Tales Of Lonely Trails (1996) (24 page)

I would keep to the edge of the ravine.

Some moments later I saw R. C. and the boy running and stooping and creeping along the bottom of the ravine. Then I ran myself to reach a point opposite the turkeys, so in case they flew uphill I might get a shot. But I did not see them, and nothing happened. I lost sight of the turkeys. Hurrying back to where I had tied my horse I mounted him and loped ahead and came out upon the ravine some distance above. Here I hunted around for a little while. Once I heard the report of the .20 gauge, and then several rifle shots. Upon returning I found that Lee and Nielsen had wasted some shells. R. C. and Romer came wagging up the hill, both red and wet and tired. R. C. carried a small turkey, about the size of a chicken. He told me, between pants, that they chased the four large turkeys, and were just about to get a shot when up jumped a hen-turkey with a flock of young ones. They ran every way. He got one.

Then he told me, between more pants and some laughs, that Romer had chased the little turkeys all over the ravine, almost catching several. Romer said for himself: "I just almost pulled feathers out of their tails. Gee! if I'd had a gun!"

We resumed our journey. About the middle of the afternoon Doyle called my attention to an opening in the forest through which I could see the yellow-walled rim of the mesa, and the great blue void below. Arizona!

That explained the black forests, the red and yellow cliffs of rock, the gray cedars, the heights and depths.

Lop? ride indeed was it down off the mesa. The road was winding, rough full of loose rocks and dusty. We were all tired out trying to keep up with the wagon. Romer, however, averred time and again that he was not tired. Still I saw him often shift his seat from one side of the saddle to the other.

At last we descended to a comparative level and came to a little hamlet. Like all Mormon villages it had quaint log cabins, low stone houses, an irrigation ditch running at the side of the road, orchards, and many rosy-cheeked children. We lingered there long enough to rest a little and drink our fill of the cold granite water. I would travel out of my way to get a drink of water that came from granite rock.

About five o'clock we left for the Natural Bridge. Romer invited or rather taunted me to a race. When it ended in his victory I found that I had jolted my rifle out of its saddle sheath. I went back some distance to look for it, but did so in vain. Isbel said he would ride back in the morning and find it.

The country here appeared to be on a vast scale. But that was only because we had gotten out where we could see all around. Arizona is all on a grand, vast scale. Mountain ranges stood up to the south and east. North loomed up the lofty, steep rim of the Mogollon Mesa, with its cliffs of yellow and red, and its black line of timber. Westward lay fold on fold of low cedar-covered hills. The valley appeared a kind of magnificent bowl, rough and wild, with the distance lost in blue haze. The vegetation was dense and rather low. I saw both prickly-pear and mescal cactus, cedars, manzanita brush, scrub oak, and juniper trees. These last named were very beautiful, especially the smaller ones, with their gray-green foliage, and purple berries, and black and white checkered bark. There were no pine trees. Since we had left the rim above the character of plant life had changed.

We crossed the plateau leading to the valley where the Natural Bridge was located. A winding road descended the east side of this valley.

A rancher lived down there. Green of alfalfa and orchard and walnut trees contrasted vividly with a bare, gray slope on one side, and a red, rugged mountain on the other. A deep gorge showed dark and wild.

At length, just after sunset, we reached the ranch, and rode through orchards of peach and pear and apple trees, all colored with fruit, and down through grassy meadows to a walnut grove where we pitched camp. By the time we had supper it was dark. Wonderful stars, thick, dreamy hum of insects, murmur of swift water, a rosy and golden afterglow on the notch of the mountain range to the west--these were inducements to stay up, but I was so tired I had to go to bed, where my eyelids fell tight, as if pleasantly weighted.

After the long, hard rides and the barren camp-sites what delight to awaken in this beautiful valley with the morning cool and breezy and bright, with smell of new-mown hay from the green and purple alfalfa fields, and the sunlight gilding the jagged crags above! Romer made a bee-line for the peach trees. He beat his daddy only a few yards. The kind rancher had visited us the night before and he had told us to help ourselves to fruit, melons, alfalfa. Needless to state that I made my breakfast on peaches!

I trailed the swift, murmuring stream to its source on the dark green slope where there opened up a big hole bordered by water-cress, long grass, and fragrant mint. This spring was one of perfectly clear water, six feet deep, boiling up to bulge on the surface. A grass of dark color and bunches of light green plant grew under the surface.

Bees and blue dragon-flies hummed around and frogs as green as the grass blinked with jewelled eyes from the wet margins. The spring had a large volume that spilled over its borders with low, hollow gurgle, with fresh, cool splash. The water was soft, tasting of limestone.

Here was the secret of the verdure and fragrance and color and beauty and life of the oasis.

It was also the secret of the formation of the wonderful Natural Bridge. Part of the rancher's cultivated land, to the extent of several acres, was the level top of this strange bridge. A meadow of alfalfa and a fine vineyard, in the air, like the hanging gardens of Babylon! The natural bridge spanned a deep gorge, at the bottom of which flowed a swift stream of water. Geologically this tremendous arch of limestone cannot be so very old. In comparatively recent times an earthquake or some seismic disturbance or some other natural force caused a spring of water to burst from the slope above the gorge. It ran down, of course, over the rim. The lime salt in the water was deposited, and year by year and age by age advanced toward the opposite side until a bridge crossed the gorge. The swift stream at the bottom kept the opening clear under the bridge.

A winding trail led deep down on the lower side of this wonderful natural span. It showed the cliffs of limestone, porous, craggy, broken, chalky. At the bottom the gorge was full of tremendous boulders, water-worn ledges, sycamore and juniper trees, red and yellow flowers, and dark, beautiful green pools. I espied tiny gray frogs, reminding me of those I found in the gulches of the Grand Canyon. Many huge black beetles, some alive, but most of them dead, lined the wet borders of the pools. A species of fish that resembled mullet lay in the shadow of the rocks.

From underneath the Natural Bridge showed to advantage, and if not magnificent like the grand Nonnezoshe of Utah, it was at least striking and beautiful. It had a rounded ceiling colored gray, yellow, green, bronze, purple, white, making a crude and scalloped mosaic.

Water dripped from it like a rain of heavy scattered drops. The left side was dryest and large, dark caves opened up, one above the other, the upper being so high that it was dangerous to attempt reaching it.

The right side was slippery and wet. All rocks were thickly encrusted with lime salt. Doyle told us that any object left under the ceaseless drip, drip of the lime water would soon become encrusted, and heavy as stone. The upper opening of the arch was much higher and smaller than the lower. Any noise gave forth strange and sepulchral echoes. Romer certainly made the welkin ring. A streak of sunlight shone through a small hole in the thinnest part of the roof. Doyle pointed out the high cave where Indians had once lived, showing the markings of their fire. Also he told a story of Apaches being driven into the highest cave from which they had never escaped. This tale was manifestly to Romer's liking and I had to use force to keep him from risking his neck. A very strong breeze blew under the arch. When we rolled a boulder into the large, dark pool it gave forth a hollow boom, boom, boom, growing hollower the deeper it went. I tried to interest Romer in some bat nests in crevices high up, but the boy wanted to roll stones and fish for the mullet. When we climbed out and were once more on a level I asked him what he thought of the place. "Some hole--I'll say!" he panted, breathlessly.

The rancher told me that the summer rains began there about July, and the snows about the first of the year. Snow never lay long on the lower slopes. Apaches had lived there forty years ago and had cultivated the soil. There was gold in the mountains of the Four Peaks Range. In this sheltered nook the weather was never severely cold or hot; and I judged from the quaint talk of the rancher's wife that life there was always afternoon.

Next day we rode from Natural Bridge to Payson in four and a half hours. Payson appeared to be an old hamlet, retaining many frontier characteristics such as old board and stone houses with high fronts, hitching posts and pumps on sidewalks, and one street so wide that it resembled a Mexican plaza. Payson contained two stores, where I hoped to buy a rifle, and hoped in vain. I had not recovered my lost gun, and when night came my prospects of anything to hunt with appeared extremely slim. But we had visitors, and one of them was a stalwart, dark-skinned rider named Copple, who introduced himself by saying he would have come a good way to meet the writer of certain books he had profited by. When he learned of the loss of my rifle and that I could not purchase one anywhere he pressed upon me his own. I refused with thanks, but he would not take no. The upshot of it was that he lent me his .30 Government Winchester, and gave me several boxes of ammunition. Also he presented me with a cowhide lasso. Whereupon Romer-boy took a shine to Copple at once. "Say, you look like an Indian," he declared. With a laugh Copple replied: "I am part Indian, sonny." Manifestly that settled his status with Romer, for he piped up: "So's Dad part Indian. You'd better come huntin' with us."

We had for next day to look forward to the longest and hardest ride of the journey in, and in order to make it and reach a good camping site I got up at three o'clock in the morning to rout everybody out. It was pitch dark until we kindled fires. Then everybody rustled to such purpose that we were ready to start before dawn, and had to wait a little for light enough to see where we were going. This procedure tickled Romer immensely. I believed he imagined he was in a pioneer caravan. The gray breaking of dawn, the coming of brighter light, the rose and silver of the rising sun, and the riding in its face, with the air so tangy and nipping, were circumstances that inspired me as the adventurous start pleased Romer. The brush and cactus-lined road was rough, up hill and down, with ever increasing indications that it was seldom used. From the tops of high points I could see black foothills, round, cone-shaped, flat-topped, all leading the gaze toward the great yellow and red wall of the mesa, with its fringed borderline, wild and beckoning.

We walked our horses, trotted, loped, and repeated the order, over and over, hour by hour, mile after mile, under a sun that burned our faces and through choking dust. The washes and stream-beds were bleached and dry; the brush was sear and yellow and dust laden; the mescal stalks seemed withered by hot blasts. Only the manzanita looked fresh. That smooth red-branched and glistening green-leafed plant of the desert apparently flourished without rain. On all sides the evidences of extreme drought proved the year to be the dreaded _anno seco_ of the Mexicans.

For ten hours we rode without a halt before there was any prominent change in the weary up- and down-hill going, in the heat and dust and brush-walled road. But about the middle of the afternoon we reached the summit of the longest hill, from which we saw ahead of us a cut up country, wild and rugged and beautiful, with pine-sloped canyon at our feet. We heard the faint murmur of running water. Hot, dusty, wet with sweat, and thirsty as sheep, we piled down that steep slope as fast as we dared. Our horses did not need urging. At the bottom we plunged into a swift stream of clear, cold water--granite water--to drink of which, and to bathe hot heads and burning feet, was a joy only known to the weary traveler of the desert. Romer yelled that the water was like that at our home in the mountains of Pennsylvania, and he drank till I thought he would burst, and then I had to hold him to keep him from wallowing in it.

Here we entered a pine forest. Heat and dust stayed with us, and the aches and pains likewise, but the worst of them lay behind. Every mile grew shadier, clearer, cooler.

Nielsen happened to fall in and ride beside me for several miles, as was often his wont. The drink of water stirred him to an Homeric recital of one of his desert trips in Sonora, at the end of which, almost dead of thirst, he had suddenly come upon such a stream as the one we had just passed. Then he told me about his trips down the west coast of Sonora, along the Gulf, where he traveled at night, at low tide, so that by daytime his footprints would be washed out. This was the land of the Seri Indians. Undoubtedly these Indians were cannibals. I had read considerable about them, much of which ridiculed the rumors of their cannibalistic traits. This of course had been of exceeding interest to me, because some day I meant to go to the land of the Seris. But not until 1918 did I get really authentic data concerning them. Professor Bailey of the University of California told me he had years before made two trips to the Gulf, and found the Seris to be the lowest order of savages he knew of. He was positive that under favorable circumstances they would practice cannibalism. Nielsen made four trips down there. He claimed the Seris were an ugly tribe.

In winter they lived on Tiburon Island, off which boats anchored on occasions, and crews and fishermen and adventurers went ashore to barter with the Indians. These travelers did not see the worst of the Seris. In summer they range up the mainland, and they go naked. They do not want gold discovered down there. They will fight prospectors.