Roughing it De Luxe Part 2

"I beg your pardon," I asked, "but what did you say would be out tonight?"

"We were just speakin' to one another about them Hydrophoby Skunks,"

said Bill apologetically. "This here Canon is where they mostly hang out and frolic 'round."

I laid down my cigar, too. I admit I was interested.

"Oh!" I said softly--like that. "Is it? Do they?"

"Yes," said Johnny. "I reckin there's liable to be one come shovin' his old nose into that door any minute. Or probably two--they mostly travels in pairs--sets, as you might say."

"You'd know one the minute you saw him, though," said Bill. "They're smaller than a regular skunk and spotted where the other kind is striped. And they got little red eyes. You won't have no trouble at all recognizin' one."

It was at this juncture that we both got up and moved back by the stove.

It was warmer there and the chill of evening seemed to be settling down noticeably.

"Funny thing about Hydrophoby Skunks," went on Johnny after a moment of pensive thought--"mad, you know!"

"What makes them mad?" The two of us asked the question together.

"Born that way!" explained Bill--"mad from the start, and won't never do nothin' to get shut of it."

"Ahem--they never attack humans, I suppose?"

"Don't they?" said Johnny, as if surprised at such ignorance. "Why, humans is their favorite pastime! Humans is just pie to a Hydrophoby Skunk. It ain't really any fun to be bit by a Hydrophoby Skunk neither."

He raised his coffee cup to his lips and imbibed deeply.

"Which you certainly said something then, Johnny," stated Bill. "You see," he went on, turning to us, "they aim to catch you asleep and they creep up right soft and take holt of you--take holt of a year usually--and clamp their teeth and just hang on for further orders. Some says they hang on till it thunders, same as snappin' turtles. But that's a lie, I judge, because there's weeks on a stretch down here when it don't thunder. All the cases I ever heard of they let go at sun-up."

"It is right painful at the time," said Johnny, taking up the thread of the narrative; "and then in nine days you go mad yourself. Remember that fellow the Hydrophoby Skunk bit down here by the rapids, Bill? Let's see now--what was that hombre's name?"

"Williams," supplied Bill--"Heck Williams. I saw him at Flagstaff when they took him there to the hospital. That guy certainly did carry on regardless. First he went mad and his eyes turned red, and he got so he didn't have no real use for water--well, them prospectors don't never care much about water anyway--and then he got to snappin' and bitin' and foamin' so's they had to strap him down to his bed. He got loose though."

"Broke loose, I suppose?" I said.

"No, he bit loose," said Bill with the air of one who would not deceive you even in a matter of small details.

"Do you mean to say he bit those leather straps in two?"

"No, sir; he couldn't reach them," explained Bill, "so he bit the bed in two. Not in one bite, of course," he went on. "It took him several. I saw him after he was laid out. He really wasn't no credit to himself as a corpse."

I'm not sure, but I think my companion and I were holding hands by now.

Outside we could hear that little lost echo laughing to itself. It was no time to be laughing either. Under certain circ.u.mstances I don't know of a lonelier place anywhere on earth than that Grand Canon.

Presently my friend spoke, and it seemed to me his voice was a mite husky. Well, he had a bad cold.

"You said they mostly attack persons who are sleeping out, didn't you?"

"That's right, too," said Johnny, and Bill nodded in affirmation.

"Then, of course, since we sleep indoors everything will be all right,"

I put in.

"Well, yes and no," answered Johnny. "In the early part of the evening a hydrophoby is liable to do a lot of prowlin' round outdoors; but toward mornin' they like to get into camps--they dig up under the side walls or come up through the floor--and they seem to prefer to get in bed with you. They're cold-blooded, I reckin, same as rattlesnakes. Cool nights always do drive 'em in, seems like."

"It's going to be sort of coolish to-night," said Bill casually.

It certainly was. I don't remember a chillier night in years. My teeth were chattering a little--from cold--before we turned in. I retired with all my clothes on, including my boots and leggings, and I wished I had brought along my earm.u.f.fs. I also b.u.t.toned my watch into my lefthand s.h.i.+rt pocket, the idea being if for any reason I should conclude to move during the night I would be fully equipped for traveling. The door would not stay closely shut--the doorjamb had sagged a little and the wind kept blowing the door ajar. But after a while we dozed off.

It was one-twenty-seven A.M. when I woke with a violent start. I know this was the exact time because that was when my watch stopped. I peered about me in the darkness. The door was wide open--I could tell that.

Down on the floor there was a dragging, scuffling sound, and from almost beneath me a pair of small red eyes peered up phosph.o.r.escently.

"He's here!" I said to my companion as I emerged from my blankets; and he, waking instantly, seemed instinctively to know whom I meant. I used to wonder at the ease with which a c.o.c.kroach can climb a perfectly smooth wall and run across the ceiling. I know now that to do this is the easiest thing in the world--if you have the proper incentive behind you. I had gone up one wall of the tent and had crossed over and was in the act of coming down the other side when Bill burst in, his eyes blurred with sleep, a lighted lamp in one hand and a gun in the other.

I never was so disappointed in my life because it wasn't a Hydrophobic Skunk at all. It was a pack rat, sometimes called a trade rat, paying us a visit. The pack or trade rat is also a denizen of the Grand Canon. He is about four times as big as an ordinary rat and has an appet.i.te to correspond. He sometimes invades your camp and makes free with your things, but he never steals anything outright--he merely trades with you; hence his name. He totes off a side of meat or a bushel of meal and brings a cactus stalk in; or he will confiscate your saddlebags and leave you in exchange a nice dry chip. He is honest, but from what I can gather he never gets badly stuck on a deal.

Next morning at breakfast Johnny and Bill were doing a lot of laughing between them over something or other. But we had our revenge! About noon, as we were emerging at the head of the trail, we met one of the guides starting down with a couple that, for the sake of convenience, we had christened Clarence and Clarice. Shorty hailed us.

"How's everything down at the camp?" he inquired.

"Oh, all right!" replied Bill--"only there's a good many of them Hydrophoby Skunks pesticatin' about. Last night we seen four."

Clarence and Clarice crossed startled glances, and it seemed to me that Clarice's cheek paled a trifle; or it may have been Clarence's cheek that paled. He bent forward and asked Shorty something, and as we departed full of joy and content we observed that Shorty was composing himself to unload that stock horror tale. It made us very happy.

By common consent we had named them Clarence and Clarice on their arrival the day before. At first glance we decided they must have come from Back Bay, Boston--probably by way of Lenox, Newport and Palm Beach; if Harvard had been a co-educational inst.i.tution we should have figured them as products of Cambridge. It was a shock to us all when we learned they really hailed from Chicago. They were nearly of a height and a breadth, and similar in complexion and general expression; and immediately after arriving they had appeared for the ride down the Bright Angel in riding suits that were identical in color, cut and effect--long-tailed, tight-b.u.t.toned coats; derby hats; stock collars; s.h.i.+ny top boots; cute little crops, and form-fitting riding trousers with those Bartlett pear extensions mids.h.i.+ps and aft--and the prevalent color was a soft, melting, misty gray, like a cow's breath on a frosty morning. Evidently they had both patronized the same tailor.

He was a wonder, that tailor. Using practically the same stage effects, he had, nevertheless, succeeded in making Clarence look feminine and Clarice look masculine. We had gone down to the rim to see them off. And when they pa.s.sed us in all the gorgeousness of their city bridle-path regalia, enthroned on s.h.a.ggy mules, behind a flock of tourists in nondescript yet appropriate attire, and convoyed by a cowboy who had no reverence in his soul for the good, the sweet and the beautiful, but kept sn.i.g.g.e.ring to himself in a low, coa.r.s.e way, we felt--all of us--that if we never saw another thing we were amply repaid for our journey to Arizona.

The exactly opposite angle of this phenomenon was presented by a certain Eastern writer, a member, as I recall, of the Jersey City school of Wild West story writers, who went to Arizona about two years ago to see if the facts corresponded with his fiction; if not he would take steps to have the facts altered--I believe that was the idea. He reached El Tovar at Grand Canon in the early morning, hurried at once to his room and presently appeared attired for breakfast. Competent eyewitnesses gave me the full details. He wore a flannel s.h.i.+rt that was unb.u.t.toned at the throat to allow his Adam's apple full sweep, a hunting coat, buckskin pants and high boots, and about his waist was a broad belt supporting on one side a large revolver--one of the automatic kind, which you start in to shooting by pulling the trigger merely and then have to throw a bucket of water on it to make it stop--and on the other side, as a counterpoise, was a buck-handled bowie knife such as was so universally not used by the early pioneers of our country.

As he crossed the lobby, jangling like a milk wagon, he created a p.r.o.nounced impression upon all beholders. The hotel is managed by an able veteran of the hotel business, a.s.sisted by a charming and accomplished wife; it is patronized by scientists, scholars and cosmopolitans, who come from all parts of the world to see the Grand Canon; and it is as up-to-the-minute in its appointments and service as though it fronted on Broadway, or Chestnut Street, or Pennsylvania Avenue.

Our hero careened across the intervening s.p.a.ce. On reaching the dining room he s.n.a.t.c.hed off his coat and, with a gesture that would have turned Hackett or Faversham as green with envy as a processed stringbean, flung it aside and prepared to enter. It was plain that he proposed to put on no airs before the simple children of the desert wilds. He would eat his antelope steak and his grizzly b'ar chuck in his s.h.i.+rt-sleeves, the way Kit Carson and Old Man Bridger always did.

[Ill.u.s.tration: HE WAS A REGULAR MOVING PICTURE COWBOY AND GAVE GENERAL SATISFACTION]

The young woman who presides over the dining room met him at the door.

In the cool, clarified accents of a Wellesley graduate, which she is, she invited him to have on his things if he didn't mind. She also offered to take care of his hardware for him while he was eating. He consented to put his coat back on, but he clung to his weapons--there was no telling when the Indians might start an uprising. Probably at the moment it would have deeply pained him to learn that the only Indian uprising reported in these parts in the last forty years was a carbuncle on the back of the neck of Uncle Hopi Hooligan, the gentle copper-colored floorwalker of the white-goods counter in the Hopi House, adjacent to the hotel!

However, he stayed on long enough to discover that even this far west ordinary human garments make a most excellent protective covering for the stranger. Many of the tourists do not do this. They arrive in the morning, take a hurried look at the Canon, mail a few postal cards, buy a Navajo blanket or two and are out again that night. Yet they could stay on for a month and make every hour count. To begin with, there is the Canon, worth a week of anybody's undivided attention. Within easy reach are the Painted Desert and the Petrified Forests--thousands of acres of trees turned to solid agate. If these things were in Europe they would be studded thick with hotels and Americans by the thousand would flock across the seas to look at them. There are cliff-dwellers'

ruins older than ancient Babylon and much less expensive.

The reservations of the Hopis and the Navajos, most distinctive of all the Southern tribes, are handy, while all about stretches a big Government reserve full of natural wonders and unnatural ones, too--everything on earth except a Lover's Leap. There are unexcelled facilities for Lover's Leaps, too--thousands of appropriate places are within easy walking distance of the hotel; but no lover ever yet cared to leap where he would have to drop five or six thousand feet before he landed. He'd be such a mussy lover; no satisfaction to himself then--or to the undertaker, either.

However, as I was saying, most of the tourists run in on the morning train and out again on the evening train. To this breed belonged a youth who dropped in during our stay; I think he must have followed the crowd in. As he came out from breakfast I chanced to be standing on the side veranda and I presume he mistook me for one of the hired help. This mistake has occurred before when I was stopping at hotels.

"My friend," he said to me in the patronizing voice of an experienced traveler, "is there anything interesting to see round here at this time of day?"

Either he had not heard there was a Grand Canon going on regularly in that vicinity or he may have thought it was open only for matinees and evenings. So I took him by the hand and led him over to the curio store and let him look at the Mexican drawnwork. It seemed to satisfy him, too--until by chance he glanced out of a window and discovered that the Canon was in the nature of a continuous performance.