"It was just beyond that that I struck water. The ravine sloped abruptly for about one hundred feet, then struck an upcurving rock and gave a little jump like a fellow does on skis and fell like a long silver ribbon for about two hundred feet. I suppose that is Bright Angel Creek?"
"And rightly named," put in the assistant topographer, nodding his head affirmatively, "any stream that doesn't run dry in this sort of country is angelic, all right."
Roger continued his story of the trip, describing points which he had noted, Masseth naming them, "Deva Temple," "Brahma Temple," "Zoroaster Temple," etc., and at last he fixed the route by its relation to "Cheops Pyramid," one of the well-known configurations of the Canyon.
"But on which side of the creek were you, when you saw the pyramid?" asked the chief.
"On the other side from it," answered Roger.
"If you had only crossed once more, or once less, it would have brought you to the main trail where the boat is," said Masseth regretfully. "But how in the world did you cross?"
So Roger told the story of the burro, and the manner in which he had been caught in the crotch of a snag; and the party, though old hands at the business, hung on his tale as though they had been so many greenhorns. He told, moreover, as well as he could, his route up the other side, until the frontiersman took up the story from the point where the lad had been seen by the spectators on the edge of the Canyon, near the hotel.
The last few sentences of the boy's story had been somewhat incoherent, for the long trip of that day, following his arduous experiences alone had been too much for him, and he could not keep his eyes open. He was promptly taken to his tent and bidden to sleep, the while the frontiersman described enthusiastically the boy's pluck and nerve.
"And I thought, by thunder," he concluded, "that the overschooled kids of this generation were a pack of milksops, but I see there's grit in an American boy yet!"