Roughing it De Luxe | Page 8

mule were not under you pensively craning his head rearward in an effort to bite your leg off, you would almost be ready to swear the whole thing was an optical illusion, a wondrous dream. Under these circumstances it is not so strange that some travelers who have been game enough until now suddenly weaken. Their nerves capsize and the grit runs out of them like sand out of an overturned pail.
All over this part of Arizona they tell you the story of the lady from the southern part of the state--she was a school teacher and the story has become an epic--who went down Bright Angel one morning and did not get back until two o'clock the following morning; and then she came against her will in a litter borne by two tired guides, while two others walked beside her and held her hands; and she was protesting at every step that she positively could not and would not go another inch; and she was as hysterical as a treeful of chickadees; her hat was lost, and her glasses were gone, and her hair hung down her back, and altogether she was a mournful sight to see.
Likewise the natives will tell you the tale of a man who made the trip by crawling round the more sensational corners upon his hands and knees; and when he got down he took one look up to where, a sheer mile above him, the rim of the ca?on showed, with the tall pine trees along its edge looking like the hairs upon a caterpillar's back, and he announced firmly that he wished he might choke if he stirred another step. Through the miraculous indulgence of a merciful providence he was down, and that was sufficient for him; he wasn't going to trifle with his luck. He would stay down until he felt good and rested, and then he would return to his home in dear old Altoona by some other route. He was very positive about it. There were two guides along, both of them patient and forbearing cowpunchers, and they argued with him. They pointed that there was only one suitable way for him to get out of the ca?on, and that was the way by which he had got into it.
"The trouble with you fellows," said the man, "is that you are too dad-blamed technical. The point is that I'm here, and here I'm going to stay."
"But," they told him, "you can't stay here. You'd starve to death like that poor devil that some prospectors found in that gulch yonder--turned to dusty bones, with a pack rat's nest in his chest and a rock under his head. You'd just naturally starve to death."
"There you go again," he said, "importing these trivial foreign matters into the discussion. Let us confine ourselves to the main issue, which is that I am not going back. This rock shall fly from its firm base as soon as I," he said, or words to that effect.
So insisting, he sat down, putting his own firm base against the said rock, and prepared to become a permanent resident. He was a grown man and the guides were less gentle with him than they had been with the lady school teacher. They roped his arms at the elbows and hoisted him upon a mule and tied his legs together under the mule's belly, and they brought him out of there like a sack of bran--only he made more noise than any sack of bran has ever been known to make.
Coming back up out of the Grand Ca?on is an even more inspiring and amazing performance than going down. But by now--anyhow this was my experience, and they tell me it is the common experience--you are beginning to get used to the sensation of skirting along the raw and ragged verge of nothing. Narrow turns where, going down, your hair pushed your hat off, no longer affright you; you take them jauntily--almost debonairly. You feel that you are now an old mountain-scaler, and your soul begins to crave for a trip with a few more thrills to the square inch in it. You get your wish. You go down Hermit Trail, which its middle name is thrills; and there you make the acquaintance of the Hydrophobic Skunk.
The Hydrophobic Skunk is a creature of such surpassing accomplishments and vivid personality that I feel he is entitled to a new chapter. The Hydrophobic Skunk will be continued in our next.

RABID AND HIS FRIENDS
[Illustration]
Rabid and His Friends
THE Hydrophobic Skunk resides at the extreme bottom of the Grand Ca?on and, next to a Southern Republican who never asked for a Federal office, is the rarest of living creatures. He is so rare that nobody ever saw him--that is, nobody except a native. I