Tales of Lonely Trails | Page 4

and the effect was stupendous Sound, movement, life seemed to have no fitness here. Ruin was there and desolation and decay. The meaning of the ages was flung at me. A man became nothing. But when I gazed across that sublime and majestic wilderness, in which the Grand Canyon was only a dim line, I strangely lost my terror and something came to me across the shining spaces.
Then Nas ta Bega and Wetherill began the descent of the slope, and the rest of us followed. No sign of a trail showed where the base of the slope rolled out to meet the green plain. There was a level bench a mile wide, then a ravine, and then an ascent, and after that, rounded ridge and ravine, one after the other, like huge swells of a monstrous sea. Indian paint brush vied in its scarlet hue with the deep magenta of cactus. There was no sage. Soap weed and meager grass and a bunch of cactus here and there lent the green to that barren, and it was green only at a distance.
Nas ta Bega kept on at a steady gait. The sun climbed. The wind rose and whipped dust from under the mustangs. There is seldom much talk on a ride of this nature. It is hard work and everybody for himself. Besides, it is enough just to see; and that country is conducive to silence. I looked back often, and the farther out on the plain we rode the higher loomed the plateau we had descended; and as I faced ahead again, the lower sank the red-domed and castled horizon to the fore.
It was a wild place we were approaching. I saw pi?on patches under the circled walls. I ceased to feel the dry wind in my face. We were already in the lee of a wall. I saw the rock squirrels scampering to their holes. Then the Indians disappeared between two rounded corners of cliff.
I rode round the corner into a widening space thick with cedars. It ended in a bare slope of smooth rock. Here we dismounted to begin the ascent. It was smooth and hard, though not slippery. There was not a crack. I did not see a broken piece of stone. Nas ta Bega and Wetherill climbed straight up for a while and then wound round a swell, to turn this way and that, always going up. I began to see similar mounds of rock all around me, of every shape that could be called a curve. There were yellow domes far above and small red domes far below. Ridges ran from one hill of rock to another. There were no abrupt breaks, but holes and pits and caves were everywhere, and occasionally deep down, an amphitheater green with cedar and pi?on. We found no vestige of trail on those bare slopes.
Our guides led to the top of the wall, only to disclose to us another wall beyond, with a ridged, bare, and scalloped depression between. Here footing began to be precarious for both man and beast. Our mustangs were not shod and it was wonderful to see their slow, short, careful steps. They knew a great deal better than we what the danger was. It has been such experiences as this that have made me see in horses something besides beasts of burden. In the ascent of the second slope it was necessary to zigzag up, slowly and carefully, taking advantage of every bulge and depression.
Then before us twisted and dropped and curved the most dangerous slopes I had ever seen. We had reached the height of the divide and many of the drops on this side were perpendicular and too steep for us to see the bottom.
[Illustration: THIS IMMENSE CAVE WOULD HOLD TRINITY CHURCH. IN IT LIES THE RUINED CLIFF DWELLING CALLED BETATAKIN]
At one bad place Wetherill and Nas ta Bega, with Joe Lee, a Mormon cowboy with us, were helping one of the pack-horses named Chub. On the steepest part of this slope Chub fell and began to slide. His momentum jerked the rope from the hands of Wetherill and the Indian. But Joe Lee held on. Joe was a giant and being a Mormon he could not let go of anything he had. He began to slide with the horse, holding back with all his might.
[Illustration: THE WIND-WORN TREACHEROUS SLOPES ON THE WAY TO NONNEZOSHE]
It seemed that both man and beast must slide down to where the slope ended in a yawning precipice. Chub was snorting or screaming in terror. Our mustangs were frightened and rearing. It was not a place to have trouble with horses.
I had a moment of horrified fascination, in which Chub turned clear over. Then he slid into a little depression that, with Joe's hold on the