The Boy With the U. S. Survey Part 19

So when Roger had packed the little heliograph instrument in as small compa.s.s as possible, in order that it might not be ungainly in the saddle, and gone to the edge of the Canyon to look over, the scene struck him with loneliness. In precisely the same place, two months before, he had stood and made up his mind to risk the peril of that single-handed journey, and his courage began to revive as he remembered how well it had resulted. Down below him he could see Bright Angel Creek, and far away, the peak to which he had signaled, all redolent of the interest of the summer now fast waning. Even the trail upon which he set out to return was full of the memories of his frontiersman friend, who had lightened the way with anecdote and information on his first journey there.

But while Roger was inly conscious of a feeling of isolation in being thus cut off from all the Survey parties, and looked forward to his ride to Needles with little antic.i.p.ation, that sense was not shared by Duke, who, having twice before with Roger traversed the high Kaibab plateau, remembered well the succulent long bunch-gra.s.s, the fragrant lupine and the toothsome wild oats. For the Kaibab plateau, lying high and therefore being moister than the surrounding territory, is a veritable garden. The gently declining ravines, instead of being filled with boulders at the bottom, are decked with flowers and their bases are avenues of smooth, rich lawn; on the banks rise spruces and pines, with the white trunks and pale foliage of the quivering aspen; and on the table-land above in wild profusion grow every sort of herb and plant and flower.

The desert lies to the north, the inaccessible Canyon to the south, an alkali waste to the westward, and the desolate cactus land to the east, but the Kaibab plateau, 8,000 feet above the sea, is a sylvan paradise.

Yet there is no running water, and travel over it must be well within reach of trails. Here alone, in this vast arid tract, it rains frequently, but the rains form no streams, for the whole plateau is pitted with cups or depressions ten to twenty feet across, into which the water runs, and through which by some underground pa.s.sages it disappears only to swell in some invisible manner the swollen torrent of the Colorado, 6,000 feet below.

Through this plateau Roger rode slowly, enjoying its peacefulness the while. No great hurry consumed him, his present work was done, and until he reached Prescott, he was his own master. Duke, moreover, had fared ill in the hard riding of the past few weeks, and so it was by very easy stages that the boy crossed the Kaibab, and indeed, loafed one whole week in the wonderful De La Motte Park, in the midst of the plateau, to give his horse a rest and to let him fill out his bones a little on the succulent gra.s.ses. A most beautiful country to enter--and a hard one to leave. No artificial maze is more confusing, for enticing as the ravines are, they are all exactly alike, no landmarks exist by which a direction may be followed, and the valleys themselves wind and double like a frightened hare.

Roger, however, had crossed this forest the first time with the frontiersman, who knew the trails like a book, and he had learned the general lie of the country from him. Besides, the lad had imbibed enough woodcraft since his appointment on the Survey to enable him to follow a trail, no matter how faint or tortuous, a thing which even the Mormon herders who follow the mazes of the wood with a keenness equal to that of the Indians, and with more intelligence, admit is a difficult thing to do.

But idleness was in no sense a characteristic of Roger's make-up, and he was glad when he reached Stewart's Canyon, where the main trail took a direct road northwards to round the Dragon and the Little Dragon and to skirt the Virgin Range still further to the northward. But as the trail descended into the valley and the alt.i.tude became less, it was seen that Paradise was left behind. Instead of pines and aspens, the ferocious and forbidding cactus took its place. The yuccas or Spanish bayonets, the p.r.i.c.kly pear, the gaunt Sahaura and the spiny devil, together with other truculent barbarians of the vegetable kingdom convinced the boy that he had left behind all the attractive part of his trip.

To the west, Roger quickened his pace and pa.s.sed over the Shewitz plateau, crossing stretches of lava, black and recent-looking, as though they had been erupted but a few years before. Then, coming to the famous geological break in the rocks known as the Hurricane Fault, he turned sharply to the south through the plain uninteresting territory of Eastern Nevada and California and reached the Needles again with little trouble to himself or Duke. By this time Roger felt quite at home in and about the Canyon, and he was conscious of boyish pride when the proprietor of El Garces, the big hotel at the Needles, welcomed him as an old traveler.

Changing at Prescott Junction, it was not long before Roger found himself in Prescott, a thriving and flourishing town of the Southwestern type. There Roger found a large packet of mail, letters from home, notes from former school friends to whom he had written at divers times throughout his trip, and which had been sent to Washington, his field address not being known. But the letter that was first opened bore no stamp, being franked with the seal of the United States Geological Survey.

As before, there was inclosed with the letter of instructions a personal letter from Mitchon, to the effect that favorable reports had been received and implying that his next party probably would be the last before his start on the Alaskan trip. The last few words made Roger almost leap with delight, for it was evidence to him that if he continued as well as he had begun, he would be accepted by Rivers, which throughout had been the goal of his ambition.

The letter of direction, moreover, was fairly pleasing, though couched in the usual dry official terms. It was to the effect that he should join the topographical party under the leadership of Mr. Gates, present post-office address being Aragon, County Presidio, Texas, and that the party was engaged in mapping the Shafter quadrangle. Borrowing a large atlas, the boy promptly proceeded to look up Aragon and Shafter, and found, to his delight, that it was near the boundary line of Mexico.

After scampering through the rest of his mail, Roger promptly went to the little depot and asked for a ticket to Aragon. Leisurely the agent went about filling his request, then, looking at him with half-shut eyes, said, with the easy familiarity of the West:

"Folks down there?"

"No," said Roger shortly, "going down on government business."

The agent's eyes opened slightly with a gleam of amus.e.m.e.nt in them.

"Ain't you pretty young for the Pecos country, son?" he said.

"Why?" asked the boy, quickly.

"Wa'al, it's pretty wild down there yet. It's nothing like what it used to be in the days when the Apaches used it as a sort o' Tom Tiddler's ground for picking up scalps, but I wouldn't go so fur as to call it an abode of peace, right now."

"But the Indians are all in reservations now!" said Roger, surprised at the suggestion of danger.

"That's right, son, so they are. But the Greasers ain't all dead yet, more's the pity."

"What's a Greaser?"

"Guess you don't know much about that saloobrious portion of the world if you ain't had the pleasure of a Greaser's company. Why, son, he's a varmint that's about one-fourth Mexican, one-fourth Spaniard, one-fourth Indian, and the other quarter just plain meanness. He's as venomous as a rattler, as sneaking as a coyote, as bad-tempered as a bob-cat, and just about as pretty to look at as a Gila monster."

Roger laughed.

"You don't seem to love them much," he said, "but I guess that description's coming it a little strong."

"Not a blamed bit!" answered the agent, handing the boy his ticket, "an'

you'll find out that the rest of the people down there are just about as fond of 'em as me. I lived down in Tombstone for some years, and I wouldn't take the whole county of Cochise for a gift unless I could teetotally banish all those cusses. Prescott ain't any lily-fingered Eastern town, by a long shot, but it's a Sunday school compared to the Pecos country, you can bet on that!"

"Well," replied the boy, nodding, "I'll try to come out of there alive, just the same."

"Hope you do, son," was the reply, "an' I'll give you jest one piece of advice which may help that hope along a lot. It's this--don't let any Greaser who has a grudge agin you get within' knifin' distance, or your camp mates will be picking out a nice chaste headstone and sending your last lovin' messages to your friends."

"All right," replied the boy cheerfully, "I'll keep it in mind."

The day following, Roger, having regretfully bidden good-by to Duke, boarded the train for the Pecos country, but the trip was so replete with wonder that there was no time for lamenting even the absence of a favorite horse. Pa.s.sing through Phoenix, which a few years ago was nothing but the desolate haunt of the dying consumptive, and which, through irrigation, has become one of the garden spots of the Southwest, they came to Casa Grande. Roger had never even heard of the place, but in the observation car an elderly man, who was traveling with his son, began speaking of the wonderful ruins that lay north of the road, and casually showed that he was going to stop off and visit them. After a moment's hesitation, Roger, who had been sitting close by, turned to him.

"I beg your pardon, sir," he said, "but I felt sure you would not mind my hearing what you said about the Casa Grande ruins."

"Not at all, my boy," was the ready reply, "I am only glad if I was able to interest you."

"Immensely," said Roger. He paused diffidently, then went on, "I am on the Geological Survey, sir," he said, "and on my way to join a new party, but have a day or two to spare, as the Director has been so kind as to give me opportunities to visit different fields of work to gain experience for a trip to Alaska next year. You said you were going to visit Casa Grande, and--I hope you won't mind my saying this--I should like to go with you if I might, and learn something about a place of which I know so little."

The elder man held out his hand.

"Glad to have you," he said, heartily, shaking hands. Then, turning, he introduced him to his son, Phil, a young fellow about Roger's age, and but very few minutes elapsed before the train stopped.

"Of course you know," said Roger's new friend, when they were in the stage and bowling through the plain, "that this part of the country is just full of evidences of a civilization far earlier than the Indians and earlier even than the Aztecs or Toltecs."

"But, father," said Phil, "I supposed the Aztecs were the first people in the country!"

"So do many people, Phil," was the reply, "but they were not. They were a wandering tribe, as Indians might be, who conquered a people older than themselves called the Nahoas, about whom we know very little. But the Aztecs achieved a good deal of skill in working in stone, and the fact that their monuments are not perishable, makes their civilization enduring in fame."

"Then the Nahoas were the first?" queried Roger.

But his informant shook his head, smiling slightly.

"They may have been," he answered, "but it seems very doubtful. I think we have to go back a great deal further when we start to look for early Americans."

"Why?"

"Because of the evident age of the remains. For example," he continued, "I don't suppose either of you has been noticing this road?"

"I've been wondering at it this last half hour," said Roger. "It isn't like any canyon that I ever saw, and by the way it cuts through different levels of strata it can't have been made by water. And if it's made by hand, why should they cut a road, when it could have been made on the level above with half the trouble?"

"You are observant, my boy, and your eye has been well trained," was the approving reply. "But you don't seem to realize that this may be artificial and yet not have been intended for a road, although it is so used now."

"Oh, I know," broke in Phil, "it must be a ca.n.a.l."

"Hardly big enough for a ca.n.a.l," said his father, "though you are on the right track. This was an irrigating ditch, and if you will notice, at almost regular intervals, smaller dry ditches fork from it. This desert through here is just honeycombed with works of irrigation, great aqueducts, ca.n.a.ls and lateral ditches, which at one time must have made this barren waste a field of blossoms."

"It seems a shame, somehow," said Roger, "to think of all that work being abandoned."

"Abandoned indeed! This place once possibly was the New York or London of its time, but ruins represent all that is left of the cities, and a thousand different kinds of cactus have taken the place of the cornfield and the vineyard. And," he added, pointing ahead, "of all the palaces of those unknown emperors, ruins like these are all that remain."

The boys thought it rather a strain on the imagination to picture palaces in the dry square adobe walls, but as they walked up close to them, some lurking hint of former greatness became felt. The Casa Grande must have stood some four or five stories in height and the rooms were rarely less than twenty feet square, so that the idea was given not only of size but also of extreme age, this being due in part, of course, to the softness of the material of which they were built.

Only a hint of greatness, but when, standing beside the ruins, the boys looked over the country below them, the real magnitude of the work became apparent. Following the pointing forefinger of the elder man, Roger could see what ninety-nine out of every hundred would have overlooked, the regular relations of green defiles, which, though veiled by the hand of time, were evidently artificial work. One great ca.n.a.l could be traced tapping the Salt River on the south side, near the mouth of the Verde; this, for three miles and a half, formerly flowed through a bed cut by hand out of the naked rock in the Superst.i.tion Mountains to a depth of a hundred feet. This ca.n.a.l alone, with its four branches and the distributing ditches, irrigated 1,600 square miles of country, and the engineering would be no disgrace to modern times.