WONDERS OF THE GRAND CANYON

Stacy was the only member of the Overland party who cared to eat when they reached the lunch station. Some of the girls took tea, but merely sipped it as they watched the fat boy eat a hearty meal.

Camp was made that night near the station, and on the following morning they rode away over the Government road around the shore of the West Arm, after which they were to make a detour to reach the lake again at Bridge Bay. From there it was but a short journey to the Lake Hotel.

“Jim, when do the stages come through?” called Lieutenant Wingate after the outfit had gotten well under way.

“We’ll meet one to-day,” replied the guide. “Others will be along to-morrow, and the day after, too, I reckon, but we may not see any after we git past the Lake Hotel, ’cause we might strike off from the trail there. I haven’t decided ’bout that yet.”

“The rougher they come the better we like it,” chuckled Hippy.

“May we catch fish where we’re going?” asked Stacy eagerly. “Cook and catch fish?”

“You mean catch and cook, don’t you?” reminded Nora.

“Either way so long as we get the fish inside of us,” averred Stacy. “I don’t care whether you cook them before you catch them, or catch them before you cook them, or whether you eat them before doing either. It’s the fish, not the—”

“Do you know,” interjected Emma, “I don’t believe there is anything in the brain-food theory?”

The Overlanders saw the point and laughed heartily, and Stacy regarded Emma narrowly. They did not stop at the Lake Hotel, but continued on and camped near the base of Elephant Back Mountain.

That evening Tom Gray gave them a talk on the Yellowstone Lake. He said the lake was about a mile and a half above the level of the sea, having an area of one hundred and thirty-nine square miles, the average depth being thirty feet, although in places it was said to be three hundred feet deep.

“Yes, few lakes in the world surpass it in either area, altitude or beauty,” added Tom Gray. “Where else will you find ice-cold water on the one hand and boiling hot on the other, both easily reached by the stretching out of the hands at one and the same time?”

“I know,” cried Stacy. “Ask me something harder.”

“Well, where, Mr. Smarty?” demanded Nora.

Stacy confessed that he didn’t know, but that he was certain he could think of a place if he were to ponder long enough.

“Don’t try it,” warned Emma. “For your information, Stacy Brown, outside the kitchen stove in winter time you will find the ice water, and the boiling water inside,” Emma informed him amid peals of laughter.

At this juncture, Hippy rose to make a speech.

“We find ourselves amid scenes of almost overpowering beauty,” he began.

“Present company excepted,” muttered Stacy.

“Mountains tower thousands of feet above the surface of the lake, the latter being fed almost wholly by the springs and snows of the—of the Absaroka Range, the mountains forming a picturesque background to the shores of the lake, and—and—” Hippy’s voice died away.

“Permit me to help you out, Hippy,” offered Emma sweetly. “What you would say, had you not forgotten the piece you committed to memory from the guide book, is, Nature has lavished her most extraordinary gifts on the region of the Yellowstone. Here are wild woodland, carpeted with varicolored flowers, crystal rivers, thundering cataracts, gorgeous canyons, sparkling cascades, birds and animals; but of all its wonders none is so unusual, so startling, so weird, as the spouting geysers, especially the one that wears Captain Gray’s pajamas and Stacy Brown’s shirt,” finished Emma in a gale of laughter from her companions.

That night the water in their cooking utensils froze, and the Overlanders rose in the morning chilled to the marrow. A brisk run up and down, while Jim was building the fire, restored their circulation and their spirits.

“Our altitude above sea level is seven thousand, seven hundred and thirty-eight feet,” announced Tom Gray. “No wonder the water froze last night.”

Their route, from that point on, lay along the west bank of the Yellowstone River on their way to the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone. They started out early in the morning, and by sunrise were well on their way. On their right the guide pointed out the profile of the Sleeping Giant on a high mountain range, the features being coated with snow.

“It’s a wonder he doesn’t freeze his face,” commented Stacy.

“Perhaps he would were it as soft as some persons,” suggested Emma demurely.

“Ouch!” cried Stacy. “That one went home.”

“Yes, the place where you ought to be,” added Nora.

“Home is all right when a fellow hasn’t any other place to go to. Of course home is the place for girls because all they can do is to chatter and try to look pretty,” retorted Chunky.

The journey was made without incident, unless the perpetual cloud of dust could be called an incident. Dust seems a necessary part of Government roads in the Yellowstone, and the Overland Riders were covered with it ere they had proceeded far on their way.

When within a mile or so of the Canyon Hotel, the murmur of rushing waters was borne to their ears. It was a welcome sound, and the guide informed them that it was the Yellowstone Rapids that they heard. The river, which up to that time had flowed along peacefully, was now forced close up to the Government road by the canyon walls. Mountainous boulders obstructed its passage, the waters plunging wildly between steep banks and over rocks, breaking into boisterous waterfalls and hurling the spray high in the air. Stacy said it reminded him of a blizzard in Chillicothe.

Camp was made without taking a look at the canyon. After a day of hard riding, dust and discomfort, they had little desire for scenery, and further, it was decided to have their first look at this wonder of nature in the early morning.

That first view was taken from Grand Point just as the sun was rising over the mountains, a view that drew exclamations of wonder from each pair of lips. The canyon, though not so vast as the Grand Canyon of the Colorado, was different. This one wound in and out for more than twenty miles, being about two thousand feet broad at the top and some two hundred feet at the bottom.

“Stupendous!” breathed Elfreda Briggs as they strolled out on Lookout Point, a great projection of rock overhanging the canyon. Here the Overlanders gazed in wonder from the painted walls, for which the canyon is famed, to the snowy waterfalls and river, the latter tracing its way like a slender ribbon of silver set amid all the colors of the rainbow.

“It is awesome!” breathed Grace Harlowe. “The little shower that has just passed, has varnished the rocks and brought out the colors with splendid effect.”

The rush and roar of the lower falls, half a mile distant, could be plainly heard, and the mist that rose from them drifted slowly up into the air, where it was caught by the rays of the morning sun, forming an exquisite rainbow that brought murmurs of wonder from the entranced Overland Riders.

“This is known as Moran Point,” announced the guide after they had moved to another promontory from which to view the splendid scenery.

“Oh, yes,” nodded Tom. “It must have been here that Thomas Moran painted the sketches for his great Yellowstone picture now in the capitol at Washington. The statement is attributed to Moran that fully a million tints and shades of color are represented here.”

“I can well believe it,” nodded Grace.

“I think I should like to have a nice big pot of each one of those colors,” spoke up Stacy. “At a dollar per I’d have some money, wouldn’t I?”

“I do not think you would. Before you could sell it you would fall somewhere and spill it all,” retorted Emma.

At the guide’s suggestion they followed the road along the edge of the canyon, finding many things to interest them, things that, while small in comparison with the canyon itself, were well worth their attention. Through the rustling pines they caught a glimpse of Castle Rock, rising nearly two thousand feet above the valley, and right among the pines that had grown up about it they came upon an enormous block of granite, weighing, Tom Gray estimated, fully a thousand tons.

“Is there any other granite like that in these parts?” he asked.

“No,” answered Badger. “It’s the only granite I know of within a hundred miles of here. They call this block the ‘Devil’s Watch Charm.’”

“I suppose the great question is, ‘Where did it come from?’” suggested Miss Briggs.

“Yes. It undoubtedly was transported here in the Glacial Age, and possibly was rolled and hurled hundreds of miles, grinding its way amid the ice of that remote age,” said Tom.

“Br-r-r-r!” shivered Stacy. “Had I lived then I should have had cold feet all the time.”

“Again, why the past tense?” questioned Emma.

Stacy grumbled, but had nothing to say, and by now the party was turning back towards camp. On their way they met a coach with a party of tourists from the Canyon Hotel in charge of the proprietor. The latter, so the Overlanders were informed, was about to make his daily trip to the bottom of the canyon, as he expressed it, “for a little exercise and to take the stiffness out of my joints.”

The canyon bottom lay a thousand feet below them at that point, Grand View, and the sides of the canyon were steep and rugged.

“What? Are you going down there?” ejaculated Elfreda.

“Yes. I do it nearly every day. Wish to come with me?”

“In order to break my neck? Oh, no,” replied the young lawyer.

The hotel man laughed as he turned and leaped out over the precipice and landed lightly on a narrow ledge of rock. Scarcely pausing to regain his balance, he sprang to another rock and on from rock to rock with the skill of a mountain goat until he reached the bottom.

Emma Dean had watched this feat intently, face flushed and eyes bright.

“No, you’ll not do as he’s done, Emma,” chortled Stacy. “You’re a ’fraid-cat and don’t dare do what we men do.” With the words Stacy took a running start and leaped for the ledge on which the hotel man had first landed. Stacy tottered, but before losing his balance entirely he sprang for the next rock, and so saved himself from a plunge into the abyss.

While the Overlanders and the hotel guests were still gasping they were startled again by seeing Emma leap from the top and go lightly from rock to rock as she made the perilous descent to the bottom of the gorge.

Hippy had run forward with the evident intention of following the reckless pair, even if he could not prevent the foolish act; but Tom put his hand on the lieutenant’s arm.

“No use, Hippy. They’ll either reach the bottom safely or—Well, in that case, you would not be in time to prevent the accident.”

The hotel guests, with a less personal interest in the outcome, watched the pair with fascination. Emma, light, graceful, and sure-footed, reached the bottom and turned to wave her hand to those above. But poor clumsy Chunky jumped and rolled and stumbled, and when he finally reached the floor of the gorge, though alive and not seriously hurt, was torn and disheveled and scratched, with blood oozing from superficial cuts.

Emma eyed the boy a moment, then broke into gales of laughter. The hotel man, being a kindly soul, tried to suppress his amusement. But Emma’s laugh was irresistible, together with the boy’s woe-begone appearance, and he finally laughed unrestrainedly.

“I got here, didn’t I? What’s so funny about that?” blustered Chunky.

“Anyway, you’re not a ’fraid-cat—any more than I am. But, oh, how you look!” and again Emma laughed.

“How do we get out of here?” asked Stacy, largely to change the subject.

“You climb and clamber out, young man.”

Stacy turned fiercely to the hotel man.

“Do you mean that I’ve got to scramble up over those rocks to the top? It can’t be done!”

“It has been done over and over. It has to be done unless you wish to spend the rest of your life down here.”

Stacy groaned and Emma said:

“I don’t like the idea any too well myself. But what has to be, has to be. Come, little boy, let’s start.”

It was a difficult climb, and Emma was red in the face and panting when she finally rejoined her friends. When Stacy appeared three quarters of an hour later he looked so battered that some of the spectators were sorry for him, some alarmed, even though he did look funny as he struggled to strut up to the Overland group as though nothing had happened. But when one girl remarked mockingly, the while she laughed, “Isn’t he the funny child?” the rest, in spite of themselves, joined the laughter.

“Perhaps you folks think I’m some kind of joke or a baby or—or—”

“A brainless person,” suggested Emma.

“I’m a man,” went on the boy brazenly. “I’m a lion tamer! lean—”

Exclamations and screams interrupted this harangue.

“A bear with cubs, and something or somebody’s disturbed her!” shouted some one.

“Run, everybody! She’s angry!”

Everybody did run, Stacy Brown, the “lion tamer,” in the fore, toward the coach that had brought the hotel guests to the spot, into which most of them climbed in haste.

The bear paused, then, as the menace to her cubs seemed less imminent, turned and led them back toward the woods. Seeing this, Stacy Brown bounced out of the coach and took after the retreating bear.

“Stacy!” called Hippy angrily. “Come back!”

“Watch me catch a bear first!”

But Chunky did not catch the bear. Again aroused by what seemed danger to her cubs, the mother bear turned and charged the oncoming boy. Her paw flashed through the air, and the boy was sent rolling into the road.

Before a further onset by the angry animal, Tom threw a stone with sure aim, which struck the beast on her nose. She whirled, and, seeing her cubs, again set out for the woods.

“Alors! Let’s go!” urged J. Elfreda Briggs.

“Yes, let’s get Stacy away before he kills himself or makes fools out of us all,” grumbled Hippy.