The Coconino sun., 1926-03-26

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desert paint" and SO high that you
had to throw your head far back to
see the top. Though it was nearly
eleven o'clock the blaze of the sun
hadn't even yet crept down to its foot,
hidden in wild grapevines and a
straggle of trees.
That's about all l registered in the
instant before the pressing business
of life closed over my head.
Things happened in the next five
days. Blind staggers over rocks and
deadfalls and up and down impossible
ut-banks; a nine-rattle diamond-back
smashed by the man behind within
three feet Of gripping hand; thirty
two laughing, cursing passages of 2
stream that collared its rock pools
with foam like the beaten whites of
eggs. Cactus barbs, heat, rain and
eclipse of the sun; nights on the sand
or corrugated black rocks; coffee from
an old tin and bacon from the lid;
waiting, for an expedition overdue,
beside q treacherous river that had
not carried white men for eleven
years and that talked and laughed in
nockery and made noises like dis
tant trains or oars in the rowlock.
was very tired when / stumbled
back through the tangle of grapevines
to the foot of the old ladder. Stick
ing it out, the necessity to keep going
in spite of anything and everything,
had been something of a keynote dur
ing the past week. Even so the
thought of the ladder, standing there
through the changeless years in a
jackpot among the canyons fifty miles
from the nearest railroad, had haunt
ed me at odd moments. | had heard
it described-and wanted to smile.
Now | had actually seen it, and it
seemed more impossible than ever.
Probably that one hurried glance had
exaggerated the whole thing.
/ gripped rung almost as large
as my wrist and tried to shake it.
Solid as rock. | looked up until the
blood ran into my head: it was like
Jack trying to see to the top of the
beanstalk.
So | went back hundred feet and
sat down to figure out what it al
meant.
The ladder stood against the west
ern wall of the canyon. Though
slightly roughened here and there that
wall was practically perpendicular to
a height of at least two hundred and
twenty feet; up it the ladder crawled
in nearly vertical sections something
like a gigantic fire escape. These sec
tions were pinned to the cliff by short
lengths of heavy. iron pipe set in deep
drill holes in the rock.
Above that perpendicular sweep
there was a great bulge in the face of
the cliff. Turning slightly to the
right the ladder went out and over
and disappeared. The upper rungs
seemed no bigger than pipe stems.
There were apparently no extra hand
holds or conspicuous rests Of any kind
from top to bottom.
The Cataract claim itself was one
of compact group of old claims ly-
ing in Havasu, or, as it was long cal
led, Cataract canyon. Both names
were derived from Havasu creek,
bursting without warning from a
giant spring and rushing and plung-
ing away down the canyon floor to
the Colorado, some nine miles to the
north, in a succession of falls and
white water without peer in the
southwest. The stream, heavily inn
pregnated with carbonate of lime and
of wonderful turquoise blue, had
inspired the pretty Indian name of
Havasu, or Blue Water. Old Package
of-Coffee was the ancient of the
dwindling tribe about its head-the
Havasupai, or people of the blue
water.
1t is not known when white men
first visited Havasu Canyon, but it
appears to have been first prospected
for minerals about 1885. | knew it,
even in 1923, as the heart of a sin
gularly little-known region of verti-
cal cliffs, deep and twisting canyons
and towering rock masses nearly fifty
miles by road and difficult trail west
of the nearest rail-head at Ell Tovar.
What it had been forty years before
] could only imagine: it had then been
farther still from the struggling cow
towns along the new transcontinental
railroad and there were. no roads, no
trails, no known springs, water holes
or streams in the whole forbidding
wilderness.
1t was said that the first prospec-
tors, unable to find any other way
into Havasu canyon, let themselves
into it with ropes. Certainly without
the rope they had been unable to adj
vance down the canyon itself much
beyond the head of Havasu creek.
Just below the little Indian village the
stream plunged over a series of steps
cut in the underlying sandstone, de-
posting its mineral content in extra
ordinary frescoes and curtains Of red
trayertine. The last of these steps
crossed the canyon from wall to wall
within two hundred yards of where
/ sat, in sheer drop of over one
hundred and fifty feet.
Did men penetrate to this final bar
rier and then turn back? Possibly,
but if they did they had left no