The Enchanted Canyon

by Honoré Willsie Morrow

  "Enoch," there was a note of protest in Diana's voice, "you aren't going to make love to me on this trip, are you?"

  Enoch's voice expressed entire astonishment. "Why certainly I am, Diana!"

  "You'll make it very hard for me!" sighed Diana.

  Enoch knelt in the sand before her and lifted her hands against his cheek.

  "Sweetheart," he said softly, his great voice, rich and mellow although it hardly rose above a whisper, "my only sweetheart, not for all the love in the world would I make it hard for you. Not for all your love would I even attempt to leave you with one memory that is not all that is sweet and noble. Only in these days I want you to learn all there is in my heart, as I must learn all that is in yours. For, after that, Diana, we must never see each other again."

  Diana freed one of her hands and brushed the tumbled hair from Enoch's forehead.

  "Do you realize," he said, quietly, "that in all the years of my memory no woman has caressed me so? I am starved, Diana, for just such a gentle touch as that."

  "Then you shall be starved no more, dearest. Sit down in the sand before me and lean your head against my knee. There!" as Enoch turned and obeyed her. "Now we can both look out at the stars and I can smooth your hair. What a mass of it you have, Enoch! And you must have been a real carrot top when you were a little boy."

  "I was an ugly brat," said Enoch, comfortably. "A red-headed, freckled-faced, awkward brat! And unhappy and disagreeable as I was ugly."

  "It seems so unfair!" Diana smoothed the broad forehead, tenderly. "I had such a happy childhood. I didn't go to school until I was twelve. Until then I lived the life of a little Indian, out of doors, taking the trail trips with dad or geologizing with mother. I don't know how many horses and dogs I had. Their number was limited only by what mother and father felt they could afford to feed."

  "There was nothing unfair in your having had all the joy that could be crammed into your childhood," protested Enoch. "Nature and circumstance were helping to make you what you are. I don't see that anything could have been omitted. Listen, Diana."

  Plaintively from below rose Na-che's voice in a slow sweet chant. Jonas's baritone hesitatingly repeated the strain, and after a moment they softly sang it together.

  "Oh, this is perfect!" murmured Enoch. "Perfect!" Then he drew Diana's hand to his lips.

  How long they sat in silence listening to the wistful notes that floated up to them, neither could have told. But when the singing finally ceased, Diana, with a sudden shiver said,

  "Enoch, I want to go back to the camp."

  Enoch rose at once, with a rueful little laugh. "Our first precious evening is ended, and we've said nothing!"

  "Nothing!" exclaimed Diana. "Enoch, what was there left to say when I could touch your hair and forehead so? We can talk on the trail."

  "Starlight and you and Na-che's little song," murmured Enoch; "I am hard to satisfy, am I not?" He put his arms about Diana and kissed her softly, then let her lead the way down to the spring. And shortly, rolled in his blankets, his feet to the dying fire, Enoch was deep in sleep.

  Sun-up found them on the trail again. All day the way wound through country that had been profoundly eroded. Na-che led by instinct, it seemed, to Enoch, for when they were a few miles from the spring, as far as he, at least, could observe, the trail disappeared, entirely. During the morning, they walked much, for the over-hanging ledges and sudden chasms along which Na-che guided them made even the horses hesitate. They were obliged to depend on their canteens for water and there was no sign of forage for the horses and mules. Every one was glad when the noon hour came.

  "It will be better, to-night," explained Diana. "There are water holes known as Indian's Cups that we should reach before dark. They're sure to be full of water, for it has rained so much lately. The way will be far easier to-morrow, Enoch, so that we can talk as we go."

  They were standing by the horses, waiting for Jonas and Na-che to put the dishes in one of the packs.

  "Diana, do you realize that you made no comment whatever on what I told you yesterday? Didn't the story of Lucy seem wonderful to you?"

  "I was too deeply moved to make any very sane comment," replied Diana. "Enoch, will you let me see the diary?"

  "When I die, it is to be yours, but--" he hesitated, "it tells so many of my weaknesses, that I wouldn't like to be alive and feel that you know so much about them." He laughed a little sadly.

  "Yet you told Lucy them, didn't you?" insisted Diana with a smile. "Don't make me jealous of that person, Enoch!"

  "She was you!" returned Enoch, briefly. "To-night, I'll tell you, Lucy, some of the things you have forgotten."

  "You're a dear," murmured Diana, under her breath, turning to mount as Jonas and Na-che clambered into their saddles.

  All the afternoon, Enoch, riding under the burning sun, through the ever shifting miracles of color, rested in his happy dream. The past and the future did not exist for him. It was enough that Diana, straight and slender and unflagging rode before him. It was enough that that evening after the years of yearning he would feel the touch of Lucy's hand on his burning forehead. For the first time in his life, Enoch's spirit was at peace.

  The pools were well up on the desert, where pinnacles and buttes had given way at last to a roughly level country, with only occasional fissures as reminders of the canyon. Bear grass and yucca, barrel and fish-hook cactus as well as the ocotilla appeared. The sun was sinking when the horses smelled water and cantered to the shallow but grateful basins. Far to the south, the chaos out of which they had labored was black, and mysterious with drifting vapors. The wind which whirled forever among the chasms was left behind. They had entered into silence and tranquillity.

  After supper and while the last glow of the sunsets still clung to the western horizon, Na-che said,

  "Jonas, you want to see the great Navajo charm, made by Navajo god when he made these waterholes?"

  Jonas pricked up his ears. "Is it a good charm or a hoo-doo?"

  "If you come at it right, it means you never die," Na-che nodded her head solemnly.

  Jonas put a cat's claw root on the fire. "All right! You see, woman, that I come at it right."

  Na-che smiled and led the way eastward.

  "Bless them!" exclaimed Enoch. "They're doing the very best they can for us!"

  "And they're having a beautiful time with each other," added Diana. "I think Jonas loves you as much as Na-che loves me."

  "I don't deserve that much love," said Enoch, watching the fire glow on Diana's face. "But he is the truest friend I have on earth."

  Diana gave him a quick, wide-eyed glance.

  "Ah, but you don't know me, as Jonas does! I wouldn't want you to know me as he does!" exclaimed Enoch.

  "I'll not admit either Lucy or Jonas as serious rivals," protested Diana.

  Enoch laughed. "Dearest, I have told you things that Jonas would not dream existed. I have poured out my heart to you, night after night. All a boy's aching dreams, all a man's hopes and fears, I've shared with you. Jonas was not that kind of friend. I first met him when I became secretary to the Mayor of New York. He was a sort of porter or doorman at the City Hall. He gradually began to do little personal things for me and before I realized just how it was accomplished, he became my valet and steward, and was keeping house for me in a little flat up on Fourth Avenue.

  "And then, when I was still in the City Hall I had a row with Luigi. He spoke of my mother to a group of officials I was taking through Minetta Lane.

  "Diana, it was Luigi who taught me to gamble when I was not over eight years old. I took to it with devilish skill. What drink or dope or women have been to other men, gambling has been to me. After I came back from the Grand Canyon with John Seaton, I began to fight against it. But, although I waited on table for my board, I really put myself through the High School on my earnings at craps and draw poker. As I grew older I ceased to gamble as a means of subsistence but whenever I was overtaxed mentally I was draw
n irresistibly to a gambling den. And so after the fight with Luigi--"

  Enoch paused, his face knotted. His strong hands, clasping his knees as he sat in the sand, opposite Diana, were tense and hard. Diana, looking at him thought of what this man meant to the nation, of what his service had been and would be: she thought of the great gifts with which nature had endowed him and she could not bear to have him humble himself to her.

  She sprang to her feet. "Enoch! Enoch!" she cried. "Don't tell me any more! You are entitled to your personal weaknesses. Even I must not intrude! I asked you about them because, oh, because, Enoch, you are letting your only real weakness come between you and me."

  Enoch had risen with Diana, and now he came around the fire and put his hands on her shoulders. "No! No! Diana! not my weaknesses keep us apart, bitterly as they mortify me."

  Diana looked up at him steadily. "Enoch, your great weakness is not gambling. Who cares whether you play cards or not? No one but Brown! But your weakness is that you have let those early years and Luigi's vicious stories warp your vision of the sweetest thing in life."

  "Diana! I thought you understood. My mother--"

  "Don't!" interrupted Diana, quickly. "Don't! I understand and because I do, I tell you that you are warped. You are America's only real statesman, the man with a vision great enough to mold ideals for the nation. Still you are not normal, not sane, about yourself."

  Enoch dropped his hands from her shoulders and stood staring at her sadly.

  "I thought you understood!" he whispered, brokenly.

  Diana wrung her hands, turned and walked swiftly toward a neighboring heap of rocks whose shadows swallowed her. Enoch breathed hard for a moment, then followed. He found Diana, a vague heap on a great stone, her face buried in her hands. Enoch sat down beside her and took her in his arms.

  "Sweetheart," he whispered, "what have I done?"

  Diana, shaken by dry sobs, did not reply. But she put her arms about his neck and clung to him as though she could never let him go. Enoch sat holding her in an ecstasy that was half pain. Dusk thickened into night and the stars burned richly above them. Enoch could see that Diana's face against his breast was quiet, her great eyes fastened on the desert. He whispered again,

  "Diana, what have I done?"

  "You have made me love you so that I cannot bear to think of the future," she replied. "It was not wise of us to take this trip together, Enoch."

  Enoch's arms tightened about her. "We'll be thankful all our lives for it, Diana. And you haven't really answered my question, darling!"

  Diana drew herself away from him. "Enoch, let's never mention the subject again. The things you understand by weakness--why, I don't care if you have a thousand of them! But, dear, I want the diary. When you leave El Tovar, leave that much of yourself with me."

  Enoch's voice was troubled. "I have been so curiously lonely! You can have no idea of what the diary has meant to me."

  "I won't ask you for it, Enoch!" exclaimed Diana. Suddenly she leaned forward in the moonlight and kissed him softly on the lips.

  Enoch drew her to him and kissed her fiercely. "The diary! It is yours, Diana, yours in a thousand ways. When you read it, you will understand why I hesitated to give it to you."

  "I'll find some way to thank you," breathed Diana.

  "I know a way. Give me some of your desert photographs. Choose those that you think tell the most. And don't forget Death and the Navajo."

  "Oh, Enoch! What a splendid suggestion! You've no idea how I shall enjoy making the collection for you. It will take several months to complete it, you know."

  "Don't wait to complete the collection. Send the prints one at a time, as you finish them. Send them to my house, not my office."

  Soft voices sounded from the camping place. "We must go back," said Diana.

  "Another evening gone, forever," said Enoch. "How many more have we, Diana?"

  "Three or four. One never knows, in the Canyon country."

  They moved slowly, hand in hand, toward the firelight. Just before they came within its zone, Enoch lifted Diana's hand to his lips.

  "Good night, Diana!"

  "Good night, Enoch!"

  Jonas and Na-che, standing by the fire like two brown genii of the desert, looked up smiling as the two appeared.

  "Ain't they a handsome pair, Na-che?" asked Jonas, softly. "Ain't he a grand looking man?"

  Na-che assented. "I wish I could get each of 'em to wear a love ring. I could get two the best medicine man in the desert country made."

  "Where are they?" demanded Jonas eagerly.

  "Up near Bright Angel."

  "You get 'em and I'll pay for 'em," urged Jonas.

  "We can't buy 'em! They got to be taken."

  "Well, how come you to think I couldn't take 'em, woman? You show me where they are. I'll do the rest."

  "All right," said Na-che. "Diana, don't you feel tired?"

  "Tired enough to go to bed, anyway," replied Diana. "It's going to be a very cold night. Be sure that you and the Judge have plenty of blankets, Jonas. Good night!" and she disappeared into the tent.

  The night was stinging cold. Ice formed on the rain pools and they ate breakfast with numbed hands. As usual, however, the mercury began to climb with the sun and when at mid-morning, they entered a huge purple depression in the desert, coats were peeled and gloves discarded.

  The depression was an ancient lava bed, deep with lavender dust that rose chokingly about them. There was a heavy wind that increased as they rode deeper into the great bowl and this, with the swirling sand, made the noon meal an unpleasant duty. But, in spite of these discomforts, Enoch managed to ride many miles, during the day, with his horse beside Diana's. And he talked to her as though he must in the short five days make up for a life time of reticence.

  He told her of the Seatons and all that John Seaton had done for him. He told her of his years of dreaming of the Canyon and of his days as Police Commissioner. He told of dreams he had had as a Congressman and as a Senator and of the great hopes with which he had taken up the work of the Secretary of the Interior. And finally, as the wind began to lessen with the sinking sun, and the tired horses slowed to the trail's lifting from the bowl, he told her of his last speaking trip, of its purpose and of its results.

  "The more I know you," said Diana, "the more I am confirmed in the opinion I had of you years before I met you. And that is that however our great Departments need men of your administrative capacity and integrity--and I'm perfectly willing to admit that their need is dire--your place, Enoch Huntingdon, is in the Senate. Yet I suppose your party will insist on pushing you on into the White House. And it will be a mistake."

  "Why?" asked Enoch quickly.

  "Because," replied Diana, brushing the lavender dust from her brown hands thoughtfully, "your gift of oratory, your fundamental, sane dreams for the nation, your admirable character, impose a particular and peculiar duty on you. It has been many generations since the nation had a spokesman. Patrick Henry, Daniel Webster, have been dead a long time. Most of our orators since have killed their own influence by fanatical clinging to some partisan cause. You should be bigger than any party, Enoch. And in the White House you cannot be. Our spoils system has achieved that. But in the Senate is your great, natural opportunity."

  Enoch smiled. "Without the flourishes of praise, I've reached about the same conclusion that you have," he said. "I have been told," he hesitated, "that I could have the party nomination for the presidency, if I wished it. You know that practically assures election."

  Diana nodded. "And it's a temptation, of course!"

  "Yes and no!" replied Enoch. "No man could help being moved and flattered, yes, and tempted by the suggestion. And yet when I think of the loneliness of a man like me in the White House, the loneliness, and the gradual disillusionment such as the President spoke of you, the temptation has very little effect on me."

  "How kind he was that day!" exclaimed Diana, "and how many years ago it seems!"
/>
  They rode on in silence for a few moments, then Diana exclaimed, "Look, Enoch dear!"

  Ahead of them, along the rim of the bowl, an Indian rode. His long hair was flying in the wind. Both he and his horse were silhouetted sharply against the brilliant western sky.

  "Make a picture of it, Diana!" cried Enoch.

  Diana shook her head. "I could make nothing of it!"

  Na-che gave a long, shrill call, which the Indian returned, then pulled up his horse to wait for them. When Enoch and Diana reached the rim, the others already had overtaken him.

  "It's Wee-tah!" exclaimed Diana, then as she shook hands, she added: "Where are you going so fast, Wee-tah?"

  The Indian, a handsome young buck, his hair bound with a knotted handkerchief, glanced at Enoch and answered Diana in Navajo.

  Diana nodded, then said: "Judge, this is Wee-tah, a friend of mine."

  Enoch and the Indian shook hands gravely, and Diana said, "Can't you take supper with us, Wee-tah?"

  "You stay, Wee-tah," Na-che put in abruptly. "Jonas and I want you to help us with a charm."

  "Na-che says you know a heap about charms, Mr. Wee-tah!" exclaimed Jonas.

  Wee-tah grinned affably. "I stay," he said. "Only the whites have to hurry. Good water hole right there." He jerked his thumb over his shoulder, then turned his pony and led the way a few hundred yards to a low outcropping of stones, the hollowed top of which held a few precious gallons of rain water.

  "My Lordy!" exclaimed Jonas, as he and Enoch were hobbling their horses, "if I don't have some charms and hoo-doos to put over on those Baptist folks back home! Why, these Indians have got even a Georgia nigger beat for knowing the spirits."

  "Jonas, you're an old fool, but I love you!" said Enoch.

  Jonas chuckled, and hurried off to help Na-che with the supper. The stunted cat's claw and mesquite which grew here plentifully made possible a glorious fire that was most welcome, for the evening was cold. Enoch undertook to keep the big blaze going while Wee-tah prepared a small fire at a little distance for cooking purposes. After supper the two Indians and Jonas gathered round this while Enoch and Diana remained at what Jonas designated as the front room stove.