The Silver Canyon: A Tale of the Western Plains

by George Manville Fenn

A week’s arduous journey over a sterile stretch of country, where water was very scarce and where game was hard to approach, brought them at last in reach of what looked to be a curiously formed mountain far away in the middle of an apparently boundless plain. Then it struck Bart that it could not be a mountain, for its sides were perpendicular, and its top at a distance seemed to be perfectly flat, and long discussions arose between him and the Doctor as to the peculiarity of the strange eminence standing up so prominently right in the middle of the plain.

While they were discussing the subject, the Beaver and his English-speaking follower came to their side, and pointing to the mountain, gave them to understand that this was their destination.

“But is there silver there?” said the Doctor eagerly, when the Indian smiled and said quietly, “Wait and see.”

The mountain on being first seen appeared to be at quite a short distance, but at the end of their first day’s journey they seemed to have got no nearer, while after another day, though it had assumed more prominent proportions, they were still at some distance, and it was not until the third morning that the little party stood on the reedy shores of a long narrow winding lake, one end of which they had to skirt before they could ride up to the foot of the flat-topped mountain which looked as if it had been suddenly thrust by some wondrous volcanic action right from the plain to form what appeared to be a huge castle, some seven or eight hundred feet high, and with no ravine or rift in the wall by which it could be approached.

All Bart’s questions were met by the one sole answer from the Indian, “Wait and see;” and in this spirit the savages guided them along beneath the towering ramparts of the mountain, whose scarped sides even a mountain sheep could not have climbed, till towards evening rein was drawn close under the mighty rocks, fragments of which had fallen here and there, loosened by time or cut loose by the shafts of storms to lie crumbling about its feet.

There seemed to be no reason for halting there, save that there was a little spring of water trickling down from the rocks, while a short distance in front what seemed to be a wide crack appeared in the plain, zigzagging here and there, one end going off into the distance, the other appearing to pass round close by the mountain; and as soon as they were dismounted and the horses tethered, the Beaver signed to Bart and the Doctor to accompany him, while the interpreter followed close behind.

It was a glorious evening, and after the heat of the day, the soft, cool breeze that swept over the plain was refreshing in the extreme; but all the same Bart felt very hungry, and his thoughts were more upon some carefully picked sage grouse that Joses and Maude were roasting than upon the search for silver; but the Doctor was excited, for he felt that most likely this would prove to be the goal of their long journey. His great fear was that the Indians in their ignorance might have taken some white shining stone or mica for the precious metal.

The crack in the plain seemed to grow wider as they approached, but the Indians suddenly led them off to the right, close under the towering flank of the mountain, and between it and a mass of rock that might have been split from it at some early stage in the world’s life.

This mass was some forty or fifty feet high, and between it and the parent mountain there was a narrow rift, so narrow in fact that they had to proceed in single file for about a hundred yards, winding in and out till, reaching the end, the Indians stood upon a broad kind of shelf of rock in silence as the Doctor and Bart involuntarily uttered a cry of surprise.

For there was the crack in the plain below their feet, and they were standing upon its very verge where it came in close to the mountain, whose top was some seven hundred feet above their heads, while here its perpendicular side went down for fully another thousand to where, in the solemn dark depths of the vast canyon or crack in the rocky crust of the earth, a great rushing river ran, its roar rising to where they stood in a strangely weird monotone, like low echoing thunder.