Part 4

A highly competent young person is Johnny and a cowpuncher of parts. Most of the Canon guides are cowpunchers--accomplished ones, too, and of high standing in the profession. With a touch of reverence Johnny pointed out to us Sam Scovel, the greatest bronco buster of his time, now engaged in piloting tourists.

"Can he ride?" echoed Johnny in answer to our question. "Scovel could ride an earthquake if she stood still long enough for him to mount! He rode Steamboat--not Young Steamboat, but Old Steamboat! He rode Rocking Chair, and he's the only man that ever did do that and not be called on in a couple of days to attend his own funeral."

This day he told us about one Tom, who lived up in Wyoming, where Johnny came from. It appeared that in an easier day Tom was hired by some cattle men to thin out the sheep herders who insisted upon invading the public ranges. By Johnny's account Tom did the thinning with conscientious attention to detail and gave general satisfaction for a while; but eventually he grew careless in his methods and took to killing parties who were under the protection of the game laws. Likewise his own private collection of yearlings began to increase with a rapidity which was only to be accounted for on the theory that a large number of calves were coming into the world with Tom's brand for a birthmark. So he lost popularity. Several times his funeral was privily arranged, but on each occasion was postponed owing to the failure of the corpse to be present. Finally he killed a young boy and was caught and convicted, and one morning they took him out and hanged him rather extensively.

"Tom was mighty methodical," said Johnny. "He got five hundred a head for killing sheep herders--that was the regular tariff. Every time he bumped one off he'd put a stone under his head, which was his private mark--a kind of a duebill, as you might say. And when they'd find that dead herder with the rock under his head they'd know there was another five hundred comin' to Tom on the books; they always paid it, too. Once in a while, though, he'd cut loose in a saloon and garner in some fellows that wasn't sheep herders. There was quite a number that thought Tom acted kind of ungentlemanly when he was drinkin'."

We went on and on at a lazy mule-trot, hearing the unwritten annals of the range from one who had seen them enacted at first hand. Pretty soon we passed a herd of burros with mealy, dusty noses and spotty hides, feeding on prickly pears and rock lichens; and just before sunset we slid down the last declivity out upon the plateau and came to a camp as was a camp!

This was roughing it de luxe with a most de-luxey vengeance! Here were three tents, or rather three canvas houses, with wooden half-walls; and they were spick-and-span inside and out, and had glass windows in them and doors and matched wooden floors. The one that was a bedroom had gay Navajo blankets on the floor, and a stove in it, and a little bureau, and a washstand with white towels and good lathery soap. And there were two beds--not cots or bunks, but regular beds--with wire springs and mattresses and white sheets and pillowslips. They were not veteran sheets and vintage pillowslips either, but clean and spotless ones. The mess tent was provided with a table with a clean cloth to go over it, and there were china dishes and china cups and shiny knives, forks and spoons. Every scrap of this equipment had been brought down from the top on burro packs. The Grand Canon is scenically artistic, but it is a non-producing district. And outside there was a corral for the mules; a canvas storehouse; hitching stakes for the burros; a Dutch oven, and a little forge where the guides sometimes shoe a mule. They aren't blacksmiths; they merely have to be. Bill was in charge of the camp--a dark, rangy, good-looking young leading man of a cowboy, wearing his blue shirt and his red neckerchief with an air. He spoke with the soft Texas drawl and in his way was as competent as Johnny.

The sun, which had been winking farewells to us over the rim above, dropped out of sight as suddenly as though it had fallen into a well. From the bottom the shadows went slanting along the glooming walls of the gorges, swallowing up the yellow patches of sunlight that still lingered near the top like blacksnakes swallowing eggs. Every second the colors shifted and changed; what had been blue a moment before was now purple and in another minute would be a velvety black. A little lost ghost of an echo stole out of a hole and went straying up and down, feebly mocking our remarks and making them sound cheap and tawdry.

Then the new moon showed as a silver fish, balancing on its tail and arching itself like a hooked skipjack. In a purpling sky the stars popped out like pinpricks and the peace that passes all understanding came over us. I wish to take advantage of this opportunity to say that, in my opinion, David Belasco has never done anything in the way of scenic effects to beat a moonrise in the Grand Canon.

I reckon we might have been there until now--my companion and I--soaking our souls in the unutterable beauty of that place, only just about that time we smelled something frying. There was also a most delectable sputtering sound as of fat meat turning over on a hot skillet; but just the smell alone was a square meal for a poor family. The meeting adjourned by acclamation. Just because a man has a soul is no reason he shouldn't have an appetite.

That Johnny certainly could cook! Served on china dishes upon a cloth-covered table, we had mounds of fried steaks and shoals of fried bacon; and a bushel, more or less, of sheepherder potatoes; and green peas and sliced peaches out of cans; and sourdough biscuits as light as kisses and much more filling; and fresh butter and fresh milk; and coffee as black as your hat and strong as sin. How easy it is for civilized man to become primitive and comfortable in his way of eating, especially if he has just ridden ten miles on a buckboard and nine more on a mule and is away down at the bottom of the Grand Canon--and there is nobody to look on disapprovingly when he takes a bite that would be a credit to a steam shovel!

Despite all reports to the contrary, I wish to state that it is no trouble at all to eat green peas off a knifeblade--you merely mix them in with potatoes for a cement; and fried steak--take it from an old steak-eater--tastes best when eaten with those tools of Nature's own providing, both hands and your teeth. An hour passed--busy, yet pleasant--and we were both gorged to the gills and had reared back with our cigars lit to enjoy a third jorum of black coffee apiece, when Johnny, speaking in an offhand way to Bill, who was still hiding away biscuits inside of himself like a parlor prestidigitator, said:

"Seen any of them old hydrophobies the last day or two?"

"Not so many," said Bill casually. "There was a couple out last night pirootin' round in the moonlight. I reckon, though, there'll be quite a flock of 'em out tonight. A new moon always seems to fetch 'em up from the river."

Both of us quit blowing on our coffee and we put the cups down. I think I was the one who spoke.

"I beg your pardon," I asked, "but what did you say would be out tonight?"

"We were just speakin' to one another about them Hydrophoby Skunks," said Bill apologetically. "This here Canon is where they mostly hang out and frolic 'round."

I laid down my cigar, too. I admit I was interested.

"Oh!" I said softly--like that. "Is it? Do they?"

"Yes," said Johnny. "I reckin there's liable to be one come shovin' his old nose into that door any minute. Or probably two--they mostly travels in pairs--sets, as you might say."

"You'd know one the minute you saw him, though," said Bill. "They're smaller than a regular skunk and spotted where the other kind is striped. And they got little red eyes. You won't have no trouble at all recognizin' one."

It was at this juncture that we both got up and moved back by the stove. It was warmer there and the chill of evening seemed to be settling down noticeably.

"Funny thing about Hydrophoby Skunks," went on Johnny after a moment of pensive thought--"mad, you know!"

"What makes them mad?" The two of us asked the question together.

"Born that way!" explained Bill--"mad from the start, and won't never do nothin' to get shut of it."

"Ahem--they never attack humans, I suppose?"

"Don't they?" said Johnny, as if surprised at such ignorance. "Why, humans is their favorite pastime! Humans is just pie to a Hydrophoby Skunk. It ain't really any fun to be bit by a Hydrophoby Skunk neither." He raised his coffee cup to his lips and imbibed deeply.

"Which you certainly said something then, Johnny," stated Bill. "You see," he went on, turning to us, "they aim to catch you asleep and they creep up right soft and take holt of you--take holt of a year usually--and clamp their teeth and just hang on for further orders. Some says they hang on till it thunders, same as snappin' turtles. But that's a lie, I judge, because there's weeks on a stretch down here when it don't thunder. All the cases I ever heard of they let go at sun-up."

"It is right painful at the time," said Johnny, taking up the thread of the narrative; "and then in nine days you go mad yourself. Remember that fellow the Hydrophoby Skunk bit down here by the rapids, Bill? Let's see now--what was that hombre's name?"