Singing Cliffs

: The Last Of The Plainsmen

Old Tom had rolled two hundred yards down the canyon, leaving a red

trail and bits of fur behind him. When I had clambered down to the

steep slide where he had lodged, Sounder and Jude had just decided he

was no longer worth biting, and were wagging their tails. Frank was

shaking his head, and Jones, standing above the lion, lasso in hand,

wore a disconsolate face.



"How I wish I had got the rope on him!"< r />


"I reckon we'd be gatherin' up the pieces of you if you had," said

Frank, dryly.



We skinned the old king on the rocky slope of his mighty throne, and

then, beginning to feel the effects of severe exertion, we cut across

the slope for the foot of the break. Once there, we gazed up in

disarray. That break resembled a walk of life--how easy to slip down,

how hard to climb! Even Frank, inured as he was to strenuous toil,

began to swear and wipe his sweaty brow before we had made one-tenth of

the ascent. It was particularly exasperating, not to mention the danger

of it, to work a few feet up a slide, and then feel it start to move.

We had to climb in single file, which jeopardized the safety of those

behind the leader. Sometimes we were all sliding at once, like boys on

a pond, with the difference that we were in danger. Frank forged ahead,

turning to yell now and then for us to dodge a cracking stone. Faithful

old Jude could not get up in some places, so laying aside my rifle, I

carried her, and returned for the weapon. It became necessary,

presently, to hide behind cliff projections to escape the avalanches

started by Frank, and to wait till he had surmounted the break. Jones

gave out completely several times, saying the exertion affected his

heart. What with my rifle, my camera and Jude, I could offer him no

assistance, and was really in need of that myself. When it seemed as if

one more step would kill us, we reached the rim, and fell panting with

labored chests and dripping skins. We could not speak. Jones had worn a

pair of ordinary shoes without thick soles and nails, and it seemed

well to speak of them in the past tense. They were split into ribbons

and hung on by the laces. His feet were cut and bruised.



On the way back to camp, we encountered Moze and Don coming out of the

break where we had started Sounder on the trail. The paws of both

hounds were yellow with dust, which proved they had been down under the

rim wall. Jones doubted not in the least that they had chased a lion.



Upon examination, this break proved to be one of the two which Clarke

used for trails to his wild horse corral in the canyon. According to

him, the distance separating them was five miles by the rim wall, and

less than half that in a straight line. Therefore, we made for the

point of the forest where it ended abruptly in the scrub oak. We got

into camp, a fatigued lot of men, horses and dogs. Jones appeared

particularly happy, and his first move, after dismounting, was to

stretch out the lion skin and measure it.



"Ten feet, three inches and a half!" he sang out.



"Shore it do beat hell!" exclaimed Jim in tones nearer to excitement

than any I had ever heard him use.



"Old Tom beats, by two inches, any cougar I ever saw," continued Jones.

"He must have weighed more than three hundred. We'll set about curing

the hide. Jim, stretch it well on a tree, and we'll take a hand in

peeling off the fat."



All of the party worked on the cougar skin that afternoon. The gristle

at the base of the neck, where it met the shoulders, was so tough and

thick we could not scrape it thin. Jones said this particular spot was

so well protected because in fighting, cougars were most likely to bite

and claw there. For that matter, the whole skin was tough, tougher than

leather; and when it dried, it pulled all the horseshoe nails out of

the pine tree upon which we had it stretched.



About time for the sun to set, I strolled along the rim wall to look

into the canyon. I was beginning to feel something of its character and

had growing impressions. Dark purple smoke veiled the clefts deep down

between the mesas. I walked along to where points of cliff ran out like

capes and peninsulas, all seamed, cracked, wrinkled, scarred and yellow

with age, with shattered, toppling ruins of rocks ready at a touch to

go thundering down. I could not resist the temptation to crawl out to

the farthest point, even though I shuddered over the yard-wide ridges;

and when once seated on a bare promontory, two hundred feet from the

regular rim wall, I felt isolated, marooned.



The sun, a liquid red globe, had just touched its under side to the

pink cliffs of Utah, and fired a crimson flood of light over the

wonderful mountains, plateaus, escarpments, mesas, domes and turrets or

the gorge. The rim wall of Powell's Plateau was a thin streak of fire;

the timber above like grass of gold; and the long slopes below shaded

from bright to dark. Point Sublime, bold and bare, ran out toward the

plateau, jealously reaching for the sun. Bass's Tomb peeped over the

Saddle. The Temple of Vishnu lay bathed in vapory shading clouds, and

the Shinumo Altar shone with rays of glory.



The beginning of the wondrous transformation, the dropping of the day's

curtain, was for me a rare and perfect moment. As the golden splendor

of sunset sought out a peak or mesa or escarpment, I gave it a name to

suit my fancy; and as flushing, fading, its glory changed, sometimes I

rechristened it. Jupiter's Chariot, brazen wheeled, stood ready to roll

into the clouds. Semiramis's Bed, all gold, shone from a tower of

Babylon. Castor and Pollux clasped hands over a Stygian river. The Spur

of Doom, a mountain shaft as red as hell, and inaccessible,

insurmountable, lured with strange light. Dusk, a bold, black dome, was

shrouded by the shadow of a giant mesa. The Star of Bethlehem glittered

from the brow of Point Sublime. The Wraith, fleecy, feathered curtain

of mist, floated down among the ruins of castles and palaces, like the

ghost of a goddess. Vales of Twilight, dim, dark ravines, mystic homes

of specters, led into the awful Valley of the Shadow, clothed in purple

night.



Suddenly, as the first puff of the night wind fanned my cheek, a

strange, sweet, low moaning and sighing came to my ears. I almost

thought I was in a dream. But the canyon, now blood-red, was there in

overwhelming reality, a profound, solemn, gloomy thing, but real. The

wind blew stronger, and then I was to a sad, sweet song, which lulled

as the wind lulled. I realized at once that the sound was caused by the

wind blowing into the peculiar formations of the cliffs. It changed,

softened, shaded, mellowed, but it was always sad. It rose from low,

tremulous, sweetly quavering sighs, to a sound like the last woeful,

despairing wail of a woman. It was the song of the sea sirens and the

music of the waves; it had the soft sough of the night wind in the

trees, and the haunting moan of lost spirits.



With reluctance I turned my back to the gorgeously changing spectacle

of the canyon and crawled in to the rim wall. At the narrow neck of

stone I peered over to look down into misty blue nothingness.



That night Jones told stories of frightened hunters, and assuaged my

mortification by saying "buck-fever" was pardonable after the danger

had passed, and especially so in my case, because of the great size and

fame of Old Tom.



"The worst case of buck-fever I ever saw was on a buffalo hunt I had

with a fellow named Williams," went on Jones. "I was one of the scouts

leading a wagon-train west on the old Santa Fe trail. This fellow said

he was a big hunter, and wanted to kill buffalo, so I took him out. I

saw a herd making over the prairie for a hollow where a brook ran, and

by hard work, got in ahead of them. I picked out a position just below

the edge of the bank, and we lay quiet, waiting. From the direction of

the buffalo, I calculated we'd be just about right to get a shot at no

very long range. As it was, I suddenly heard thumps on the ground, and

cautiously raising my head, saw a huge buffalo bull just over us, not

fifteen feet up the bank. I whispered to Williams: 'For God's sake,

don't shoot, don't move!' The bull's little fiery eyes snapped, and he

reared. I thought we were goners, for when a bull comes down on

anything with his forefeet, it's done for. But he slowly settled back,

perhaps doubtful. Then, as another buffalo came to the edge of the

bank, luckily a little way from us, the bull turned broadside,

presenting a splendid target. Then I whispered to Williams: 'Now's your

chance. Shoot!' I waited for the shot, but none came. Looking at

Williams, I saw he was white and trembling. Big drops of sweat stood

out on his brow his teeth chattered, and his hands shook. He had

forgotten he carried a rifle."



"That reminds me," said Frank. "They tell a story over at Kanab on a

Dutchman named Schmitt. He was very fond of huntin', an' I guess had

pretty good success after deer an' small game. One winter he was out in

the Pink Cliffs with a Mormon named Shoonover, an' they run into a

lammin' big grizzly track, fresh an' wet. They trailed him to a clump

of chaparral, an' on goin' clear round it, found no tracks leadin' out.

Shoonover said Schmitt commenced to sweat. They went back to the place

where the trail led in, an' there they were, great big silver tip

tracks, bigger'n hoss-tracks, so fresh thet water was oozin' out of

'em. Schmitt said: 'Zake, you go in und ged him. I hef took sick right

now.'"



Happy as we were over the chase of Old Tom, and our prospects for

Sounder, Jude and Moze had seen a lion in a tree--we sought our

blankets early. I lay watching the bright stars, and listening to the

roar of the wind in the pines. At intervals it lulled to a whisper, and

then swelled to a roar, and then died away. Far off in the forest a

coyote barked once. Time and time again, as I was gradually sinking

into slumber, the sudden roar of the wind startled me. I imagined it

was the crash of rolling, weathered stone, and I saw again that huge

outspread flying lion above me.



I awoke sometime later to find Moze had sought the warmth of my side,

and he lay so near my arm that I reached out and covered him with an

end of the blanket I used to break the wind. It was very cold and the

time must have been very late, for the wind had died down, and I heard

not a tinkle from the hobbled horses. The absence of the cowbell music

gave me a sense of loneliness, for without it the silence of the great

forest was a thing to be felt.



This oppressiveness, however, was broken by a far-distant cry, unlike

any sound I had ever heard. Not sure of myself, I freed my ears from

the blanketed hood and listened. It came again, a wild cry, that made

me think first of a lost child, and then of the mourning wolf of the

north. It must have been a long distance off in the forest. An interval

of some moments passed, then it pealed out again, nearer this time, and

so human that it startled me. Moze raised his head and growled low in

his throat and sniffed the keen air.



"Jones, Jones," I called, reaching over to touch the old hunter.



He awoke at once, with the clear-headedness of the light sleeper.



"I heard the cry of some beast," I said, "And it was so weird, so

strange. I want to know what it was."



Such a long silence ensued that I began to despair of hearing the cry

again, when, with a suddenness which straightened the hair on my head,

a wailing shriek, exactly like a despairing woman might give in death

agony, split the night silence. It seemed right on us.



"Cougar! Cougar! Cougar!" exclaimed Jones.



"What's up?" queried Frank, awakened by the dogs.



Their howling roused the rest of the party, and no doubt scared the

cougar, for his womanish screech was not repeated. Then Jones got up

and gatherered his blankets in a roll.



"Where you oozin' for now?" asked Frank, sleepily.



"I think that cougar just came up over the rim on a scouting hunt, and

I'm going to go down to the head of the trail and stay there till

morning. If he returns that way, I'll put him up a tree."



With this, he unchained Sounder and Don, and stalked off under the

trees, looking like an Indian. Once the deep bay of Sounder rang out;

Jones's sharp command followed, and then the familiar silence

encompassed the forest and was broken no more.



When I awoke all was gray, except toward the canyon, where the little

bit of sky I saw through the pines glowed a delicate pink. I crawled

out on the instant, got into my boots and coat, and kicked the

smoldering fire. Jim heard me, and said:



"Shore you're up early."



"I'm going to see the sunrise from the north rim of the Grand Canon," I

said, and knew when I spoke that very few men, out of all the millions

of travelers, had ever seen this, probably the most surpassingly

beautiful pageant in the world. At most, only a few geologists,

scientists, perhaps an artist or two, and horse wranglers, hunters and

prospectors have ever reached the rim on the north side; and these men,

crossing from Bright Angel or Mystic Spring trails on the south rim,

seldom or never get beyond Powell's Plateau.



The frost cracked under my boots like frail ice, and the bluebells

peeped wanly from the white. When I reached the head of Clarke's trail

it was just daylight; and there, under a pine, I found Jones rolled in

his blankets, with Sounder and Moze asleep beside him. I turned without

disturbing him, and went along the edge of the forest, but back a

little distance from the rim wall.



I saw deer off in the woods, and tarrying, watched them throw up

graceful heads, and look and listen. The soft pink glow through the

pines deepened to rose, and suddenly I caught a point of red fire. Then

I hurried to the place I had named Singing Cliffs, and keeping my eyes

fast on the stone beneath me, trawled out to the very farthest point,

drew a long, breath, and looked eastward.



The awfulness of sudden death and the glory of heaven stunned me! The

thing that had been mystery at twilight, lay clear, pure, open in the

rosy hue of dawn. Out of the gates of the morning poured a light which

glorified the palaces and pyramids, purged and purified the afternoon's

inscrutable clefts, swept away the shadows of the mesas, and bathed

that broad, deep world of mighty mountains, stately spars of rock,

sculptured cathedrals and alabaster terraces in an artist's dream of

color. A pearl from heaven had burst, flinging its heart of fire into

this chasm. A stream of opal flowed out of the sun, to touch each peak,

mesa, dome, parapet, temple and tower, cliff and cleft into the

new-born life of another day.



I sat there for a long time and knew that every second the scene

changed, yet I could not tell how. I knew I sat high over a hole of

broken, splintered, barren mountains; I knew I could see a hundred

miles of the length of it, and eighteen miles of the width of it, and a

mile of the depth of it, and the shafts and rays of rose light on a

million glancing, many-hued surfaces at once; but that knowledge was no

help to me. I repeated a lot of meaningless superlatives to myself, and

I found words inadequate and superfluous. The spectacle was too elusive

and too great. It was life and death, heaven and hell.



I tried to call up former favorite views of mountain and sea, so as to

compare them with this; but the memory pictures refused to come, even

with my eyes closed. Then I returned to camp, with unsettled, troubled

mind, and was silent, wondering at the strange feeling burning within

me.



Jones talked about our visitor of the night before, and said the trail

near where he had slept showed only one cougar track, and that led down

into the canyon. It had surely been made, he thought, by the beast we

had heard. Jones signified his intention of chaining several of the

hounds for the next few nights at the head of this trail; so if the

cougar came up, they would scent him and let us know. From which it was

evident that to chase a lion bound into the canyon and one bound out

were two different things.



The day passed lazily, with all of us resting on the warm, fragrant

pine-needle beds, or mending a rent in a coat, or working on some camp

task impossible of commission on exciting days.



About four o'clock, I took my little rifle and walked off through the

woods in the direction of the carcass where I had seen the gray wolf.

Thinking it best to make a wide detour, so as to face the wind, I

circled till I felt the breeze was favorable to my enterprise, and then

cautiously approached the hollow were the dead horse lay. Indian

fashion, I slipped from tree to tree, a mode of forest travel not

without its fascination and effectiveness, till I reached the height of

a knoll beyond which I made sure was my objective point. On peeping out

from behind the last pine, I found I had calculated pretty well, for

there was the hollow, the big windfall, with its round, starfish-shaped

roots exposed to the bright sun, and near that, the carcass. Sure

enough, pulling hard at it, was the gray-white wolf I recognized as my

"lofer."



But he presented an exceedingly difficult shot. Backing down the ridge,

I ran a little way to come up behind another tree, from which I soon

shifted to a fallen pine. Over this I peeped, to get a splendid view of

the wolf. He had stopped tugging at the horse, and stood with his nose

in the air. Surely he could not have scented me, for the wind was

strong from him to me; neither could he have heard my soft footfalls on

the pine needles; nevertheless, he was suspicious. Loth to spoil the

picture he made, I risked a chance, and waited. Besides, though I

prided myself on being able to take a fair aim, I had no great hope

that I could hit him at such a distance. Presently he returned to his

feeding, but not for long. Soon he raised his long, fine-pointed head,

and trotted away a few yards, stopped to sniff again, then went back to

his gruesome work.



At this juncture, I noiselessly projected my rifle barrel over the log.

I had not, however, gotten the sights in line with him, when he trotted

away reluctantly, and ascended the knoll on his side of the hollow. I

lost him, and had just begun sourly to call myself a mollycoddle

hunter, when he reappeared. He halted in an open glade, on the very

crest of the knoll, and stood still as a statue wolf, a white,

inspiriting target, against a dark green background. I could not stifle

a rush of feeling, for I was a lover of the beautiful first, and a

hunter secondly; but I steadied down as the front sight moved into the

notch through which I saw the black and white of his shoulder.



Spang! How the little Remington sang! I watched closely, ready to send

five more missiles after the gray beast. He jumped spasmodically, in a



half-curve, high in the air, with loosely hanging head, then dropped in

a heap. I yelled like a boy, ran down the hill, up the other side of

the hollow, to find him stretched out dead, a small hole in his

shoulder where the bullet had entered, a great one where it had come

out.



The job I made of skinning him lacked some hundred degrees the

perfection of my shot, but I accomplished it, and returned to camp in

triumph.



"Shore I knowed you'd plunk him," said Jim very much pleased. "I shot

one the other day same way, when he was feedin' off a dead horse. Now

thet's a fine skin. Shore you cut through once or twice. But he's only

half lofer, the other half in plain coyote. Thet accounts fer his

feedin' on dead meat."



My naturalist host and my scientific friend both remarked somewhat

grumpily that I seemed to get the best of all the good things. I might

have retaliated that I certainly had gotten the worst of all the bad

jokes; but, being generously happy over my prize, merely remarked: "If

you want fame or wealth or wolves, go out and hunt for them."



Five o'clock supper left a good margin of day, in which my thoughts

reverted to the canyon. I watched the purple shadows stealing out of

their caverns and rolling up about the base of the mesas. Jones came

over to where I stood, and I persuaded him to walk with me along the

rim wall. Twilight had stealthily advanced when we reached the Singing

Cliffs, and we did not go out upon my promontory, but chose a more

comfortable one nearer the wall.



The night breeze had not sprung up yet, so the music of the cliffs was

hushed.



"You cannot accept the theory of erosion to account for this chasm?" I

asked my companion, referring to a former conversation.



"I can for this part of it. But what stumps me is the mountain range

three thousand feet high, crossing the desert and the canyon just above

where we crossed the river. How did the river cut through that without

the help of a split or earthquake?"



"I'll admit that is a poser to me as well as to you. But I suppose

Wallace could explain it as erosion. He claims this whole western

country was once under water, except the tips of the Sierra Nevada

mountains. There came an uplift of the earth's crust, and the great

inland sea began to run out, presumably by way of the Colorado. In so

doing it cut out the upper canyon, this gorge eighteen miles wide. Then

came a second uplift, giving the river a much greater impetus toward

the sea, which cut out the second, or marble canyon. Now as to the

mountain range crossing the canyon at right angles. It must have come

with the second uplift. If so, did it dam the river back into another

inland sea, and then wear down into that red perpendicular gorge we

remember so well? Or was there a great break in the fold of granite,

which let the river continue on its way? Or was there, at that

particular point, a softer stone, like this limestone here, which

erodes easily?"



"You must ask somebody wiser than I."



"Well, let's not perplex our minds with its origin. It is, and that's

enough for any mind. Ah! listen! Now you will hear my Singing Cliffs."



From out of the darkening shadows murmurs rose on the softly rising

wind. This strange music had a depressing influence; but it did not

fill the heart with sorrow, only touched it lightly. And when, with the

dying breeze, the song died away, it left the lonely crags lonelier for

its death.



The last rosy gleam faded from the tip of Point Sublime; and as if that

were a signal, in all the clefts and canyons below, purple, shadowy

clouds marshaled their forces and began to sweep upon the battlements,

to swing colossal wings into amphitheaters where gods might have

warred, slowly to enclose the magical sentinels. Night intervened, and

a moving, changing, silent chaos pulsated under the bright stars.



"How infinite all this is! How impossible to understand!" I exclaimed.



"To me it is very simple," replied my comrade. "The world is strange.

But this canyon--why, we can see it all! I can't make out why people

fuss so over it. I only feel peace. It's only bold and beautiful,

serene and silent."



With the words of this quiet old plainsman, my sentimental passion

shrank to the true appreciation of the scene. Self passed out to the

recurring, soft strains of cliff song. I had been reveling in a species

of indulgence, imagining I was a great lover of nature, building

poetical illusions over storm-beaten peaks. The truth, told by one who

had lived fifty years in the solitudes, among the rugged mountains,

under the dark trees, and by the sides of the lonely streams, was the

simple interpretation of a spirit in harmony with the bold, the

beautiful, the serene, the silent.



He meant the Grand Canyon was only a mood of nature, a bold promise, a

beautiful record. He meant that mountains had sifted away in its dust,

yet the canyon was young. Man was nothing, so let him be humble. This

cataclysm of the earth, this playground of a river was not inscrutable;

it was only inevitable--as inevitable as nature herself. Millions of

years in the bygone ages it had lain serene under a half moon; it would

bask silent under a rayless sun, in the onward edge of time.



It taught simplicity, serenity, peace. The eye that saw only the

strife, the war, the decay, the ruin, or only the glory and the

tragedy, saw not all the truth. It spoke simply, though its words were

grand: "My spirit is the Spirit of Time, of Eternity, of God. Man is

little, vain, vaunting. Listen. To-morrow he shall be gone. Peace!

Peace!"