Roughing it De Luxe | Page 6

a guide to every party of six or eight.
At the start there is always a lot of nervous chatter--airy persiflage flies to and fro and much laughing is indulged in. But it has a forced, strained sound, that laughter has; it does not come from the heart, the heart being otherwise engaged for the moment. Down a winding footpath moves the procession, with the guide in front, and behind him in single file his string of pilgrims--all as nervous as cats and some holding to their saddle-pommels with death-grips. Just under the first terrace a halt is made while the official photographer takes a picture; and when you get back he has your finished copy ready for you, so you can see for yourself just how pale and haggard and wall-eyed and how much like a typhoid patient you looked.
The parade moves on. All at once you notice that the person immediately ahead of you has apparently ridden right over the wall of the ca?on. A moment ago his arched back loomed before you; now he is utterly gone. It is at this point that some tourists tender their resignations--to take effect immediately. To the credit of the sex, be it said, the statistics show that fewer women quit here than men. But nearly always there is some man who remembers where he left his umbrella or something, and he goes back after it and forgets to return.
In our crowd there was one person who left us here. He was a circular person; about forty per cent of him, I should say, rhymed with jelly. He climbed right down off his mule. He said:
"I'm not scared myself, you understand, but I've just recalled that my wife is a nervous woman. She'd have a fit if she knew I was taking this trip! I love my wife, and for her sake I will not go down this ca?on, dearly as I would love to." And with that he headed for the hotel. I wanted to go with him. I wanted to go along with him and comfort him and help him have his chill, and if necessary send a telegram for him to his wife--she was in Pittsburgh--telling her that all was well. But I did not. I kept on. I have been trying to figure out ever since whether this showed courage on my part, or cowardice.
Over the ridge and down the steep declivity beyond goes your mule, slipping a little. He is reared back until his rump almost brushes the trail; he grunts mild protests at every lurching step and grips his shoecalks into the half-frozen path. You reflect that thousands of persons have already done this thing; that thousands of others--men, women and children--are going to do it, and that no serious accident has yet occurred--which is some comfort, but not much. The thought comes to you that, after all, it is a very bright and beautiful world you are leaving behind. You turn your head to give it a long, lingering farewell, and you try to put your mind on something cheerful--such as your life insurance. Then something happens.
The trail, that has been slanting at a downward angle which is a trifle steeper than a ship's ladder, but not quite so steep perhaps as a board fence, takes an abrupt turn to the right. You duck your head and go through a little tunnel in the rock, patterned on the same general design of the needle's eye that is going to give so many of our prominent captains of industry trouble in the hereafter. And as you emerge on the lower side you forget all about your life-insurance papers and freeze to your pommel with both hands, and cram your poor cold feet into the stirrups--even in warm weather they'll be good and cold--and all your vital organs come up in your throat, where you can taste them. If anybody had shot me through the middle just about then he would have inflicted only a flesh wound.
You have come out on a place where the trail clings to the sheer side of the dizziest, deepest chasm in the known world. One of your legs is scraping against the everlasting granite; the other is dangling over half a mile of fresh mountain air. The mule's off hind hoof grates and grinds on the flinty trail, dislodging a fair-sized stone that flops over the verge. You try to look down and see where it is going and find you haven't the nerve to do it--but you can hear it falling from one narrow ledge to another, picking up other boulders as it goes until there must be a fair-sized little avalanche of them cascading down. The sound of their roaring, racketing passage grows fainter and fainter, then dies almost