"Oh, all right," I agreed, "but the bedding-roll bounced out and I thought you might want to pick it up." The fugitive bedding recovered, we resumed our journey.
The storm ended as suddenly as everything else happens in that topsy-turvy land
and in the eastern sky hung a double quivering rainbow. I rubbed my eyes and
looked again. It was double! The Chief explained that this was due to a mirage, but I placed it to the credit of altitude, like all other Arizona wonders.
At Hilltop we found Indian guides with trail ponies to take us the rest of the way.
They had been waiting two days for us, they said. Strolling to the Canyon's brink I encountered a fearful odor. "What in the world is that?" I asked Wattahomigie (which by the way means "Good Watchful Indian"). "Him pony," was the stolid reply. "But—?" "Buck and fall over trail," explained my Indian brave. I fled to
the Chief for comfort and change of air. He investigated and found that when Wattahomigie had brought the ponies up from the village one had become unruly
and pitched over the Rim, landing squarely across the trail a hundred feet below.
It was the only trail, but it never occurred to the Noble Red Man to remove the
dead horse. No indeed! If it proved impossible to get around the obstacle, why,
stay off the trail until Providence cleared the way. In other words let Nature take its course. The Chief procured a few pounds of TNT from the Government warehouse located there, and with the aid of that soon cleared the trail.
"That good way to clear trail," approved Wattahomigie. "No pull, no dig, no nothin'." I hoped no TNT would be left roaming at large for promiscuous experiments by Wattahomigie while we were natives of his village.
We camped there at Hilltop that night, and after a supper of fried sage-rabbit, corn cakes, and coffee, I rolled into the blankets and fell asleep without worrying about the morrow. Something awakened me. I certainly had heard something.
Inch by inch I silently lifted myself from the blankets and peered into the shadows. Standing there like a graven image was a beautiful doe with twin fawns playing around her. Curiosity had conquered caution and she was
investigating our camp. Just then a coyote's wild cry sounded from the distance.
She lifted her sensitive nose and sniffed the air, then wheeled and glided into the deep shadows. Other coyote voices swelled the chorus. Hundreds it seemed were
howling and shrieking like mad, when I dropped to sleep to dream I was listening to grand opera at the Metropolitan.
Morning dawned clear and crisp. "Will it rain today?" I asked an Indian. "No rain; three sleeps, then rain," he told me; and this proved correct.
Wattahomigie had provided a long-legged race horse for me to ride. "Will he carry her all right?" the Chief asked him. Wattahomigie looked me over carefully and one could almost see him comparing me mentally with a vision of his fat squaw, Dottie. His white teeth flashed a smile: "Sure, my squaw him all time ride that pony." That settled the matter. "Him squaw" weighs a good two hundred pounds and is so enveloped in voluminous skirts that the poor horse must feel completely submerged.
This trail does not gradually grow steeper—it starts that way. I had been told that all other trails we had traveled were boulevards compared to this one, and it was well that I had been warned beforehand. My place was near the center of the caravan, and I was divided between the fear that I should slide down on top of
the unwary Indian riding ahead and the one that the Chief's horse directly behind would bump me off the trail. It was a cheerful situation. The Canyon walls closed in upon us, and the trail grew worse, if that could be possible. The firm rock gave way to shale that slipped and slid under the feet of the horses. It was so narrow that one slip of a hoof would send the horse crashing on the rocks hundreds of feet beneath. Still this is the only path it has been possible to make down to the Indian retreat. It was carved out by a past generation when they crept down into the valley far below to make their last futile stand.
We rounded a point and came out near a sparkling pool of clear, inviting water
fed by a stream bursting out of what appeared to be solid rock. I knelt to drink, but was jerked to my feet sharply by a watchful Indian. The water is unfit to drink on account of the arsenic it contains. I noticed that none of the hot, tired horses even dipped their dusty noses into the pool. Safely away from this unhealthy spot we came into Rattlesnake Canyon, so named for obvious reasons,
where the riding was much easier. Twelve miles onward and two thousand feet
farther down found us among bubbling springs and magnificent cotton woods.
This is where the Thousand Springs come into the sunlight after their rushing journey through many miles of underground caverns. New springs broke out from the roots of the trees and along the banks of the stream until it was a rushing little river.
We were evidently expected, for when we reached the village the natives all turned out to see and be seen: brown children as innocent of clothing as when they first saw the light; fat, greasy squaws with babies on their backs; old men and women—all stared and gibbered at us.
"Big Jim" and "Captain Burros" headed what seemed to be the committee of welcome. Big Jim was clad in a full-dress suit and silk hat donated to him by Albert, King of the Belgians, and with that monarch's medal of honor pinned to
his front, Jim was, speaking conservatively, a startling vision. Captain Burros wore the white shirt of ceremony which he dons only for special occasions, with
none of the whiteness dimmed by being tucked into his trousers.
Big Jim welcomed us gravely, asking the Chief: "Did you bring my fermit?" This permit, a paper granting Big Jim a camping location on Park grounds, having been duly delivered, Jim invited us to share his hewa, but after one look at the surroundings we voted unanimously to camp farther up the stream among the cottonwoods. We chose a level spot near the ruins of an old hewa.
While supper was being prepared an aged squaw tottered into camp and sat down. She wailed and beat her breast and finally was persuaded to tell her troubles. It seemed that she and her husband had lived in this hewa until his death a year or two before. Then the hewa was thrown open to the sky and abandoned, as is their custom. She disliked to mention his name because he might hear it in the spirit world and come back to see what was being said about him.
"Don't you want him to come back?" I asked idly, thinking to tease her. Her look of utter terror was answer enough and shamed me for my thoughtlessness. These
Indians have a most exaggerated fear of death. When one dies he and his personal belongings are taken to a wild spot and there either cremated or covered with stones. No white man has ever been permitted to enter this place of the dead. Any hour of the day or night that a white man approaches, an Indian rises
apparently from out of the earth and silently waves him away. Until a few years
ago the best horse of the dead Indian was strangled and sent into the Happy Hunting Ground with its owner, but with the passing of the older generation this custom has been abandoned.
From a powerful and prosperous tribe of thousands this nation has dwindled down to less than two hundred wretched weaklings. Driven to this canyon fastness from their former dwelling-place by more warlike tribes, they have no coherent account of their wanderings or their ancestors. About all they can tell is that they once lived in cliff dwellings; that other Indians drove them away; and that then Spaniards and grasping whites pushed them nearer and nearer the Canyon until they descended into it, seeking refuge. They are held in low esteem by all other Indian tribes and never marry outside of their own people.
Ridiculous and unreasonable tales about their savage customs have kept timid explorers at a safe distance, and thus little has been learned about them. This last fragment will pass away within a few years and all trace will be lost.
Tuberculosis claims a dozen yearly; the children are weaklings from diseased parents and the result of intermarriage, so they fall victims of comparatively harmless ailments. A few years ago an epidemic of measles swept through the tribe. Poor ignorant creatures, trying to cool the burning fever they spent hours bathing in the cold waters of the stream flowing through the village. More than
eighty died in one week from the effects, and others that lived through it are invalids. This was almost too much for their superstitious minds. They were for
