Tales of Lonely Trails | Page 2

labyrinthine Canyon Segi with its great
prehistoric cliff-dwellings.
The desert beyond Kayenta spread out impressively, bare red flats and
plains of sage leading to the rugged vividly-colored and
wind-sculptured sandstone heights typical of the Painted Desert of
Arizona. Laguna Creek, at that season, became flooded after every
thunderstorm; and it was a treacherous red-mired quicksand where I
convinced myself we would have stuck forever had it not been for
Wetherill's Navajos.
We rode all day, for the most part closed in by ridges and bluffs, so that
no extended view was possible. It was hot, too, and the sand blew and
the dust rose. Travel in northern Arizona is never easy, and this grew
harder and steeper. There was one long slope of heavy sand that I made
sure would prove too much for Wetherill's pack mules. But they
surmounted it apparently less breathless than I was. Toward sunset a
storm gathered ahead of us to the north with a promise of cooling and
sultry air.
At length we turned into a long canyon with straight rugged red walls,
and a sandy floor with quite a perceptible ascent. It appeared endless.
Far ahead I could see the black storm-clouds; and by and bye began to
hear the rumble of thunder. Darkness had overtaken us by the time we
had reached the head of this canyon; and my first sight of Monument
Valley came with a dazzling flash of lightning. It revealed a vast valley,

a strange world of colossal shafts and buttes of rock, magnificently
sculptored, standing isolated and aloof, dark, weird, lonely. When the
sheet lightning flared across the sky showing the monuments
silhouetted black against that strange horizon the effect was
marvelously beautiful. I watched until the storm died away.
[Illustration: Z. G. AFTER TWO MONTHS IN THE WILDS]
Dawn, with the desert sunrise, changed Monument Valley, bereft it of
its night gloom and weird shadow, and showed it in another aspect of
beauty. It was hard for me to realize that those monuments were not the
works of man. The great valley must once have been a plateau of red
rock from which the softer strata had eroded, leaving the gentle
league-long slopes marked here and there by upstanding pillars and
columns of singular shape and beauty. I rode down the sweet-scented
sage-slopes under the shadow of the lofty Mittens, and around and
across the valley, and back again to the height of land. And when I had
completed the ride a story had woven itself into my mind; and the spot
where I stood was to be the place where Lin Slone taught Lucy Bostil
to ride the great stallion Wildfire.
[Illustration: THERE WAS SOMETHING BEYOND THE
WHITE-PEAKED RANGES]
Two days' ride took us across country to the Segi. With this wonderful
canyon I was familiar, that is, as familiar as several visits could make a
man with such a bewildering place. In fact I had named it Deception
Pass. The Segi had innumerable branches, all more or less the same
size, and sometimes it was difficult to tell the main canyon from one of
its tributaries. The walls were rugged and crumbling, of a red or yellow
hue, upward of a thousand feet in height, and indented by spruce-sided
notches.
There were a number of ruined cliff-dwellings, the most accessible of
which was Keet Seel. I could imagine no more picturesque spot. A
huge wind-worn cavern with a vast slanted stained wall held upon a
projecting ledge or shelf the long line of cliff-dwellings. These silent
little stone houses with their vacant black eye-like windows had strange

power to make me ponder, and then dream.
Next day, upon resuming our journey, it pleased me to try to find the
trail to Betatakin, the most noted, and surely the most wonderful and
beautiful ruin in all the West. In many places there was no trail at all,
and I encountered difficulties, but in the end without much loss of time
I entered the narrow rugged entrance of the canyon I had named
Surprise Valley. Sight of the great dark cave thrilled me as I thought it
might have thrilled Bess and Venters, who had lived for me their
imagined lives of loneliness here in this wild spot. With the sight of
those lofty walls and the scent of the dry sweet sage there rushed over
me a strange feeling that "Riders of the Purple Sage" was true. My
dream people of romance had really lived there once upon a time. I
climbed high upon the huge stones, and along the smooth red walls
where Pay Larkin once had glided with swift sure steps, and I entered
the musty cliff-dwellings, and called out to hear the weird and sonorous
echoes, and I wandered through the thickets and upon the