Part 6

It never occurs to an Indian to knock at a door, nor does the question of propriety enter into his calculations when he has an object in view.

I told him to leave, and he went out. An hour later, however, when we went to breakfast, he was squatted outside my door waiting for us to appear. He had silver bracelets and rings beaten out of Mexican coins and studded with native turquoise and desert rubies. We each bought something. I bought because I liked his wares, and the other girls purchased as a sort of thank-offering for mercies received.

The bracelets were set with the brilliant rubies found by the Indians in the desert. It is said that ants excavating far beneath the surface bring these semi-precious stones to the top. Others contend that they are not found underneath the ground but are brought by the ants from somewhere near the nest because their glitter attracts the ant. True or false, the story results in every anthill being carefully searched.

Virginia's visit was drawing to a close, and White Mountain and I decided to announce our engagement while she was still with us. We gave a dinner at El Tovar, with the rangers and our closest friends present. At the same party another ranger announced his engagement and so the dinner was a hilarious affair.

One of the oldest rangers there, and one notoriously shy with women, made me the object of a general laugh. He raised his glass solemnly and said: "Well, here's wishin' you joy, but I jest want to say this: ef you'd a played yo' cyards a little bit different, you wouldn't 'a had to take White Mountain."

Before the dinner was over a call came from the public camp ground for aid. Our party broke up, and we girls went to the assistance of a fourteen-year-old mother whose baby was ill. Bad food and ignorance had been too much for the little nameless fellow, and he died about midnight. There was a terrible electric storm raging, and rain poured down through the old tent where the baby died.

Ranger Winess carried the little body down to our house and we took the mother and followed. We put him in a dresser drawer and set to work to make clothes to bury him in. Ranger Fisk and Ranger Winess made the tiny casket, and we rummaged through our trunks for materials. A sheer dimity frock of mine that had figured in happier scenes made the shroud, and Virginia gave a silken scarf to line the coffin. Ranger Winess tacked muslin over the rough boards so it would look nicer to the young mother. There were enough of my flowers left by Dollar Mark to make a wreath, and that afternoon a piteous procession wended its way to the cemetery. And such a cemetery! Near the edge of the Canyon, a mile or so from Headquarters it lay, a bleak neglected spot in a sagebrush flat with nothing to mark the cattle-tramped graves, of which there were four. At the edge of the clearing, under a little pine, was the open grave, and while the coffin was lowered the men sang. I never heard a more lonesome sound than those men singing there over that little grave. White Mountain read the burial service.

We took the mother back to our cabin while the grave was being filled in. I used to see her walking out there each morning with a few wild flowers to put on the mound. Ranger Winess managed to ride that way and keep her in sight until she returned to the camp ground. While the blue lupine blossomed she kept the mound covered with the fragrant flowers.

Ranger Fisk had a vacation about this time, and he insisted White Mountain and I should get married while he could act as best man. So we journeyed to Flagstaff with him and were married. It seemed more like a wedding in a play than anything else. Ranger Fisk was burdened with the responsibility of the wedding-ring, license, minister's fee, and flowers for the occasion. He herded us into the clerk's office to secure the necessary papers, and the girl clerk that issued them was a stickler for form. We gave our names, our parents' names, our ages, birth-places, and previous states of servitude. I was getting ready to show her my vaccination scar, when she turned coldly critical eyes on me and asked: "Are you white?" This for a Virginian to answer was quite a blow.

We went to the minister's house, and since two witnesses were necessary, the wife was called in from her washing. She came into the parlor drying her hands on her apron, which she discarded by rolling up and tossing into a chair. Ranger Fisk produced the ring, with a flourish, at the proper moment, gave the minister his money, after all the "I do's" had been said, and the wedding was over. So we were married. No wedding march, no flower girls, no veil, no rice, no wedding breakfast. Just a solemn promise to respect each other and be faithful. Perhaps the promise meant just a little more to us because it was not smothered in pomp.

For a wedding-trip we visited the cliff dwellings in Walnut Canyon. Here, hundreds of years ago, other newly married couples had set up housekeeping and built their dreams into the walls that still tell the world that we are but newcomers on this hemisphere.

The news of our marriage reached the Canyon ahead of us, and we found our little cabin filled with our friends and their gifts. They spent a merry evening with us and as we bade them goodnight we felt that such friendship was beyond price indeed.

But after midnight! The great open spaces were literally filled with a most terrifying and ungodly racket. I heard shrieks and shots, and tin pans banging. Horrors! The cook was on another vanilla-extract jamboree!! But--drums boomed and bugles blared. Ah, of course! The Indians were on the warpath; I never entirely trusted those red devils. I looked around for a means of defense, but the Chief told me not to be alarmed--it was merely a "shivaree."

"Now, what might that be?" I inquired. I supposed he meant at least a banshee, or at the very least an Irish wake! It was, however, nothing more or less than our friends serenading us. They came inside, thirty strong; the walls of the cabin fairly bulged. They played all sorts of tricks on us, and just as they left someone dropped a handful of sulphur on top of the stove. Naturally, we went outside with our visitors to wish them "godspeed!"

"I'll never get married again; at least not in the land of the shivaree," I told White Mountain as we tried to repair the damage.

I guess we were let off easy, for when our ranger friend returned with his bride they suffered a much worse fate. The groom was locked for hours in the old bear cage on the Rim, and his wife was loaded into a wheelbarrow and rolled back and forth across the railroad tracks until the Chief called a halt to that. He felt the treatment was a little too severe even for people in love.

Since I could not go to live in the bachelor ranger quarters, White Mountain moved into my cabin until our house could be completed. A tent house was built for Stell in the back yard of our cabin. She was afraid to live alone, and used to wake us at all hours of the night. Once she came bursting into our cabin, hysterical with fright. A bunch of coyotes had been racing around and around her tent trying to get into the garbage can. They yelped and barked, and, finally, as she sobbed and tried to explain, "They sat down in my door and laughed like crazy people." She finished the night on our spare cot, for anybody that thinks coyotes can't act like demons had better spend a night in Arizona and listen to them perform.

Stell wasn't a coward by any means. She was right there when real courage was needed. A broken leg to set or a corpse to bathe and dress were just chores that needed to be done, and she did her share of both. But seven thousand feet altitude for months at a time will draw a woman's nerves tauter than violin strings. I remember, one morning, Stell and I came home in the dawn after an all-night vigil with a dying woman. We were both nearly asleep as we stumbled along through the pines, but not too far gone to see Dollar Mark come charging at us. We had stopped at the cookhouse and begged a pot of hot coffee to take to our cabins. Stell was carrying it, and she stood her ground until the mean old bull was within a few feet of her. Then she dashed the boiling-hot coffee full in his gleaming red eyes, and while he snorted and bellowed with pain we shinnied up a juniper tree and hung there like some of our ancestors until the road crew came along and drove him away. We were pretty mad, and made a few sarcastic remarks about a ranger force that couldn't even "shoot the bull." We requested the loan of a gun, if necessary! Ranger Winess took our conversation to heart, and next morning hung a notice in Headquarters which "Regretted to report that Dollar Mark Bull accidentally fell over the Rim into the Canyon and was killed." In my heart I questioned both the "regret" and the "accidental" part of the report, and in order to still any remorse that the ranger might feel I baked him the best lemon pie I had in my repertoire!

Chapter IV: CELEBRITIES AND SQUIRRELS

Soon after our wedding the Chief crossed to the North Rim to meet a party of celebrities, which included his old friend Emerson Hough. This was to have been our honeymoon trip, but I was left at home! The new Superintendent needed me in the office; therefore White Mountain spent our honeymoon trip alone. I had heard of such a thing, but never expected it to happen to me. I might have felt terribly cut up about it but on the South Rim we were fermenting with excitement getting ready to entertain important guests.

General Diaz of Italy and his staff were coming, soon to be followed by Marshal Foch with his retinue. And in the meantime Tom Mix and Eva Novak had arrived with beautiful horses and swaggering cowboys to make a picture in the Canyon. What was a mere honeymoon compared to such luminaries?

Tom and Eva spent three weeks making the picture, and we enjoyed every minute they were there. Ranger Winess was assigned to duty with them, and when they left the Canyon he found himself with the offer of a movie contract. Tom liked the way the ranger handled his horse and his rifle, and Tom's wife liked the sound of his guitar. So we lost Ranger Winess. He went away to Hollywood, and we all went around practicing: "I-knew-him-when" phrases. But Hollywood wasn't Grand Canyon, and there wasn't a horse there, not even Tom's celebrated Tony, that had half as much brains as his own bay Tony of the ranger horses. So Winess came back to us, and everybody was happy again.

While the picture was being made, some of the company found a burro mother with a broken leg, and Ranger Winess mercifully ended her suffering. A tiny baby burro playing around the mother they took to camp and adopted at once. He was so comical with his big velvet ears and wise expression. Not bigger than a shepherd dog, the men could pick him up and carry him around the place. Tom took him to Mixville and the movie people taught him to drink out of a bottle, so he is well on the road to stardom. Ranger Winess, visiting in New Jersey a couple of years later, dropped into a theater where Tom Mix was in a vaudeville act. Mix spied the ranger, and when the act was over he stepped to the edge of the stage and sang out: "Hey, Winess, I still got that burro!"

A dummy that had been used in the picture was left lying quite a distance up the side of a mountain, but quite visible from their movie camp. Tom bet his Director, Lynn Reynolds, twenty-five dollars that the dummy was six feet tall. He knew quite well that it was not six feet tall, and knew that Reynolds knew so too. But the bet was on. A guide going to the top, was bribed by a ten-dollar bill from Tom, to stretch the dummy out to the required length. This guide went up the trail a few hours before Tom and Reynolds were due to measure the dummy. Imagine their feelings when they arrived, and found the money and this note pinned to the object of dispute:

"Mr. Tom Mix, deer sir. I streetched the dam thing till it busted. It hain't no higher than me, and I hain't six feet. You'll plees find herein yore money.

Youers truly, SHORTY."

It is said that Reynolds collected in full and then hunted Shorty up and bestowed the twenty-five dollars on him.

White Mountain returned from the North Rim full of his trip. He, together with Director Mather and Emerson Hough, had been all through the wonderful Southern Utah country, including Bryce Canyon and Zion National Park. Mr. Hough had just sold his masterpiece, The Covered Wagon, to the Saturday Evening Post, and was planning to write a Canyon story. He told White Mountain he felt that he was not big enough to write such a story but intended to try. His title was to be "The Scornful Valley." Before he could come to the Canyon again, he died on the operating table.