whoop he pulled the mare to her haunches and laughed down at me. He was dressed as a white man would be and spoke perfect English. He was just home
from Sherman, he explained, and was going to race his mare against the visitors.
I took his picture on the mare, and he told me where to send it to him after it was finished. "I hope you win. I'm betting on you for Mollie," I told him and gave him some money. He did win! Around the smooth hillside the ponies swept, and
when almost at the goal he leaned forward and whistled in the mare's ear. She doubled up like a jackknife and when she unfolded she was a nose ahead of them
all. Every race ended the same way. He told me he won two hundred silver dollars all told. I am wearing a bracelet now made from one of them. Very seldom does one see a rattlesnake portrayed in any Hopi or Navajo work, but I
had my heart set on a rattlesnake bracelet. Silversmith after silversmith turned me down flat, until at last Mollie and the boy told me they would see that I got what I wanted. A month later a strange Indian came to my house, handed me a
package with a grunt, and disappeared. It was my bracelet. I always wear it to remind me of my visit to Navajo Land.
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Chapter VI: "THEY KILLED ME"
White Mountain and I walked out to the cemetery one evening at sunset, and I
asked him to tell me about the four sleeping there. One trampled grave, without a marker, was the resting-place of a forest ranger who had died during the flu epidemic. At that time no body could be shipped except in a metal casket, and
since it had been impossible to secure one he was buried far from his home and
people. The mother wrote she would come and visit the grave as soon as she had
enough money, but death took her too and she was spared seeing his neglected
grave.
The Chief stood looking down at the third grave, which still held the weather-beaten débris of funeral wreaths.
"Cap Hance is buried here," he said. "He was a dear friend of mine."
From his tone I scented a story, and as we strolled back to Headquarters he told me something of the quaint old character. In the days that followed, I heard his name often. Travelers who had not been at the Canyon for several years invariably inquired for "Cap" as soon as they arrived. I always felt a sense of personal shame when I heard a ranger directing them to his grave. He had begged with his last breath to be buried in the Canyon, or else on the Rim overlooking it. "God willing, and man aiding," as he always said. However, his wish had been ignored, for the regular cemetery is some distance from the Rim.
This Captain John Hance was the first settler on the Rim of the Grand Canyon.
The Hance Place is located about three miles east of Grand View Point. Here he
built the old Hance Trail into the Canyon, and discovered numerous copper and
asbestos mines. Many notables of the early days first saw the Canyon from his
home, staging in there from Flagstaff, seventy miles away. He had an
inexhaustible fund of stories, mostly made up out of whole cloth. These improbable tales were harmless, however, and in time he became almost an institution at the Canyon. The last years of his life were spent at El Tovar, regaling the tourists with his colorful and imaginary incidents of the wild and woolly days.
He was quite proud of his Munchausenian abilities. Another old-timer at the Canyon, W. W. Bass, who is still alive, was Cap's best friend. Cap Hance was often heard to declare: "There are three liars here at the Canyon; I'm one and Bass is the other two."
Romantic old ladies at El Tovar often pressed him for a story of his early fights with the Indians. Here is one of his experiences:
"Once, a good many years ago when I was on the outs with the Navajos, I was riding the country a few miles back from here looking up some of my loose horses. I happened to cast my eye over to one side and saw a bunch of the red
devils out looking for trouble. I saw that I was outnumbered, so I spurred old Roaney down into a draw at the left, hoping that I hadn't been seen. I got down
the draw a little piece and thought I had given them the slip, but the yelling told me that they were still after me. I thought I could go down this draw a ways and then circle out and get back to my ranch. But I kept going down the canyon and
the walls kept getting steeper and steeper, and narrower and narrower until finally they got so close together that me and Roaney stuck right there."
At this point he always stopped and rolled a cigarette. The ladies were invariably goggle-eyed with excitement and would finally exclaim:
"What happened then, Captain Hance?"
"Oh, they killed me," he'd say simply.
Another time he was again being chased by Indians, and looking back over his
shoulder at them, not realizing that he was so near the Rim of the Canyon, his horse ran right up to the edge and jumped off into space.
"I'd a been a goner that time," he said, "if I hadn't a had time to think it over and decide what to do." (He fell something like five thousand feet.) "So when my horse got within about fifteen feet from the ground, I rose up in the stirrups and gave a little hop and landed on the ground. All I got was a twisted ankle."
A lady approached him one day while he stood on the Rim gazing into the mile-
deep chasm.
"Captain Hance," she said, "I don't see any water in the Canyon. Is this the dry season, or does it never have any water in it?"
Gazing at her earnestly through his squinty, watery eyes, he exclaimed:
