CHAPTER XVI.—CONCERNING A HEADLESS GHOST.
“Now,” Clay suggested, on the morning following the arrival at the mouth of the mightiest canyon on earth, “we may as well make up our minds that we can’t go very much farther in the Rambler. We will go in as far as we can, then tie up and investigate the great mystery.”
“If you want to see the Grand Canyon to good advantage,” Don advised, “get up on the plateau and look down and across. At the level of the river you see little save blue sky and rock, and you see those like one looking out of a well! Besides, it is pretty hot down here.
“There is little breeze, and we are a mile or more nearer the center of the earth than those at the lips of the cut. When it snows up above it rains down here. Clumps of willows which grow in the canyon look like fringes of grass from above. The houses where the guides and a few Indians live look like soap-boxes from the top.
“And, then, from the top, you can get the full contrast of the colors in the layers of rocks. You’ll see a wall of black granite rusty with the iron that is in it, and, a short distance away, you’ll see red, amber and green pinnacles with white tops. We’ll have to climb some to get to the shack where Uncle David lived, and so you may be able to satisfy your love of nature without going to the top.”
“Did any one ever sail down through this canyon?” asked Alex.
“Yes,” Don answered, “Major Powell succeeded in getting through with a boat, but some members of his party lost their lives. We can nose the Rambler up for quite a distance yet, but of course we can’t go through.”
“Then suppose we camp in the canyon itself to-night?” Alex questioned. “It will be fine to hear the waters singing!”
“We may safely do that,” Don answered. “We will, of course, be in what is known as the inner gorge, that is, away down to bed rock! We can get to within a couple of miles of the shack by night and make camp there. Then, in the morning, we can climb up and have a look at the old place.”
“You lived there for a time with your uncle?” asked Case.
“Yes, for a couple of years. But Uncle never made much of us boys. He seemed to want to be alone, and, besides, he often said that we ought to be out in the world learning to fight humans! Uncle had a notion that men and women were worse than wild animals!
“So, after a time, he sent us away, giving us tickets to Chicago by way of San Francisco and the S. P. While on the way back, as I have already told you, we visited the old house at Yuma. I never saw Uncle again. He was a strange old fellow. Where he got all his wealth is more than I know, but he certainly was rich.”
It was hard work sailing against the currents of the Colorado, but the motors were strong and reliable, and at night the boys found themselves shut in by towering walls of rock. Above, on either side, were shelves, ledges and precipices. Away at the top grew yellow pine and fir, below juniper thrived, and farther down were willows and various kinds of bushes. The light was dim long before sunset, and the river ran dark and sullen between the frowning walls.
“We’ve got to stop here,” Don declared, as the Rambler reached a point where the inner gorge widened out into a small valley—a very small valley indeed—“for the shelf where the shack stands can be reached only from this point.”
“How far up is it?” asked Clay.
“Something like two thousand feet.”
“Almost to the surface?”
“Not half way,” was the laughing reply. “There was a copper mine there, once, years ago, and the shack was left by the miners when the drive was deserted. It is an uncanny place!”
“How do you get there?” asked Alex. “Is it a hard climb?”
“Rather! In places the path is only thirty inches wide, with a wall a thousand feet up on one side and a drop of a thousand feet on the other! In places the way is so steep that steps have been cut in the rock, to prevent the burros slipping.”
“Burros!” echoed Alex. Walking up and down that wall!”
“Both burros and horses, after proper training,” Don answered.
“I think I'd rather walk!” Alex muttered, and Case nodded agreement.
“You’ll find that horses’ feet are surer than your own,” Don predicted. “There is rarely an accident here.”
The boys anchored the Rambler close to the shore, opposite the little spread-out of rocky soil and built a fire of driftwood. When night settled down the stars looked into the gulch bright and clear, and in time the moon arose and lighted the upper air, though its rays did not penetrate to the inner gorge at first, of course.
After supper the lads sat on the deck of the motor boat and watched the line of moonlight drop down on the west wall. Now it touched the top of a monument erosion had wrought, now it painted a shadowy wall where rocks were tottering to a fall.
“It is going to be a ghost night!” Don said, presently.
The other boys laughed at the expression, and Clay asked:
“Do they have ghost nights at the bottom of the canyon?”
“The ghost nights,” Don explained, gravely, “are found only near the broad level made by the dumpings of the old copper mine. Anybody who ever lived hereabouts can tell you that ghosts come forth at midnight and walk the ledges where they came to their deaths!”
“Bunk!” grunted Case. That’s all bunk!”
“About the ghosts? Of course, but there is something mysterious in the Grand Canyon! There are noises no one can account for, and sights which no one can explain are common. It is a haunted place!”
“I’m glad of that!” Alex exclaimed. “I’ve always wanted to form the acquaintance of a really, truly ghost! One may come to-night!”
“If one should,” laughed Clay, “you would be the first one to jump out of your skin with fright! I don’t want to be bothered with ghosts, for one, for I’m tired and sleepy. Besides, we have a hard climb before us for to-morrow.”
When the boys went to bed the west wall of the canyon was silvered with moonlight, while the east wall was still clothed in shadows. Case’s bunk was nearest to the door of the cabin, and Captain Joe, seeking companionship, snuggled down by it.
The last thing the boy heard, before he dropped into a sound sleep, was the uneasy breathing of the dog. After a time he awoke with a start. Captain Joe was bristling and growling.
“You ornery pup,” Case whispered, “keep still! You’ll wake the boys up! What do you see out there to growl at?”
Captain Joe advanced to the prow of the boat and pointed with a quivering nose to the east wall of the canyon. Then he looked back at Case and invited an apology for previous coarse treatment!
Case looked and turned back to awake the other boys, then changed his mind and stood waiting. On a descending shelf of rock five hundred feet above the level of the river, a white object could be seen creeping slowly downward. It was in the shadow at first, but presently came into a light reflected from the opposite wall.
Then the boys saw a white horse without a head and a white rider, also without a head! The horse moved slowly down the shelf toward the river, and the rider sat upright and stiff, not swaying at all with the motions of the horse! While Case looked the pair, the white horse and the white rider, came to an abrupt ending in the shelf.
To the amazement of the lad they did not stop there. They went on over the edge of the precipice and something white fell down, down, to a rocky bed below. As the white thing shot through the air a shriek of terror echoed over the canyon, and then all was still.
Case watched and listened with a wildly beating heart. The horse and rider had certainly gone down the precipice! He awoke Don and told him of what he had seen. Don looked serious.
“It is the ghost of the canyon,” he said. “For years, on moonlight nights, the horse and rider have gone over the precipice. It is said that a rider met death there years ago, and that his bones, and the bones of his horse, were found at the bottom of the precipice by a hunter. For a long time no one would come within sight of that shelf at night.”
“I don’t believe in ghosts!” Case asserted. “I don’t believe it was a ghost at all! It is some trick to drive us away!”
“But the sight has been seen for a long time—years before we ever thought of coming here,” urged Don.
“You don’t actually believe in it?” asked Case.
“There is something strange about it,” was all the boy would say.
“Will it ride again to-night?” asked Case. “If I thought it would I’d sit up and watch for it. I’m interested in this ghost.”
“It is never twice seen on the same night,” Don replied. “In fact it comes only when the moon reaches just such a position in the heavens. Always when the rider moves down the ledge you will see the shadow of that granite monument resting on the white boulder which nestles like a setting in that cliff.”
“Who compiled all the ignorance there is in the world regarding ghosts?” Case grinned. “I guess if people got a chance to return to earth after death, they wouldn’t be monkeying around in fool ways like that! This is some trick! You’ll see if we don’t get to the bottom of it before we go away! Headless horse, and headless rider! Why, even Captain Joe knew that they were not ghosts, for he woke me up growling at them!”
“Where is he now?” asked Don, looking around for the dog.
“He was here a minute ago,” Case replied. “He is not far away.”
“Don’t let the ghosts get him,” laughed Don, and went back to his bunk.
Case did not go to sleep. He was wondering if there really were people who actually believed in supernatural visitations! Reared in the hard school of the streets, he had long ago learned to accept nothing as true which did not comply with the standards of the knowable.
He wondered, too, where Captain Joe had taken himself off to. Usually the dog remained close to the boat at night, so his sudden disappearance was a puzzle to the boy. He whistled softly, but the dog did not come.
Then Case remembered the remarks Alex had made concerning the moonlight and the ghost nights. The lad certainly would be ripe for a visit to the bottom of the precipice. Case did not know what he might find there, but he had his suspicions as to what had gone down!
Alex kicked out vigorously and rubbed his eyes sleepily when Case shook him up in his bunk. He had no thought of getting up! Then Case whispered in his ear—whispered because he did not want the others to awake and learn that they were going away on a ghost hunt!
“The ghost walks!” Case rumbled in the boy’s ear!
“Leave mine in my pocket!” Alex yawned. “Where is he?”
“Not the money ghost,” Case snickered, “but the ghost that falls off mountains without being injured, and rides about the country with his head under his arm, or somewhere else out of sight. Get up!”
“Me for the ghost!” Alex exclaimed. “Bring him to me!”
“We’ve got to go and get him!” Case replied. “And you’d better keep still, or the whole bunch will want to go. Get up and dress.”
“I’m dressed,” replied the boy. “I was going out anyhow as soon as the others got to sleep. Where’s Captain Joe?”
“The ghost carried him off!” laughed Case. “Indeed he did,” he went on, as Alex expressed disapproval. “He hasn’t been seen since the headless ghost rode the headless horse down the bottomless precipice!”
“Wheels!” cried Alex, in derision. “You’ve got buzzing wheels!”
Case got the sleepy youngster out of the cabin and told him about the white rider and also about Don’s account of the tradition.
“Now,” he added, “I propose that we go down the shore a little way and climb up the slope to the foot of that precipice. You can see from here where the shelf ends. Well, anything dropped off the break would fall into a coulee on the other side of the ridge. See?”
“Perhaps we can get to the foot of the precipice, and perhaps we can not,” Alex said, “but we’ll try, anyway. What do you expect to find there? The dead ghost of a headless horse and rider?”
Case laughed and the two started away, following the river bank down until the rise to the east ran out, and then following the coulee back of it. In a very short time they were at the foot of the smooth wall of rock which dropped down from the shelf above. The moon was now far up in the sky, and its light fell directly into the canyon.
The lads looked carefully about the foot of the wall, but were not rewarded in any way for their labor. Presently, however, Case bent over a depression in the soil which had gathered in a corner—washed down from the heights above—and called to his chum.
“What do you make of it?” he asked, flashing his electric on the spot indicated. “Does that look like a ghost’s track?”
“Dog’s track!” Alex exclaimed. “Captain Joe’s track! Now what was he doing here? But here’s another footprint!” he went on, all excitement, “and it wasn’t made by a dog, either. Healthy ghost, that!”
“The ghost that made that track,” Case answered, “wore a No. 10 shoe with the taps worn down so as to show the nailheads! And the shoe was here not long ago, at that. Now, what was the dog doing with a stranger?”
“I reckon Captain Joe has been abducted!” grinned Alex. “I’d like to see the man that did it. He’d be some chewed up, I take it!”
“Well,” Case went on, “the dog has been captured, for here are the marks where he pulled back as he was dragged away! And I guess it was no ghost that did it, either. Just listen to that!”