, Judge."

  Enoch gazed thoughtfully at the fire for a moment, then slowly and quietly he gave them the prayer of Habakkuk. The liquid phrases rolled from his lips, echoed in the Canyon, then dropped into silence. Enoch sat with his great head bowed, his sensitive mouth compressed as if with pain. His friends stared from him to one another, then one by one slipped away to their blankets. When Enoch looked up, only Milton was left.

  "And so," said Enoch, "the Canyon has been a great experience for you, Milton!"

  "Yes, Judge. I became engaged to a girl who is a Catholic. I am a Protestant, one of the easy going kind that never goes to church. Yet, do you know, when she insisted that I turn Catholic, I wouldn't do it? We had a fearful time! I didn't have any idea there was so much creed in me as I discovered I had. In the midst of it the opportunity came for this Canyon work, and this trip has changed the whole outlook of life for me. Judge, creeds don't matter any more than bridges do to a stream. They are just a way of getting across, that's all. Creeds may come and creeds may go, but God goes on forever. Nothing changes true religion. Christ promulgated the greatest system of ethics the world has known. The ethics of God. He put them into practical working form for human beings. Whatever creed helps you to live the teachings of Christ most truly, that's the true creed for you. That's what the Canyon's done for me. And when I get out, I'm going back to Alice and let her make of me whatever will help her most. I'm safe. I've got the creed of the Colorado Canyon!"

  Enoch looked at the freckled, ruddy face and smiled. "Thank you, Milton. You've given me something to think about."

  "I doubt if you lack subjects," replied Milton drily. "But--well, I have an idea you came out here looking for something. There are lines around your eyes that say that. So I just thought I'd hand on to you what I got."

  Enoch nodded and the two smoked for a while in silence. Then Enoch said in a low voice:

  "Do you have trouble with Forrester and Harden?"

  "Yes, constant friction. They're both fine fellows, but naturally antagonistic to each other."

  "A fellow may be ever so fine," said Enoch, "yet lack the sense of team play that is absolutely essential in a job like this."

  "Exactly," replied Milton. "The great difficulty is that you can't judge men until they're undergoing the trial. Then it's too late. In Powell's first expedition, soon after the Civil War, there was constant friction between Powell and three of his men. At last, although they had signed a contract to stick by him, they deserted him."

  "How was that?" asked Enoch with interest.

  "They simply insisted on being put ashore and they climbed out of the Canyon with the idea of getting to some of the Mormon settlements. But the Indians killed them almost at once, poor devils! Powell got the story of it on his second expedition. The history of those two expeditions, I think, are as glorious as any chapter in our American annals."

  "Was it so much harder than the work you are doing?"

  "There is no comparison! We're simply following the trail that Powell blazed. Think of his superb courage! These terrible waters were enshrouded in mystery and fear. He did not know even what kind of boats could live in them. Hostile Indians marauded on either hand. And as near as I recall the only settlements he could call on, if he succeeded in clambering out of the Canyon, were Ft. Defiance in New Mexico, and Mormon settlements, miles across the desert in Utah."

  "Hum!" said Enoch slowly, "it doesn't seem to me that things are so much better now, that we need to boast about them. There are no Indians, to be sure, but the river is about all human endurance and ingenuity can cope with, just as it was in Powell's day."

  "She's a bird, all right!" sighed Milton. "Well, Judge, I'm going to turn in. To-morrow's another day! Good night."

  "Good night, Captain!" replied Enoch. He threw another stick of driftwood on the fire and after a moment's thought fetched the black diary from his rubber dunnage
bag. When the fire was clear and bright, he began to write.

  "Diana, you were wrong. No matter how strenuous the work is, you are never out of the background of my thoughts. But at least I am having surcease from grieving for you. I have had no time to dwell on the fact that you cannot belong to me. I am afraid to come out of the Canyon. Afraid that when these wonderful days of adventure are over, the knowledge that I must not ask you to marry me will descend on me like a stifling fog. As for Brown! Diana, why not let me kill him! I'd be willing to stand before any jury in the world with his blood on my hands. What he has done to me is typical of Brown and all his works. He is unclean and clever, a frightful combination. Consider the class of readers he has! The majority of the people who read Brown, read only Brown. His readers are the great commonalty of America, the source, once, of all that was best in our life. Brown tells them nasty stories, not about people alone, but about systems; systems of money, systems of work, systems of government. And because nasty stories are always luscious reading, and because it is easier to believe evil than good about anything, twice every day, as he produces his morning and evening editions, Brown is polluting the head waters of our national existence. I say, why not let me kill him? What more useful and direct thing could I do than rid the nation of him? And O Diana, when I think of the smut to which he coupled your loveliness, I feel that I am less than a man to have hesitated this long."

  Enoch closed the book, replaced it in the bag, and sat for a long hour staring into the fire. Then he went to bed.

  CHAPTER XI

  THE PERFECT ADVENTURE

  "Who cares whether or not my hands are clean? Does God? Wouldn't God expect me to punish evil? God is mercilessly just, is He not? Else why disease and grief in the world? If you could only tell me!"--_Enoch's Diary_.

  It was nipping cold in the morning. Ice encrusted the edges of the little brook. But by the time breakfast was finished, the sun had appeared over the distant mountain peaks and the long warm rays soon brought the thermometer up to summer heat. Milton expounded his program at breakfast. Jonas was to keep the camp. Enoch and Milton were to climb to the rim for topographical information. Harden was to look for fossils. Agnew and Forrester were to make a geological report on the strata of the section.

  Jonas was extraordinarily well pleased with his assignment.

  "I'm going to finish painting the Na-che," he said. "Mr. Milton, have you got anything I can mend the tarpaulins with that go over the decks?"

  "Needles and twine in the bag labeled Repairs," replied Milton. "How about giving the Ida the once over, too, Jonas."

  "All right! If I get around to it!" Jonas' manner was vague.

  "Can't love but one boat at a time, eh, Jonas?" asked Enoch.

  "I always wanted to have a boat to fix up," said Jonas. "When I was a kid my folks had an old flat-bottom tub, but I never earned enough for a can of paint. Will you folks be home by twelve for dinner?"

  There was a chorus of assent as the crew scattered to its several tasks. Milton and Enoch started at once up the edge of the brook, hoping that the ascent might be made more easily thus. But the crevice, out of which the little stream found its way to the Colorado, narrowed rapidly to the point where it became impossible for the two men to work their way into it. They were obliged, after a half hour's struggle, to return to the camp and start again.

  A very steep slope of bright orange sand led from the shore to a scarcely less oblique terrace of sharp broken rock. There were several hundred feet of the sand and, as it was dry and loose, it caused a constant slipping and falling that consumed both time and strength. The rocky terrace was far easier to manage, and they covered that rapidly, although Enoch had a nasty fall, cutting his knee. They were brought to pause, however, when the broken rock gave way to a sheer hard wall, which offered neither crack nor projection for hand or foot hold.

  Milton led the way carefully along its foot for a quarter of a mile until they reached a fissure wide enough for them to enter. The walls of this were crossed by transverse cracks. By utilizing these, now pulling, now boosting each other, they finally emerged on a flat, smooth tableland, of which fissures had made a complete island. At the southern end of the island rose an abrupt black peak.

  "If we can get to the top of that," said Milton, "it ought to bring us to the general desert level. Is your knee bothering you, Judge?"

  "Not enough to stop the parade," replied Enoch. "How high do you think that peak is, Milton?"

  "Not less than a thousand feet, I would guess. I bet it's as easy to climb as a greased pole, too."

  The pinnacle, when they reached it, appeared very little less difficult than Milton had guessed it would be. The north side offered no hope whatever. It rose smooth and perpendicular toward the heavens. But the south side was rough and though a yawning fissure at its base added five hundred feet to its southern height they determined to try their fortunes here. Ledges and jutting rocks, cracks and depressions finally made the ascent possible. The top, when they achieved it, was not twenty feet in diameter. They dropped on it, panting.

  The view which met their eyes was superb. To the south lay the desert, rainbow colored. Rising abruptly from its level were isolated peaks of bright purple, all of them snow capped, many of them with crevices marked by the brilliant white of snow. Miles to the south of the isolated peaks lay a long range of mountains, dull black against the blue sky, but with the white of snow caps showing even at this distance. To the north, the river gorge wound like a snake; the gorge and one huge mountain dominating the entire northern landscape. Satiated by wonders as Milton was, he exclaimed over the beauty of this giant, sleeping in the desert sun.

  A sprawling cone in outline, there was nothing extraordinary about it in contour, but its size and color surpassed anything that Enoch had as yet seen. From base to apex it was a perfect rose tint, deepening where its great shoulders bent, to crimson. As if still not satisfied with her work, nature had sent a recent snow storm to embellish the verdureless rock, and the mountain was lightly powdered with white which here was of a gauze-like texture permitting pale rose to glimmer through, there lay in drifts, white defined against crimson.

  Enoch sat gazing about him while Milton worked rapidly with his note book and instruments. Finally he slipped his pencil into his pocket with a sigh.

  "And that's done! What do you say to a return for lunch, Judge?"

  "I'm very much with you," replied Enoch. "Here! Hold up, old man! What's the matter?" For Milton was swaying and would have fallen if Enoch had not caught him.

  Milton clung to Enoch's broad shoulder for a moment, then straightened himself with a jerk.

  "Sorry, Judge. It's that infernal vertigo again!"

  "What's the cause of it?" asked Enoch. "Might be rather serious, might it not, on a trip such as yours?"

  "I think the water we have to drink must be affecting my kidneys," replied Milton. "I never had anything of the sort before this trip, but I've been troubled this way a dozen times lately. It only lasts for a minute."

  "But in that minute," Enoch's voice was grave, "you might fall down a mountain or out of the boat."

  "Oh, I don't get it that bad! And anyhow, I haven't gone off alone since these things began. When we get to El Tovar I'll try to locate a doctor."

  Enoch looked admiringly at the grim young freckled face beneath the faded hat. "I see I shall have to appoint myself bodyguard," he said. "I'd suggest Jonas, only he's deserted me for the Na-che, and I doubt if you could win him from her."

  Milton laughed. "Nothing on earth can equal the joy of puddling about in boats, to the right kind of a chap, as the Wind in the Willows has it. And Jonas certainly is the right kind of a chap!"

  "Jonas is a man, every inch of him," agreed Enoch. "Shall we try the descent now, Milton?"

  "I'm ready," replied the young man, and the slow and arduous task was begun.

  Jonas was just lifting the frying pan from the fire when they slid down the orange sand bank. The rest of the
crew was ready and waiting around the flat rock that served as dining table.

  "What's the matter with your knee, boss?" cried Jonas, standing with the coffee pot in his hand.

  Enoch laughed as he glanced down at his torn and blood-stained overalls. "Of course, if you were giving me half the care you give your boat, Jonas, these things wouldn't happen to me!"

  "You better let me fix you up, before you eat, boss," said Jonas.

  "Not on your life, old man! Food will do this knee more good than a bandage."

  "It's a wonder you wouldn't offer to help the rest of us out once in a while, Jonas!" Harden looked up from his plate of fish. "Look at this scratch on my cheek! I might get blood poisoning, but lots you care if my fatal beauty was destroyed! As it is, I look as much like an inmate of a menagerie as old goat Forrester here."

  "Too bad the scratch didn't injure your tongue, Harden," returned Forrester, sarcastically.

  "Nothing seems able to stop your chin, though, Forr! Why do you have to get sore every time I speak to you?"

  "Because you're always going out of your way to say something insulting to me."

  "Don't make a mountain out of a mole hill, Forr," said Milton. "If you fellows aren't careful you'll have a real quarrel, and that's the last thing I'm going to stand for, I warn you."

  "Very well, Milt," replied Forrester, "if you don't want trouble make Harden keep his tongue off me."

  "The fault is primarily yours, Hard," Milton went on. "You know Forrester is foolishly sensitive and you can't control your love of teasing. Now, once for all, I ask you not to speak to Forrester except on the business of the survey."