"No time to stop now," was the answer.
We pulled under a sheltering juniper and slowed up.
"What did you want to stop there for? Don't you know we have to keep on moving if we reach a shelter tonight?" inquired the pilot of our ship. He had evidently been brooding over my unseemly mirth at the mad cow episode.
"Oh, all right," I agreed, "but the bedding-roll bounced out and I thought you might want to pick it up." The fugitive bedding recovered, we resumed our journey.
The storm ended as suddenly as everything else happens in that topsy-turvy land and in the eastern sky hung a double quivering rainbow. I rubbed my eyes and looked again. It was double! The Chief explained that this was due to a mirage, but I placed it to the credit of altitude, like all other Arizona wonders.
At Hilltop we found Indian guides with trail ponies to take us the rest of the way. They had been waiting two days for us, they said. Strolling to the Canyon's brink I encountered a fearful odor. "What in the world is that?" I asked Wattahomigie (which by the way means "Good Watchful Indian"). "Him pony," was the stolid reply. "But—?" "Buck and fall over trail," explained my Indian brave. I fled to the Chief for comfort and change of air. He investigated and found that when Wattahomigie had brought the ponies up from the village one had become unruly and pitched over the Rim, landing squarely across the trail a hundred feet below. It was the only trail, but it never occurred to the Noble Red Man to remove the dead horse. No indeed! If it proved impossible to get around the obstacle, why, stay off the trail until Providence cleared the way. In other words let Nature take its course. The Chief procured a few pounds of TNT from the Government warehouse located there, and with the aid of that soon cleared the trail.
"That good way to clear trail," approved Wattahomigie. "No pull, no dig, no nothin'." I hoped no TNT would be left roaming at large for promiscuous experiments by Wattahomigie while we were natives of his village.
We camped there at Hilltop that night, and after a supper of fried sage-rabbit, corn cakes, and coffee, I rolled into the blankets and fell asleep without worrying about the morrow. Something awakened me. I certainly had heard something. Inch by inch I silently lifted myself from the blankets and peered into the shadows. Standing there like a graven image was a beautiful doe with twin fawns playing around her. Curiosity had conquered caution and she was investigating our camp. Just then a coyote's wild cry sounded from the distance. She lifted her sensitive nose and sniffed the air, then wheeled and glided into the deep shadows. Other coyote voices swelled the chorus. Hundreds it seemed were howling and shrieking like mad, when I dropped to sleep to dream I was listening to grand opera at the Metropolitan.
Morning dawned clear and crisp. "Will it rain today?" I asked an Indian. "No rain; three sleeps, then rain," he told me; and this proved correct.
Wattahomigie had provided a long-legged race horse for me to ride. "Will he carry her all right?" the Chief asked him. Wattahomigie looked me over carefully and one could almost see him comparing me mentally with a vision of his fat squaw, Dottie. His white teeth flashed a smile: "Sure, my squaw him all time ride that pony." That settled the matter. "Him squaw" weighs a good two hundred pounds and is so enveloped in voluminous skirts that the poor horse must feel completely submerged.