The Last of the Plainsmen | Page 6

striking of
which was how Moze had broken his chain and plunged into the raging
Colorado River, and tried to swim it just above the terrible Sockdolager
Rapids. Rust and his fellow-workmen watched the dog disappear in the
yellow, wrestling, turbulent whirl of waters, and had heard his knell in
the booming roar of the falls. Nothing but a fish could live in that
current; nothing but a bird could scale those perpendicular marble walls.
That night, however, when the men crossed on the tramway, Moze met
them with a wag of his tail. He had crossed the river, and he had come
back!

To the four reddish-brown, high-framed bloodhounds I had given the
names of Don, Tige, Jude and Ranger; and by dint of persuasion, had
succeeded in establishing some kind of family relation between them
and Moze. This night I tied up the bloodhounds, after bathing and
salving their sore feet; and I left Moze free, for he grew fretful and
surly under restraint.
The Mormons, prone, dark, blanketed figures, lay on the sand. Jones
was crawling into his bed. I walked a little way from the dying fire, and
faced the north, where the desert stretched, mysterious and illimitable.
How solemn and still it was! I drew in a great breath of the cold air, and
thrilled with a nameless sensation. Something was there, away to the
northward; it called to me from out of the dark and gloom; I was going
to meet it.
I lay down to sleep with the great blue expanse open to my eyes. The
stars were very large, and wonderfully bright, yet they seemed so much
farther off than I had ever seen them. The wind softly sifted the sand. I
hearkened to the tinkle of the cowbells on the hobbled horses. The last
thing I remembered was old Moze creeping close to my side, seeking
the warmth of my body.
When I awakened, a long, pale line showed out of the dun-colored
clouds in the east. It slowly lengthened, and tinged to red. Then the
morning broke, and the slopes of snow on the San Francisco peaks
behind us glowed a delicate pink. The Mormons were up and doing
with the dawn. They were stalwart men, rather silent, and all workers.
It was interesting to see them pack for the day's journey. They traveled
with wagons and mules, in the most primitive way, which Jones
assured me was exactly as their fathers had crossed the plains fifty
years before, on the trail to Utah.
All morning we made good time, and as we descended into the desert,
the air became warmer, the scrubby cedar growth began to fail, and the
bunches of sage were few and far between. I turned often to gaze back
at the San Francisco peaks. The snowcapped tips glistened and grew
higher, and stood out in startling relief. Some one said they could be
seen two hundred miles across the desert, and were a landmark and a

fascination to all travelers thitherward.
I never raised my eyes to the north that I did not draw my breath
quickly and grow chill with awe and bewilderment with the marvel of
the desert. The scaly red ground descended gradually; bare red knolls,
like waves, rolled away northward; black buttes reared their flat heads;
long ranges of sand flowed between them like streams, and all sloped
away to merge into gray, shadowy obscurity, into wild and desolate,
dreamy and misty nothingness.
"Do you see those white sand dunes there, more to the left?" asked
Emmett. "The Little Colorado runs in there. How far does it look to
you?"
"Thirty miles, perhaps," I replied, adding ten miles to my estimate.
"It's seventy-five. We'll get there day after to-morrow. If the snow in
the mountains has begun to melt, we'll have a time getting across."
That afternoon, a hot wind blew in my face, carrying fine sand that cut
and blinded. It filled my throat, sending me to the water cask till I was
ashamed. When I fell into my bed at night, I never turned. The next day
was hotter; the wind blew harder; the sand stung sharper.
About noon the following day, the horses whinnied, and the mules
roused out of their tardy gait. "They smell water," said Emmett. And
despite the heat, and the sand in my nostrils, I smelled it, too. The dogs,
poor foot-sore fellows, trotted on ahead down the trail. A few more
miles of hot sand and gravel and red stone brought us around a low
mesa to the Little Colorado.
It was a wide stream of swiftly running, reddish-muddy water. In the
channel, cut by floods, little streams trickled and meandered in all
directions. The main part of the river ran in close to the