The Deer Stalker Read online

  “Tine, my outfit’s rarin’ to go, but I forgot my cigarettes,” he said, in a slow, cool voice.

  “Say, Nels, I’m plumb tired bein’ your tobacco store,” complained the other, his hands going to his breast pocket. He was ruddy-faced and painfully homely.

  “You smoke too much, Tine,” replied the cowboy with a grin. “Doc Miller told me so an’ that I was savin’ your life.”

  “Ahuh!” grunted Tine, fumbling in his pocket. He appeared full of protest and derision. Yet there was an unconscious loyal resignation in his glance.

  “Thanks, cowboy,” acknowledged the other, accepting the proffered package. Then he doffed his sombrero to Sue.

  “Howdy, Texas,” he drawled, his sleepy eyes on her pretty face.

  “Good mawnin’, Mr. Stackhouse,” replied the girl. She tilted her chin ever so little and eyed him coolly. But when presently she turned her shoulder to him, Patricia espied a tinge of red through the golden tan of her cheeks. It suited the easterner then to step briskly to the corral gate and approach the young people. Sue stared an instant, and then her face grew bright.

  “Shore I didn’t know you,” she burst out. “Good mawnin’. I was just going to run in to fetch you.”

  Patricia greeted her and the older woman, then looked from the cowboys to Sue and back again.

  “Miss Clay, this is our guide, Tine Higgenbottom,” announced Sue, “and this—Mr. Nelson Stackhouse.”

  The cowboys doffed their sombreros, not ungallantly, and mumbled their acknowledgments.

  “Heah’s your mount,” interposed Sue, drawing Patricia away. “Joker’s his name. He’s a character. He gets that name from his habit of stopping along the trail, at the edge of the worst precipices, to look down. Tine swears the mule does it to scare tenderfoot tourists. He never plays his trick on expert riders.”

  “But, Sue, I’m a tenderfoot,” rejoined Patricia dubiously. “I’m not so sure I want Joker.”

  “He’s absolutely safe. Now get up and try your stirrups.—Funny aboot clothes, isn’t it? Last night you looked so tall and slim. But in this riding outfit you do look like a movie star.”

  “Sue, I haven’t anything on you,” retorted Patricia, as she mounted to the saddle and smiled down into the glowing face of the girl. “In that riding rig you beat any cowgirl I ever saw at the rodeo. You look the real thing and I’ll bet you are. So there!”

  “Oh—Miss Clay—you shore embarrass me, but I’d be lying if I said I didn’t like it…. Now stand in your stirrups.”

  “They feel just about right.”

  “Well, they’re long. I’ll take them up a hole.”

  Patricia slipped one foot out of a stirrup and bent to the opposite side of the saddle to ease the strain. And as she did so her sharp ear caught the whispering of the two cowboy guides who had drawn aside and had their backs turned.

  “You see, Nels, I get trusted with the pretty western gurls, an’ the swell peaches from Noo York. You’re a handsome devil. I’m. only a sawed-off, bowlegged, ugly cowpuncher.”

  “Tine, this ain’t funny—yore ridin’ off with Sue. I reckoned you was my pard. An’ here you’re double-crossin’ me.”

  “Aw naw, Nels, you’re loco.”

  “But couldn’t you get sick or kicked or somethin’—so I could take this party and be with Sue? All the other guides are out. An’ Sue’s madder’n blazes at me.”

  “Huh! An’ lose my job? Nels, you’re not orful bright. It’s better for you that I take Sue. ’Cause I’ll fix it up for you. I got a hunch.”

  “You give me hunches before,” complained Nels, “an’ the last one near cost me my head.”

  “How come?”

  “Didn’t you say I ought to grab Sue up an’ kiss her? Well, I did! She socked me one an’ she’s still sore at me.”

  “Nels, you didn’t go at it right. Listen to this hunch. I’ll talk this dame from Noo York into a trip over to the North Rim. She’ll go. She’s a thoroughbred, with money to burn. An’ say, Nels, ain’t she a lollapaloosa?”

  “I’ll say she is. Never saw such a looker like her in all my born life.”

  “Neither did I. An’ what’s better, she’s nice an’ sweet. Not stuck up like most of them eastern dudes…. Well, Nels, what you think of my idee?”

  “Mighty fine. But there ain’t no such luck. Why, cowboy, if you pulled that stunt for me I’d—I’d—”

  “Good as done. Beat it! There’s that fox Hilton lookin’. Meet you at the Gardens, mebbe. You work fast an’ I’ll work slow. So long.”

  The cowboys separated, Stackhouse striding to his mule and mounting with effortless ease and grace, while Higgenbottom advanced to meet newcomers joining his party. Patricia sat there, smiling to herself over the little plot she had unwittingly overheard. What boys they were! Already Patricia liked them. Should she reveal their plot to Sue or keep it secret and appear innocently to succumb to the machinations of these conspirators? Thought of a trip to the wild north rim certainly stirred Patricia; and if such trips were made by tourists, as the guides had implied, she would like to go. There had been longing in the voice of this boy Nels. But was he worthy of Sue? Patricia’s first impression of Stackhouse had not been too favorable. Now she saw that she might have misjudged him. She decided to let the developments of the day guide her to a decision.

  Suddenly she became aware that Sue was tugging at her arm.

  “Whatever were you thinkin’ aboot?” queried the girl gravely. Her big eyes, almost colorless except for the dark hazel centers, were uplifted to the light of the sun.

  “Why?” she asked, smiling down.

  “I spoke to you twice. You shore were far away.”

  “Pardon my abstraction. No, Sue, I was not far away. I was thinking of—of what happiness I might find in association with you.”

  “Me! Oh, how good of you!” exclaimed Sue, suddenly excited. “You mean comin’ to see me in Flag?”

  “Perhaps! But I shall not tell you now.”

  Sue gave her a steady gaze, thoughtful, wondering; and then replied, “Shore I could tell you somethin’, too, only I won’t now.”

  Higgenbottom placed Sue’s aunt next to him in line, then Mrs. Price, then Sue and Patricia, and let the others fall in as they chose. They rode in single file down a road behind the hotel, across a wide flat past a rather picturesque building, that Sue said was the Bright Angel Inn, and so on to where the trail headed gradually down into the cedars.

  Patricia saw where a great notch cut into the rim, and it was down the near side of this depression that the trail zigzagged. It was a wide, well-trodden trail, not at all steep at the start. Patricia failed to feel the trepidation she had expected: indeed she seemed quite gay, and she even found herself shouting bantering replies to some of the facetious remarks made by those behind her.

  “Auntie, let your mule alone,” protested Sue. “You don’t have to turn his haid that way. He doesn’t like it. What do you suppose he’s learned, traveling up and down this trail a thousand times?”

  “My dear, mules are like some people—they never learn anythin’,” declared her aunt. “This one doesn’t want to go anywhere but back.”

  The trail zigzagged down a pine-wooded slope that hid the canyon from sight. It began to grow steeper now. The yellow wall of rock on the other side of the notch loomed above them as the trail pitched ever downward. How scarred it was, and seamed! From above on the rim it had looked different; now, as she descended toward the river, far, far below, she began to appreciate the canyon’s tremendous depth. Sue observed her craning her neck.

  “That’s what they call ‘the Limestone’,” she said. “Reckon it’s aboot a thousand feet. Some cliff, don’t you think?”

  “It’s amazing. Indeed, I’m glad I didn’t try to form any positive conceptions of size and distance. I can see now, I’d have to change them.”

  “Shore. It’ll be better for you to pay attention to the trail and things near at hand,” advised Sue. “Then as y
ou go down you meet places close up, and in the end you’ve passed from near to far.”

  Patricia thought it good advice. Besides she did not want a recurrence of her mood of yesterday. That was for lonely vigils. Today she would try to enter into the spirit of the trip as the other tourists were—as something of fun and adventure. They seemed impressed, naturally, by the majesty of the canyon walls and the color and beauty, but not in any sense overwhelmed.

  “Sue, how often have you been down?” she inquired.

  “Let’s see, four—no, six times down Bright Angel, and two down Hermit trail. I’ve come with normal-school girls, as a sort of amateur guide.”

  “So many! And do you still find it thrilling?”

  “I shore do. Reckon I love it more every trip. But I’m a little worried this time. That mule Auntie’s on is going to balk with her shore as shootin’. If he does it in a bad place, she’ll be scared.”

  The trail grew narrower, steeper, more crooked; it passed under beetling gray walls, and through cuts in the rocks so narrow that she bumped her knees, and around abrupt corners where she could not see anyone either ahead or behind. After that there was a level stretch where the narrow trail rounded a bold bluff, with a sheer, breath-taking drop to the left. Patricia did not look a second time. She heard Mrs. Price say she wished she had stayed on top; and behind, one of the women screamed.

  “Let your mule have his own way,” called the guide, with a reassuring grin on his ruddy face.

  Patricia began to have some conception of how it must feel going down into a mine. Above, the great walls closed in, seemingly to blot out the sky. Below, the green and yellow slope apparently ended; she caught a glimpse of blue space, where there was nothing, and it looked as if she were riding to a point where further progress would be impossible. Yet the trail always found a way, mostly down, but often on a level and sometimes up-grade for a brief space.

  Sue told her that they had descended from the Limestone to the Red Rock. The change was striking. The large pine trees gave way to cedars, then even the cedars became stunted, finally yielding to brush. Huge boulders alternated with rocks of every size and shape, many that evidently had rolled from the cracked walls above and seemed poised as if they might start rolling again at any moment. To ride beneath one of these great balancing rocks shook Patricia’s nerve, but the trail wound past so many that she grew used to them. Wilder and more rugged became the slopes, steeper and darker of hue, with less and less green foliage to be seen. Suddenly they rounded a sharp turn and could see the trail zigzagging to a sheer, dizzy descent. The guide halted, looking nonchalantly back.

  “Heavens!” ejaculated Mrs. Price. “Do we have to ride down there?”

  “Jacob’s Ladder. It ain’t bad,” replied Higgenbottom. “Wait till we hit the Devil’s Corkscrew!”

  “Well, this is devilish enough for me,” declared Sue’s aunt. “I’m goin’ to walk.”

  “Auntie, don’t pay any attention to Tine,” advised Sue. “I told you he’d tease you. Nobody rides down heah. Everybody walks.”

  “Thank goodness!” declared Patricia as she dismounted behind Sue.

  The trail here appeared slanted to an angle of forty-five degrees and would have presented a serious obstacle to most tourists if sapling poles had not been laid step after step down to where the descent became more gradual again. Patricia mounted her mule and once again rode along behind Sue. It was growing noticeably warmer in the canyon. The cleft down which they had descended grew wider as they approached what appeared to be a triangular-shaped plateau, spreading toward the black ragged line that Sue said marked the second or Marble Canyon. It did not seem possible to the New York girl that they would be able to get past a huge break in the wall below; but the trail took another unexpected turn to go around the narrow head of a gorge, and she could see it stretching level over red rock for a long distance ahead. Beyond that, it went down and down, crossing the bottom of the gorge and working its way onto another gigantic step-off. The abyss yawned again on Patricia’s left; and when Sue called out warningly: “Keep your haid, heah!” the sensations of height and depth began to assume proportions that dwarfed any she had felt before. The trail was only a yard wide, with an overhanging cliff to the right and the bottomless pit on the left. Then it began to ascend. Patricia saw above her a corner of red wall. Here the trail seemed to disappear completely. Higgenbottom reached the point, and turned to call lazily: “Lover’s Leap. Watch your step!” Sue let out a peal of silvery laughter. “Listen to that cowboy,” she said to Patricia. “Don’t you believe him. He’s only kiddin’ me. Nels and I once had a scrap right heah. Nels swore he’d jump off the corner there. And I dared him to. Shore it was a bluff.”

  Mrs. Price vanished around the corner; then Sue’s aunt, and then Sue. Patricia’s mule reached it, but instead of turning close to the wall, as had the others, he deliberately walked out the few feet of that jutting point and stood on the very verge of a precipice that seemed to have no bottom. He looked down; he wagged his ears. Patricia was terrified, but she did not yield to a frantic desire to scream and jerk the mule back. One of the women in the line behind cried out. They all halted.

  “Let him alone!” came Sue’s clear warning voice. Then Patricia remembered that she was astride Joker, the wise old mule who played tricks on tenderfoot tourists. Presently he wagged his ears and stepped back, very carefully, foot by foot, until he bumped into the wall, whereupon he turned into the trail and went on. The New York girl’s heart descended from her throat; and all of a sudden she was weak, cold perspiration breaking out on her face.

  Sue was waiting ahead along the trail. Manifestly she was trying her best to look concerned when she wanted to give way to glee.

  “That stubborn old mule tried it on you, didn’t he?” she queried demurely.

  “Sue Warren! You knew he would,” cried Patricia accusingly.

  “Why—Miss—Clay,” said Sue haltingly. Then she ducked her telltale face, and her merry laugh rang out. The cowboy guide followed suit, and his “haw haw” came echoing back from the opposite cliff and bellowed down the gorge.

  Patricia regretted she could not share the mirth of these young westerners. But considering that she was still trembling and her breast had not yet recovered from its caved-in sensation, she felt that she could not quite get their point of view. She had heard and read how westerners played tricks on easterners. It was not quite beyond her to think of one in retaliation. Yet, when composure had fully returned, she warmed to them only the more.

  The descent varied and the trail still held curves and grades that made Patricia’s heart skip many a beat. There were no more stops, however, and at last the guide led them out of a narrow defile onto the apex of that triangular plateau which they had seen from above. From up there it had appeared level, but now they could see that it sloped downhill, rugged and rough for a considerable distance.

  As Patricia approached the Indian Gardens, she found that what from the rim had appeared to be a green dot was in reality a beautiful oasis of cottonwoods and willows among which tents and cottages nestled. A stream of crystal water babbled between borders of bright green grass.

  The guide led his party out across the plateau. Patricia saw the white trail winding across the undulating gray barren. Sue pointed out where it forked, one branch running down into a dark cleft and the other continuing out across the plateau.

  “Some trail parties go on down to the Colorado and some out to the rim of Marble Canyon,” explained Sue. “I chose this halfway trip for Auntie because it’s not so hard. When I come over again we’ll shore take the river trip.”

  Over this rolling wide plateau, Patricia was conscious of neither mule nor trail, but only of the majesty of the scenery all about her. Stupendous walls of red sheered up from the plateau, and above them, step by step, yellow and green slopes led aloft to the magnificent belt of limestone, and high over that towered the fringed rim, remote and far away. The gap by which they had descende
d seemed nothing but a tiny crack in the walls. Before her spread the plateau, miles across, and beyond it rose a succession of upflung pyramids, colossal at the base, and slanting to turrets, parapets, domes and peaks, pinnacles and crags, rising to the dignity of mountain summits. The golden, black-fringed belt of the North Rim, which she well remembered, was hidden from sight.

  What a wild and naked world of rock, glaring under the noonday sun! It was unreal, ghastly, stark, yet of a noble austerity that exalted the soul. Patricia felt insulated, bound, shut off from the cool heights, lost in the depths of the rock-riven earth. Was it too vast, too huge for beauty—this varicolored canyon that was only a crack in the greater canyon?

  She became aware, presently, that Sue had dismounted and was waiting.

  “I’ve something for you,” she said, “Take off your glove.” And she raised her closed hand.

  “No!’’ exclaimed Patricia.

  “But it’s very beautiful,” protested Sue.

  “I don’t care if it is. I’ll bet you’ve a bug or something horrid.”

  “Are you afraid, tenderfoot?” bantered Sue, yet with a challenge in her voice.

  Patricia pulled off her glove and held out her hand. Sue put hers over it and left something warm and throbbing in her palm. Then the eastern girl’s eyes fell upon a tiny horned toad, scalloped and ridged, softly red and gray and bronze, with eyes like jewels.

  “There. That’s the desert for you,” declared Sue. “In the palm of your hand.”

  “It’s beautiful—if that’s what you want me to see,” returned Patricia.

  Sue took the toad and set it free upon the ground. “Run away and keep out of the trail. Some rider whose eyes are not so sharp as mine will let his horse step on you.”

  “That toad was the most perfect example of protective coloration I ever saw,” remarked Patricia.

  “Yes. I’d never seen him if he’d kept squatted down. But he ran.”