University of Virginia Library

29. CHAPTER XXIX.

When the adventurers commenced their tottering march toward the shore
of the Colorado, Sweeny, dragging the clumsy bearskin boat, was a few yards in
advance of Thurstane and Glover, bearing the canvas boat.

Every one of the three had as much as he could handle. The Grizzly, pulled
at by the furious current, bobbed up and down and hither and thither, nearly
capsizing Sweeny at every other step. The Buchanan, weighing one hundred
and fifty pounds when dry, and now somewhat heavier because of its thorough
wetting, made a heavy load for two men who were hip deep in swift water.

“Slow and sure,” repeated Thurstane. “It's a five minutes job. Keep your
courage and your feet for five minutes. Then we'll live a hundred years.”

“Liftinant, is this soldierin'?” squealed Sweeny.

“Yes, my man, this is soldiering.”

“Thin I'll do me dooty if I pull me arrms off.”

But there was not much talking. Pretty nearly all their breath was needed
for the fight with the river. Glover, a slender and narrow-shouldered creature,
was particularly distressed; and his only remark during the pilgrimage shoreward
was, “I'd like to change hosses.”

Sweeny, leading the way, got up to his waist once and yelled, “I'll drown.”

Then he backed a little, took a new direction, found shallower water, and tottled
onward to victory. The moment he reached the shore he gave a shrill
hoot of exultation, went at his bearskin craft with both hands, dragged it clean
out of the water, and gave it a couple of furious kicks.

“Take that!” he yelped. “Ye're wickeder nor both yer fathers. But I've
bate ye. Oh, ye blatherin', jerkin', bogglin' baste, ye!”

Then he splashed into the river, joined his hard-pressed comrades, got his
head under the centre of the Buchanan, and lifted studily. In another minute
the precious burden was safe on a large flat rock, and the three men were
stretched out panting beside it. Glover was used up; he was trembling from
head to foot with fatigue; he had reached shore just in time to fall on it instead
of into the river.

“Ye'd make a purty soldier,” scoffed Sweeny, a habitual chaffer, like most
Irishmen.

“It was the histin' that busted me,” gasped the skipper. “I can't handle a
ton o' water.”

“Godamighty made ye already busted, I'm a thinkin',” retorted Sweeny.

As soon as Glover could rise he examined the Buchanan. There was a
ragged rent in the bottom four inches long, and the canvas in other places had
been badly rubbed. The voyagers looked at the hole, looked at the horrible
chasm which locked them in, and thought with a sudden despair of the great environment
of desert.

The situation could hardly be more gloomy. Having voyaged for five days
in the Great Cañon, they were entangled in the very centre of the folds of that
monstrous anaconda. Their footing was a lap of level not more than thirty
yards in length by ten in breadth, strewn with pebbles and bowlders, and showing
not one spire of vegetation. Above them rose a precipice, the summit of
which they could not see, but which was undoubtedly a mile in height. Had
there been armies or cities over their heads, they could not have discovered it
by either eye or ear.

At their feet was the Colorado, a broad rush of liquid porphyry, swift and
pitiless. By its color and its air of stoical cruelty it put one in mind of the red
race of America, from whose desert mountains it came and through whose wildernesses
it hurried. On the other side of this grim current rose precipices five
thousand feet high, stretching to right and left as far as the eye could pierce.
Certainly never before did shipwrecked men gaze upon such imprisoning immensity
and inhospitable sterility.

Directly opposite them was horrible magnificence. The face of the fronting
rampart was gashed a mile deep by the gorge of a subsidiary cañon. The fissure
was not a clean one, with even sides. The strata had been torn, ground, and
tattered by the river, which had first raged over them and then through them. It
was a Petra of ruins, painted with all stony colors, and sculptured into a million
outlines. On one of the boldest abutments of the ravine perched an enchanted
castle with towers and spires hundreds of feet in height. Opposite, but further
up the gap, rose a rounded mountain-head of solid sandstone and limestone.
Still higher and more retired, towering as if to look into the distant cañon of the
Colorado, ran the enormous terrace of one of the loftier plateaus, its broad, bald
forehead wrinkled with furrows that had once held cataracts. But language has
no charm which can master these sublimities and horrors. It stammers; it repeats
the same words over and over; it can only begin to tell the monstrous
truth.

“Looks like we was in our grave,” sighed Glover.

“Liftinant,” jerked out Sweeny, “I'm thinkin' we're dead. We ain't livin',
Liftinant. We've been buried. We've no business trying to walk.”

Thurstane had the same sense of profound depression; but he called up his
courage and sought to cheer his comrades.

“We must do our best to come to life,” he said. “Mr. Glover, can nothing
be done with the boat?”

“Can't fix it,” replied the skipper, fingering the ragged hole. “Nothin' to
patch it with.”

“There are the bearskins,” suggested Thurstane.

Glover slapped his thigh, got up, danced a double-shuffle, and sat down again
to consider his job. After a full minute Sweeny caught the idea also and set up
a haw-haw of exultant laughter, which brought back echoes from the other side
of the cañon, as if a thousand Paddies were holding revel there.

“Oh! yees may laugh,” retorted Sweeny, “but yees can't laugh us out av it.”

“I'll sheath the whole bottom with bearskin,” said Glover. “Then we can
let her grind. It'll be an all day's chore, Capm—perhaps two days.”

They passed thirty-six hours in this miserable bivouac. Glover worked
during every moment of daylight. No one else could do anything. A green
hand might break a needle, and a needle broken was a step toward death.
From dawn to dusk he planned, cut, punctured, and sewed with the patience of
an old sailor, until he had covered the rent with a patch of bearskin which fitted
as if it had grown there. Finally the whole bottom was doubled with hide, the
long, coarse fur still on it, and the grain running from stem to stern so as to aid
in sliding over the sand and pebbles of the shallows.

While Glover worked the others slept, lounged, cooked, waited. There was
no food, by the way, but the hard, leathery, tasteless jerked meat of the grizzly
bears, which had begun to pall upon them so they could hardly swallow it.
Eating was merely a duty, and a disagreeable one.

When Glover announced that the boat was ready for launching, Sweeny uttered
a yelp of joy, like a dog who sees a prospect of hunting.

“Ah, you paddywhack!” growled the skipper. “All this work for you.
Punch another hole, 'n' I'll take yer own hide to patch it.”

“I'll give ye lave,” returned Sweeny. “Wan bare skin 's good as another.
Only I might want me own back agin for dress-parade.”

Once more on the Colorado. Although the boat floated deeper than before,
navigation in it was undoubtedly safer, so that they made bolder ventures and
swifter progress. Such portages, however, as they were still obliged to traverse,
were very severe, inasmuch as the Buchanan was now much above its original
weight. Several times they had to carry one half of their materials for a mile or
more, through a labyrinth of rocks, and then trudge back to get the other half.

Meantime their power of endurance was diminishing. The frequent wettings,
the shivering nights, the great changes of temperature, the stale and
wretched food, the constant anxiety, were sapping their health and strength.
On the tenth day of their wanderings in the Great Cañon Glover began to complain
of rheumatism.

“These cussed draughts!” he groaned. “It's jest like travellin' in a bellows
nozzle.”

“Wid the divil himself at the bellys,” added Sweeny. “Faix, an' I wish
he'd blow us clane out intirely. I'm gittin' tired o' this same, I am. I didn't
lisht to sarve undher ground.”

“Patience, Sweeny,” smiled Thurstane. “We must be nearly through the
cañon.”

“An' where will we come out, Liftinant? Is it in Ameriky? Bedad, we
ought to be close to the Chaynees by this time. Liftinant, what sort o' paple
lives up atop of us, annyway?”

“I don't suppose anybody lives up there,” replied the officer, raising his eyes
to the dizzy precipices above. “This whole region is said to be a desert.”

“Be gorry, an' it 'll stay a desert till the ind o' the worrld afore I'll poppylate
it. It wasn't made for Sweenys. I haven't seen sile enough in tin days to raise
wan pataty. As for livin' on dried grizzly, I'd like betther for the grizzlies to
live on me. Liftinant, I niver see sich harrd atin'. It tires the top av me head
off to chew it.”

About noon of the twelfth day in the Great Cañon this perilous and sublime
navigation came to a close. The walls of the chasm suddenly spread out into a

considerable opening, which absolutely seemed level ground to the voyagers, although
it was encumbered with mounds or buttes of granite and sandstone.
This opening was produced by the entrance into the main channel of a subsidiary
one, coming from the south. At first they did not observe further particulars,
for they were in extreme danger of shipwreck, the river being studded with rocks
and running like a mill-race. But on reaching the quieter water below the rapid,
they saw that the branch cañon contained a rivulet, and that where the two
streams united there was a triangular basin, offering a safe harbor.

“Paddle!” shouted Thurstane, pointing to the creek. “Don't let her go
by. This is our place.”

A desperate struggle dragged the boat out of the rushing Colorado into the
tranquillity of the basin. Everything was landed; the boat itself was hoisted on
to the rocks; the voyage was over.

“Think ye know yer way, Capm?” queried Glover, squinting doubtfully up
the arid recesses of the smaller cañon.

“Of course I may be mistaken. But even if it is not Diamond Creek, it will
take us in our direction. We have made westing enough to have the Cactus
Pass very nearly south of us.”

As there was still a chance of returning to the river, the boat was taken to
pieces, rolled up, and hidden under a pile of stones and driftwood. The small
remnant of jerked meat was divided into three portions. Glover, on account
of his inferior muscle and his rheumatism, was relieved of his gun, which was
given to Sweeny. Canteens were filled, blankets slung, ammunition belts
buckled, and the march commenced.

Arrived at a rocky knoll which looked up both waterways, the three men
halted to take a last glance at the Great Cañon, the scene of a pilgrimage that
had been a poem, though a terrible one. The Colorado here was not more than
fifty yards wide, and only a few hundred yards of its course were visible either
way, for the confluence was at the apex of a bend. The dark, sullen, hopeless,
cruel current rushed out of one mountain-built mystery into another. The walls
of the abyss rose straight from the water into dizzy abutments, conical peaks,
and rounded masses, beyond and above which gleamed the distant sunlit walls
of a higher terrace of the plateau.

“Come along wid ye,” said Sweeny to Glover, “It's enough to give ye the
rheumatiz in the oyes to luk at the nasty black hole. I'm thinkin' it's the
divil's own place, wid the fires out.”

The Diamond Creek Cañon, although far inferior to its giant neighbor, was
nevertheless a wonderful excavation, striking audaciously into sombre mountain
recesses, sublime with precipices, peaks, and grotesque masses. The footing
was of the ruggedest, a débris of confused and eroded rocks, the pathway of an
extinct river. One thing was beautiful: the creek was a perfect contrast to the
turbid Colorado; its waters were as clear and bright as crystal. Sweeny halted
over and over to look at it, his mouth open and eyes twinkling like a pleased
dog.

“An' there's nothing nagurish about that, now,” he chuckled. “A pataty
ud laugh to be biled in it.”

After slowly ascending for a quarter of a mile, they turned a bend and came
upon a scene which seemed to them like a garden. They were in a broad opening,
made by the confluence of two cañons. Into this gigantic rocky nest had
been dropped an oasis of turf and of thickets of green willows. Through the
centre of the verdure the Diamond Creek flowed dimpling over a pebbly bed,

or shot in sparkles between barring bowlders, or plunged over shelves in toy
cascades. The travellers had seen nothing so hospitable in nature since leaving
the country of the Moquis weeks before.

Sweeny screamed like a delighted child. “Oh! an' that's just like ould
Oirland. Oh, luk at the turrf! D'ye iver see the loikes o' that, now? The
blessed turrf! Here ye be, right in the divil's own garden. Liftinant, if ye'll
let me build a fort here, I'll garrison it. I'll stay here me whole term of sarvice.”

“Halt,” said Thurstane. “We'll eat, refill canteens, and inspect arms. If
this is Diamond Cañon, and I think there is no doubt of it, we may expect to
find Indians soon.”

“I'll fight 'em,” declared Sweeny. “An' if they've got anythin' betther nor
dried grizzly, I'll have it.”

“Wait for orders,” cautioned Thurstane. “No firing without orders.”

After cleaning their guns and chewing their tough and stale rations, they resumed
their march, leaving the rivulet and following the cañon, which led toward
the southwest. As they were now regaining the level of the plateau, their advance
was a constant and difficult ascent, sometimes struggling through
labyrinths of detached rocks, and sometimes climbing steep shelves which had
once been the leaping-places of cataracts. The sides of the chasm were two
thousand feet high, and it was entered by branch ravines of equal grandeur.

The sun had set for them, although he was still high above the horizon of
upper earth, when Thurstane halted and whispered, “Wigwams!”

Perched among the rocks, some under projecting strata and others in shadowy
niches between huge buttresses, they discovered at first three or four, then
a dozen, and finally twenty wretched cabins. They scarcely saw before they
were seen; a hideous old squaw dropped a bundle of fuel and ran off screeching;
in a moment the whole den was in an uproar. Startling yells burst from lofty
nooks in the mountain flanks, and scarecrow figures dodged from ambush to ambush
of the sombre gully. It was as if they had invaded the haunts of the
brownies.

The Hualpais, a species of Digger Indians, dwarfish, miserable, and degraded,
living mostly on roots, lizards, and the like, were nevertheless conscious of
scalps to save. In five minutes from the discovery of the strangers they had
formed a straggling line of battle, squatting along a ledge which crossed the
cañon. There were not twenty warriors, and they were no doubt wretchedly
armed, but their position was formidable.

Sweeny, looking like an angry rat, his nose twitching and eyes sparkling with
rage, offered to storm the rampart alone, shouting, “Oh, the nasty, lousy
nagurs! Let 'em get out of our way.”

“Guess we'd better talk to the cusses,” observed Glover. “Tain't the
handiest place I ever see for fightin'; an' I don't keer 'bout havin' my ears 'n'
nose bored any more at present.”

“Stay where you are,” said Thurstane. “I'll go forward and parley with
them.”