Part 13

He had served with the British forces in Egypt, and if he could have known how interested we were in his experiences, he would have given us more than a bare hint of the scenes that were enacted during the defense of the Dardanelles and the entrance into Jerusalem.

One night he was telling us something about the habits of the Turks they fought, when the telephone rang and interrupted the narrative, which was never finished. The Chief had to go and investigate an attempted suicide.

It seemed that a lad under twenty, in Cleveland, had seen on a movie screen a picture of Grand Canyon. He tucked that vision away somewhere in his distorted brain, and when he had his next quarrel with his mother he gathered together all his worldly wealth and invested it in a ticket to Grand Canyon. There he intended to end his troubles, and make his mother sorry she hadn't sewed on a button the instant he had asked her to! That was a touching scene he pictured to himself--his heart-broken mother weeping with remorse because her son had jumped into the Canyon.

But! When he reached the Rim and looked over, it was a long way to the bottom, and there were sharp rocks there. Perhaps no one would ever find him, and what's the use of killing one's self if nobody knows about it? Something desperate had to be done, however, so he shot himself where he fancied his heart was located (he hit his stomach, which was a pretty close guess) with a cheap pistol he carried, hurled the gun into the Canyon, and started walking back to Headquarters. He met Ranger Winess making a patrol and reported to him that he had committed suicide! Rangers West and Winess took care of him through the night, with Nurse Catti's supervision, and the next day the Chief took him to Flagstaff, where the bullet was removed and he was returned to his mother a sadder and a wiser boy.

There is some mysterious power about the Canyon that seems to make it impossible for a person to face the gorge and throw himself into it.

A young man, immensely wealthy, brought his fiancee to the Canyon for a day's outing. At Williams, where they had lunch, he proposed that she go on to the Coast with him, but she refused, saying that she thought it was not the thing to do, since her mother expected her back home that night. He laughed and scribbled something on a paper which he tucked carelessly into a pocket of his overcoat. They went on to the Canyon and joined a party that walked out beyond Powell's Monument. He walked up to the Rim and stared into the depths, then turned facing his sweetheart. "Take my picture," he shouted; and while she bent over the kodak, he uttered a prayer, threw his arms up, and leaped backward into the Canyon. He had not been able to face it and destroy the life God had given him. Hours later rangers recovered his body, and in his pocket found the paper on which he had written: "You wouldn't go with me to Los Angeles, so it's goodbye!"

Ranger West came in one day and told me that there was a lot of sickness among the children at an Indian encampment a few miles from Headquarters. I rode out with him to see what was the matter and found that whooping-cough was rampant. For some reason, even though it was a very severe winter, the Supai Indians had come up from their home in Havasu Canyon, "Land of the Sky-Blue Water," made famous by Cadman, and were camped among the trees on a hillside. The barefoot women and dirty children were quite friendly, but the lazy, filthy bucks would have been insolent had I been alone. They lolled in the "hewas," brush huts daubed with mud, while the women dragged in wood and the children filled sacks with snow to melt for drinking purposes. To be sure they didn't waste any of it in washing themselves.

They would not let me doctor the children, and several of them died; but we could never find where they were buried. It is a custom of that tribe to bury its members with the right arm sticking up out of the ground. In case it is a lordly man that has passed to the Happy Hunting Ground his pony is shot and propped upright beside the grave with the reins clutched in the dead master's hand.

I thought I might be able to reach a better understanding with the women if the men were not present, so I told them to bring all the baskets they made to my house and I would look at them and buy some of them. Beautiful baskets were brought by the older squaws, and botched-up shabby ones by the younger generation. Sometimes a sick child would be brought by the mother, but there was little I could do for it outside of giving it nourishing food. An Indian's cure-all is castor oil. He will drink quarts of that if he can obtain it.

The Supai women are without dignity or appeal, and I never formed the warm friendships with them that I did with women of other tribes. They begged for everything in sight. One fat old squaw coveted a yellow evening gown she saw in my closet; I gave it to her, also a discarded garden hat with big yellow roses on it. She draped the gown around her bent shoulders and perched the hat on top of her gray tangled hair and went away happier than Punch. In a few minutes a whole delegation of squaws arrived to see what they could salvage.

Wattahomigie, their chief, and Dot, his wife, are far superior to the rest of the tribe, and when it was necessary to have any dealing with their people the Chief acted through Wattahomigie. He had often begged us to visit their Canyon home, and we promised to go when we could. He came strutting into our house one summer day and invited us to accompany him home, as the season of peaches and melons was at its height. He had been so sure we would go that he left orders for members of the tribe to meet us at Hilltop where the steep trail begins. We listened to him.

Chapter IX: THE DOOMED TRIBE

Wattahomigie reminded us the next morning that we had promised to go with him, so we rushed around and in an hour were ready to follow his lead.

It's a long trail, winding through forest and desert, up hill and down, skirting sheer precipices and creeping through tunnels. And at the end of the trail one stumbles upon the tiny, hidden village where the last handful of a once powerful nation has sought refuge. Half-clad, half-fed, half-wild, one might say, they hide away there in their poverty, ignorance, and superstition. But oh, the road one must travel to reach them! I hadn't anticipated Arizona trails when I so blithely announced to White Mountain, "Whither thou goest, I will go." Neither had I slept in an Indian village when I added, "And where thou lodgest, I will lodge."

We loaded our camp equipment into the Ford, tied a canvas bag of water where it would be air-cooled, strapped a road-building shovel on the running-board, and were on our way.

The first few miles led through forests of pinon and pine. Gradually rising, we reached the desert, where only cactus, sagebrush, and yucca grew. As far as we could see the still, gray desert lay brooding under the sun's white glare. Surely no living thing could exist in that alkali waste. But look! An ashen-colored lizard darts across the trail, a sage rabbit darts behind a yucca bush, and far overhead a tireless buzzard floats in circles. Is he keeping a death watch on the grizzled old "Desert Rat" we pass a little later? His face burned and seamed with the desert's heat and storms, the old prospector cheerfully waved at us, as he shared his beans and sour dough with a diminutive burro, which bore his master's pack during the long search through the trackless desert for the elusive gold. For us it would be suicide to leave the blazed trail. The chances are that the circling buzzard and hungry coyotes will be the only mourners present at his funeral.

Now and then we passed a twisted, warped old juniper that was doubtless digging for a foothold while Christ walked on earth. The Chief said these old junipers vie with the Sequoias in age. Nothing else broke the monotony of the heat and sand, until we came to the first water hole.

It was dry now, for the summer rains were long overdue, and bogged firmly in the red adobe mud was a gaunt long-horned cow. The Chief was too tender-hearted to shoot her and drive on, as he knew he should. Instead he stopped the car and got out to see if he could possibly "extract" her. Failing to frighten her into pulling herself out, he goaded her into a frenzy by throwing sharp stinging rocks at her. One landed on her tender flank and she tossed her horns and struggled. The Chief stooped, with his back to her, for another rock, just as she pulled out.

"Look out. She's coming for you!" I yelled.

Straight at her rescuer she charged with an angry rumble. Round and round a stunted pinon they raced, hot and angry. I was too helpless with mirth to be of any aid, and the Chief's gun was in the car. Still, an angry range cow on the prod is no joke, and it began to look serious. At last the impromptu marathon ended by the Chief making an extra sprint and rolling into the Ford just as her sharp horns raked him fore and aft.

"Well!" he exploded, and glared at me while I wiped the tears out of my eyes.

"Shall we drive on?" I inquired meekly. We drove on.

A few miles along the way a piteous bawling reached us. Since even Arizona cattle must drink sometimes, a cow had hidden her baby while she went to a distant water hole. Three coyotes had nosed him out and were preparing to fill up on unwilling veal. He bobbed about on his unsteady little legs and protested earnestly. The sneaking beasts scattered at our approach, and we drove on thinking the calf would be all right. Looking back, however, we saw that the coyotes had returned and pulled him down. This time the Chief's forty-five ended the career of one, and the other two shifted into high, getting out of range without delay. The trembling calf was loaded into the machine and we dropped him when the main herd was reached. Here he would be safe from attack, but I have often wondered if the mother found her baby again. At the next water hole a lean lynx circled warily around with his eye fixed hungrily on some wild ducks swimming too far from shore for him to reach. It seemed that the sinister desert mothered cruel breeds.

We had reached the "Indian Pasture" now, where the Indians kept their ponies. A score of Supai bucks were digging a shallow ditch. Upon being questioned they said the ditch was a mile long and would carry water to the big dam in their pasture when the rains fell. They were finishing the ditch just in time, for the first of the season's storms was closing down upon us. There was an ominous stillness, then the black cloud was rent with tongues of flame. And the rains descended--more than descended. They beat and dashed and poured until it seemed that the very floodgates of heaven had opened over our unfortunate heads. It was impossible to stay in the glue-and-gumbo road, so we took to the open prairie. Since this part of the country is well ventilated with prairie-dog holes, we had anything but smooth sailing.

"Stop," I shouted, trying to make myself heard above the roar of the storm.

"No time to stop now," was the answer.

We pulled under a sheltering juniper and slowed up.

"What did you want to stop there for? Don't you know we have to keep on moving if we reach a shelter tonight?" inquired the pilot of our ship. He had evidently been brooding over my unseemly mirth at the mad cow episode.