The Last of the Plainsmen
Z >>
Zane Grey >> The Last of the Plainsmen
Pages:
1 |
2 |
3 |
4 |
5 |
6 |
7 |
8 |
9 |
10 |
11 | 12 |
13 |
14 |
15 |
16
The rock wall, on which we dizzily stood, dropped straight down
for a thousand feet, to meet a long, pinyon-covered slope, which
graded a mile to cut off into what must have been the second
wall. We were far west of Clarke's trail now, and faced a point
above where Kanab Canyon, a red gorge a mile deep, met the great
canyon. As I ran along the rim, looking for a fissure or break,
my gaze seemed impellingly drawn by the immensity of this thing I
could not name, and for which I had as yet no intelligible
emotion.
Two "Waa-hoos" in the rear turned me back in double-quick time,
and hastening by the horses, I found the three men grouped at the
head of a narrow break.
"He went down here. Wallace saw him round the base of that
tottering crag."
The break was wedge-shaped, with the sharp end off toward the
rim, and it descended so rapidly as to appear almost
perpendicular. It was a long, steep slide of small, weathered
shale, and a place that no man in his right senses would ever
have considered going down. But Jones, designating Frank and me,
said in his cool, quick voice:
"You fellows go down. Take Jude and Sounder in leash. If you find
his trail below along the wall, yell for us. Meanwhile, Wallace
and I will hang over the rim and watch for him."
Going down, in one sense, was much easier than had appeared, for
the reason that once started we moved on sliding beds of
weathered stone. Each of us now had an avalanche for a steed.
Frank forged ahead with a roar, and then seeing danger below,
tried to get out of the mass. But the stones were like quicksand;
every step he took sunk him in deeper. He grasped the smooth
cliff, to find holding impossible. The slide poured over a fall
like so much water. He reached and caught a branch of a pinyon,
and lifting his feet up, hung on till the treacherous area of
moving stones had passed.
While I had been absorbed in his predicament, my avalanche
augmented itself by slide on slide, perhaps loosened by his; and
before I knew it, I was sailing down with ever-increasing
momentum. The sensation was distinctly pleasant, and a certain
spirit, before restrained in me, at last ran riot. The slide
narrowed at the drop where Frank had jumped, and the stones
poured over in a stream. I jumped also, but having a rifle in one
hand, failed to hold, and plunged down into the slide again. My
feet were held this time, as in a vise. I kept myself upright and
waited. Fortunately, the jumble of loose stone slowed and
stopped, enabling me to crawl over to one side where there was
comparatively good footing. Below us, for fifty yards was a sheet
of rough stone, as bare as washed granite well could be. We slid
down this in regular schoolboy fashion, and had reached another
restricted neck in the fissure, when a sliding crash above warned
us that the avalanches had decided to move of their own free
will. Only a fraction of a moment had we to find footing along
the yellow cliff, when, with a cracking roar, the mass struck the
slippery granite. If we had been on that slope, our lives would
not have been worth a grain of the dust flying in clouds above
us. Huge stones, that had formed the bottom of the slides, shot
ahead, and rolling, leaping, whizzed by us with frightful
velocity, and the remainder groaned and growled its way down, to
thunder over the second fall and die out in a distant rumble.
The hounds had hung back, and were not easily coaxed down to us.
From there on, down to the base of the gigantic cliff, we
descended with little difficulty.
"We might meet the old gray cat anywheres along here," said
Frank.
The wall of yellow limestone had shelves, ledges, fissures and
cracks, any one of which might have concealed a lion. On these
places I turned dark, uneasy glances. It seemed to me events
succeeded one another so rapidly that I had no time to think, to
examine, to prepare. We were rushed from one sensation to
another.
"Gee! look here," said Frank; "here's his tracks. Did you ever
see the like of that?"
Certainly I had never fixed my eyes on such enormous cat-tracks
as appeared in the yellow dust at the base of the rim wall. The
mere sight of them was sufficient to make a man tremble.
"Hold in the dogs, Frank," I called. "Listen. I think I heard a
yell."
From far above came a yell, which, though thinned out by
distance, was easily recognized as Jones's. We returned to the
opening of the break, and throwing our heads back, looked up the
slide to see him coming down.
"Wait for me! Wait for me! I saw the lion go in a cave. Wait for
me!"
With the same roar and crack and slide of rocks as had attended
our descent, Jones bore down on us. For an old man it was a
marvelous performance. He walked on the avalanches as though he
wore seven-league boots, and presently, as we began to dodge
whizzing bowlders, he stepped down to us, whirling his coiled
lasso. His jaw bulged out; a flash made fire in his cold eyes.
"Boys, we've got Old Tom in a corner. I worked along the rim
north and looked over every place I could. Now, maybe you won't
believe it, but I heard him pant. Yes, sir, he panted like the
tired lion he is. Well, presently I saw him lying along the base
of the rim wall. His tongue was hanging out. You see, he's a
heavy lion, and not used to running long distances. Come on, now.
It's not far. Hold in the dogs. You there with the rifle, lead
off, and keep your eyes peeled."
Single file, we passed along in the shadow of the great cliff. A
wide trail had been worn in the dust.
"A lion run-way," said Jones. "Don't you smell the cat?"
Indeed, the strong odor of cat was very pronounced; and that,
without the big fresh tracks, made the skin on my face tighten
and chill. As we turned a jutting point in the wall, a number of
animals, which I did not recognize, plunged helter-skelter down
the canyon slope.
"Rocky Mountain sheep!" exclaimed Jones. "Look! Well, this is a
discovery. I never heard of a bighorn in the Canyon."
It was indicative of the strong grip Old Tom had on us that we at
once forgot the remarkable fact of coming upon those rare sheep
in such a place.
Jones halted us presently before a deep curve described by the
rim wall, the extreme end of which terminated across the slope in
an impassable projecting corner.
"See across there, boys. See that black hole. Old Tom's in
there."
"What's your plan?" queried the cowboy sharply.
"Wait. We'll slip up to get better lay of the land."
We worked our way noiselessly along the rim-wall curve for
several hundred yards and came to a halt again, this time with a
splendid command of the situation. The trail ended abruptly at
the dark cave, so menacingly staring at us, and the corner of the
cliff had curled back upon itself. It was a box-trap, with a drop
at the end, too great for any beast, a narrow slide of weathered
stone running down, and the rim wall trail. Old Tom would plainly
be compelled to choose one of these directions if he left his
cave.
"Frank, you and I will keep to the wall and stop near that scrub
pinyon, this side of the hole. If I rope him, I can use that
tree."
Then he turned to me:
"Are you to be depended on here?"
"I? What do you want me to do?" I demanded, and my whole breast
seemed to sink in.
"You cut across the head of this slope and take up your position
in the slide below the cave, say just by that big stone. From
there you can command the cave, our position and your own. Now,
if it is necessary to kill this lion to save me or Frank, or, of
course, yourself, can you be depended upon to kill him?"
I felt a queer sensation around my heart and a strange tightening
of the skin upon my face! What a position for me to be placed in!
For one instant I shook like a quivering aspen leaf. Then because
of the pride of a man, or perhaps inherited instincts cropping
out at this perilous moment, I looked up and answered quietly:
"Yes. I will kill him!"
"Old Tom is cornered, and he'll come out. He can run only two
ways: along this trail, or down that slide. I'll take my stand by
the scrub pinyon there so I can get a hitch if I rope him. Frank,
when I give the word, let the dogs go. Grey, you block the slide.
If he makes at us, even if I do get my rope on him, kill him!
Most likely he'll jump down hill--then you'll HAVE to kill him!
Be quick. Now loose the hounds. Hi! Hi! Hi! Hi!"
I jumped into the narrow slide of weathered stone and looked up.
Jones's stentorian yell rose high above the clamor of the hounds.
He whirled his lasso.
A huge yellow form shot over the trail and hit the top of the
slide with a crash. The lasso streaked out with arrowy swiftness,
circled, and snapped viciously close to Old Tom's head. "Kill
him! Kill him!" roared Jones. Then the lion leaped, seemingly
into the air above me. Instinctively I raised my little automatic
rifle. I seemed to hear a million bellowing reports. The tawny
body, with its grim, snarling face, blurred in my sight. I heard
a roar of sliding stones at my feet. I felt a rush of wind. I
caught a confused glimpse of a whirling wheel of fur, rolling
down the slide.
Then Jones and Frank were pounding me, and yelling I know not
what. From far above came floating down a long "Waa-hoo!" I saw
Wallace silhouetted against the blue sky. I felt the hot barrel
of my rifle, and shuddered at the bloody stones below me--then,
and then only, did I realize, with weakening legs, that Old Tom
had jumped at me, and had jumped to his death.
CHAPTER 13. SINGING CLIFFS
Old Tom had rolled two hundred yards down the canyon, leaving a
red trail and bits of fur behind him. When I had clambered down
to the steep slide where he had lodged, Sounder and Jude had just
decided he was no longer worth biting, and were wagging their
tails. Frank was shaking his head, and Jones, standing above the
lion, lasso in hand, wore a disconsolate face.
"How I wish I had got the rope on him!"
"I reckon we'd be gatherin' up the pieces of you if you had,"
said Frank, dryly.
We skinned the old king on the rocky slope of his mighty throne,
and then, beginning to feel the effects of severe exertion, we
cut across the slope for the foot of the break. Once there, we
gazed up in disarray. That break resembled a walk of life--how
easy to slip down, how hard to climb! Even Frank, inured as he
was to strenuous toil, began to swear and wipe his sweaty brow
before we had made one-tenth of the ascent. It was particularly
exasperating, not to mention the danger of it, to work a few feet
up a slide, and then feel it start to move. We had to climb in
single file, which jeopardized the safety of those behind the
leader. Sometimes we were all sliding at once, like boys on a
pond, with the difference that we were in danger. Frank forged
ahead, turning to yell now and then for us to dodge a cracking
stone. Faithful old Jude could not get up in some places, so
laying aside my rifle, I carried her, and returned for the
weapon. It became necessary, presently, to hide behind cliff
projections to escape the avalanches started by Frank, and to
wait till he had surmounted the break. Jones gave out completely
several times, saying the exertion affected his heart. What with
my rifle, my camera and Jude, I could offer him no assistance,
and was really in need of that myself. When it seemed as if one
more step would kill us, we reached the rim, and fell panting
with labored chests and dripping skins. We could not speak. Jones
had worn a pair of ordinary shoes without thick soles and nails,
and it seemed well to speak of them in the past tense. They were
split into ribbons and hung on by the laces. His feet were cut
and bruised.
On the way back to camp, we encountered Moze and Don coming out
of the break where we had started Sounder on the trail. The paws
of both hounds were yellow with dust, which proved they had been
down under the rim wall. Jones doubted not in the least that they
had chased a lion.
Upon examination, this break proved to be one of the two which
Clarke used for trails to his wild horse corral in the canyon.
According to him, the distance separating them was five miles by
the rim wall, and less than half that in a straight line.
Therefore, we made for the point of the forest where it ended
abruptly in the scrub oak. We got into camp, a fatigued lot of
men, horses and dogs. Jones appeared particularly happy, and his
first move, after dismounting, was to stretch out the lion skin
and measure it.
"Ten feet, three inches and a half!" he sang out.
"Shore it do beat hell!" exclaimed Jim in tones nearer to
excitement than any I had ever heard him use.
"Old Tom beats, by two inches, any cougar I ever saw," continued
Jones. "He must have weighed more than three hundred. We'll set
about curing the hide. Jim, stretch it well on a tree, and we'll
take a hand in peeling off the fat."
All of the party worked on the cougar skin that afternoon. The
gristle at the base of the neck, where it met the shoulders, was
so tough and thick we could not scrape it thin. Jones said this
particular spot was so well protected because in fighting,
cougars were most likely to bite and claw there. For that matter,
the whole skin was tough, tougher than leather; and when it
dried, it pulled all the horseshoe nails out of the pine tree
upon which we had it stretched.
About time for the sun to set, I strolled along the rim wall to
look into the canyon. I was beginning to feel something of its
character and had growing impressions. Dark purple smoke veiled
the clefts deep down between the mesas. I walked along to where
points of cliff ran out like capes and peninsulas, all seamed,
cracked, wrinkled, scarred and yellow with age, with shattered,
toppling ruins of rocks ready at a touch to go thundering down. I
could not resist the temptation to crawl out to the farthest
point, even though I shuddered over the yard-wide ridges; and
when once seated on a bare promontory, two hundred feet from the
regular rim wall, I felt isolated, marooned.
The sun, a liquid red globe, had just touched its under side to
the pink cliffs of Utah, and fired a crimson flood of light over
the wonderful mountains, plateaus, escarpments, mesas, domes and
turrets or the gorge. The rim wall of Powell's Plateau was a thin
streak of fire; the timber above like grass of gold; and the long
slopes below shaded from bright to dark. Point Sublime, bold and
bare, ran out toward the plateau, jealously reaching for the sun.
Bass's Tomb peeped over the Saddle. The Temple of Vishnu lay
bathed in vapory shading clouds, and the Shinumo Altar shone with
rays of glory.
The beginning of the wondrous transformation, the dropping of the
day's curtain, was for me a rare and perfect moment. As the
golden splendor of sunset sought out a peak or mesa or
escarpment, I gave it a name to suit my fancy; and as flushing,
fading, its glory changed, sometimes I rechristened it. Jupiter's
Chariot, brazen wheeled, stood ready to roll into the clouds.
Semiramis's Bed, all gold, shone from a tower of Babylon. Castor
and Pollux clasped hands over a Stygian river. The Spur of Doom,
a mountain shaft as red as hell, and inaccessible,
insurmountable, lured with strange light. Dusk, a bold, black
dome, was shrouded by the shadow of a giant mesa. The Star of
Bethlehem glittered from the brow of Point Sublime. The Wraith,
fleecy, feathered curtain of mist, floated down among the ruins
of castles and palaces, like the ghost of a goddess. Vales of
Twilight, dim, dark ravines, mystic homes of specters, led into
the awful Valley of the Shadow, clothed in purple night.
Suddenly, as the first puff of the night wind fanned my cheek, a
strange, sweet, low moaning and sighing came to my ears. I almost
thought I was in a dream. But the canyon, now blood-red, was
there in overwhelming reality, a profound, solemn, gloomy thing,
but real. The wind blew stronger, and then I was to a sad, sweet
song, which lulled as the wind lulled. I realized at once that
the sound was caused by the wind blowing into the peculiar
formations of the cliffs. It changed, softened, shaded, mellowed,
but it was always sad. It rose from low, tremulous, sweetly
quavering sighs, to a sound like the last woeful, despairing wail
of a woman. It was the song of the sea sirens and the music of
the waves; it had the soft sough of the night wind in the trees,
and the haunting moan of lost spirits.
With reluctance I turned my back to the gorgeously changing
spectacle of the canyon and crawled in to the rim wall. At the
narrow neck of stone I peered over to look down into misty blue
nothingness.
That night Jones told stories of frightened hunters, and assuaged
my mortification by saying "buck-fever" was pardonable after the
danger had passed, and especially so in my case, because of the
great size and fame of Old Tom.
"The worst case of buck-fever I ever saw was on a buffalo hunt I
had with a fellow named Williams," went on Jones. "I was one of
the scouts leading a wagon-train west on the old Santa Fe trail.
This fellow said he was a big hunter, and wanted to kill buffalo,
so I took him out. I saw a herd making over the prairie for a
hollow where a brook ran, and by hard work, got in ahead of them.
I picked out a position just below the edge of the bank, and we
lay quiet, waiting. From the direction of the buffalo, I
calculated we'd be just about right to get a shot at no very long
range. As it was, I suddenly heard thumps on the ground, and
cautiously raising my head, saw a huge buffalo bull just over us,
not fifteen feet up the bank. I whispered to Williams: 'For God's
sake, don't shoot, don't move!' The bull's little fiery eyes
snapped, and he reared. I thought we were goners, for when a bull
comes down on anything with his forefeet, it's done for. But he
slowly settled back, perhaps doubtful. Then, as another buffalo
came to the edge of the bank, luckily a little way from us, the
bull turned broadside, presenting a splendid target. Then I
whispered to Williams: "Now's your chance. Shoot!' I waited for
the shot, but none came. Looking at Williams, I saw he was white
and trembling. Big drops of sweat stood out on his brow his teeth
chattered, and his hands shook. He had forgotten he carried a
rifle."
"That reminds me," said Frank. "They tell a story over at Kanab
on a Dutchman named Schmitt. He was very fond of huntin', an' I
guess had pretty good success after deer an' small game. One
winter he was out in the Pink Cliffs with a Mormon named
Shoonover, an' they run into a lammin' big grizzly track, fresh
an' wet. They trailed him to a clump of chaparral, an' on goin'
clear round it, found no tracks leadin' out. Shoonover said
Schmitt commenced to sweat. They went back to the place where the
trail led in, an' there they were, great big silver tip tracks,
bigger'n hoss-tracks, so fresh thet water was oozin' out of 'em.
Schmitt said: 'Zake, you go in und ged him. I hef took sick right
now.'"
Happy as we were over the chase of Old Tom, and our prospects for
Sounder, Jude and Moze had seen a lion in a tree--we sought our
blankets early. I lay watching the bright stars, and listening to
the roar of the wind in the pines. At intervals it lulled to a
whisper, and then swelled to a roar, and then died away. Far off
in the forest a coyote barked once. Time and time again, as I was
gradually sinking into slumber, the sudden roar of the wind
startled me. I imagined it was the crash of rolling, weathered
stone, and I saw again that huge outspread flying lion above me.
I awoke sometime later to find Moze had sought the warmth of my
side, and he lay so near my arm that I reached out and covered
him with an end of the blanket I used to break the wind. It was
very cold and the time must have been very late, for the wind had
died down, and I heard not a tinkle from the hobbled horses. The
absence of the cowbell music gave me a sense of loneliness, for
without it the silence of the great forest was a thing to be
felt.
This oppressiveness, however, was broken by a far-distant cry,
unlike any sound I had ever heard. Not sure of myself, I freed my
ears from the blanketed hood and listened. It came again, a wild
cry, that made me think first of a lost child, and then of the
mourning wolf of the north. It must have been a long distance off
in the forest. An interval of some moments passed, then it pealed
out again, nearer this time, and so human that it startled me.
Moze raised his head and growled low in his throat and sniffed
the keen air.
"Jones, Jones," I called, reaching over to touch the old hunter.
He awoke at once, with the clear-headedness of the light sleeper.
"I heard the cry of some beast," I said, "And it was so weird, so
strange. I want to know what it was."
Such a long silence ensued that I began to despair of hearing the
cry again, when, with a suddenness which straightened the hair on
my head, a wailing shriek, exactly like a despairing woman might
give in death agony, split the night silence. It seemed right on
us.
"Cougar! Cougar! Cougar!" exclaimed Jones.
"What's up?" queried Frank, awakened by the dogs.
Their howling roused the rest of the party, and no doubt scared
the cougar, for his womanish screech was not repeated. Then Jones
got up and gatherered his blankets in a roll.
"Where you oozin' for now?" asked Frank, sleepily.
"I think that cougar just came up over the rim on a scouting
hunt, and I'm going to go down to the head of the trail and stay
there till morning. If he returns that way, I'll put him up a
tree."
With this, he unchained Sounder and Don, and stalked off under
the trees, looking like an Indian. Once the deep bay of Sounder
rang out; Jones's sharp command followed, and then the familiar
silence encompassed the forest and was broken no more.
When I awoke all was gray, except toward the canyon, where the
little bit of sky I saw through the pines glowed a delicate pink.
I crawled out on the instant, got into my boots and coat, and
kicked the smoldering fire. Jim heard me, and said:
"Shore you're up early."
"I'm going to see the sunrise from the north rim of the Grand
Canon," I said, and knew when I spoke that very few men, out of
all the millions of travelers, had ever seen this, probably the
most surpassingly beautiful pageant in the world. At most, only a
few geologists, scientists, perhaps an artist or two, and horse
wranglers, hunters and prospectors have ever reached the rim on
the north side; and these men, crossing from Bright Angel or
Mystic Spring trails on the south rim, seldom or never get beyond
Powell's Plateau.
The frost cracked under my boots like frail ice, and the
bluebells peeped wanly from the white. When I reached the head of
Clarke's trail it was just daylight; and there, under a pine, I
found Jones rolled in his blankets, with Sounder and Moze asleep
beside him. I turned without disturbing him, and went along the
edge of the forest, but back a little distance from the rim wall.
I saw deer off in the woods, and tarrying, watched them throw up
graceful heads, and look and listen. The soft pink glow through
the pines deepened to rose, and suddenly I caught a point of red
fire. Then I hurried to the place I had named Singing Cliffs, and
keeping my eyes fast on the stone beneath me, trawled out to the
very farthest point, drew a long, breath, and looked eastward.
The awfulness of sudden death and the glory of heaven stunned me!
The thing that had been mystery at twilight, lay clear, pure,
open in the rosy hue of dawn. Out of the gates of the morning
poured a light which glorified the palaces and pyramids, purged
and purified the afternoon's inscrutable clefts, swept away the
shadows of the mesas, and bathed that broad, deep world of mighty
mountains, stately spars of rock, sculptured cathedrals and
alabaster terraces in an artist's dream of color. A pearl from
heaven had burst, flinging its heart of fire into this chasm. A
stream of opal flowed out of the sun, to touch each peak, mesa,
dome, parapet, temple and tower, cliff and cleft into the
new-born life of another day.
I sat there for a long time and knew that every second the scene
changed, yet I could not tell how. I knew I sat high over a hole
of broken, splintered, barren mountains; I knew I could see a
hundred miles of the length of it, and eighteen miles of the
width of it, and a mile of the depth of it, and the shafts and
rays of rose light on a million glancing, many-hued surfaces at
once; but that knowledge was no help to me. I repeated a lot of
meaningless superlatives to myself, and I found words inadequate
and superfluous. The spectacle was too elusive and too great. It
was life and death, heaven and hell.
I tried to call up former favorite views of mountain and sea, so
as to compare them with this; but the memory pictures refused to
come, even with my eyes closed. Then I returned to camp, with
unsettled, troubled mind, and was silent, wondering at the
strange feeling burning within me.
Jones talked about our visitor of the night before, and said the
trail near where he had slept showed only one cougar track, and
that led down into the canyon. It had surely been made, he
thought, by the beast we had heard. Jones signified his intention
of chaining several of the hounds for the next few nights at the
head of this trail; so if the cougar came up, they would scent
him and let us know. From which it was evident that to chase a
lion bound into the canyon and one bound out were two different
things.
Pages:
1 |
2 |
3 |
4 |
5 |
6 |
7 |
8 |
9 |
10 |
11 | 12 |
13 |
14 |
15 |
16