Walker shook his head.
“He had the courage,” said he, “but he had too much sense to try to go through that cañon. No white man ever went in there and came out alive. And even if the doctor had wanted to go he wouldn’t have started at night.”
“I don’t know that it would make much difference,” said Agnes. “It’s always night in that terrible cañon.”
“And that’s so, too,” Walker agreed. “I think I’ll go over there and take a look around.”
“Do you mind if Mr. Bentley and I go with you?” Agnes asked.
“I was going to suggest it,” Walker replied, looking longingly at June.
June asked permission with her eyes; Mrs. Reed nodded, having overcome her fears of Walker, owing to the substantial credentials which he was able to show. Mrs. Mann put on her hat and slipped her black bag a bit farther up her arm, and stood ready in a moment to join the expedition. Mrs. Reed was to remain alone in camp to watch things, for they had been warned that morning by the hotel people against a band of visiting Indians, who picked up anything and everything that was not anchored at least at one end. 129
It was late in the afternoon; the sun was low when they reached the river. There wasn’t anything to be made out of the footprints there. The mouth of the cañon had been visited by a great many tourists, some of whom had ventured within a little way to bring out stones for mementos of their daring days of fearsome adventures in the West.
The party stood looking into the mouth of the narrow slit between the high-towering walls. Down there it was already dark; the eye could pierce the gloom but a little way.
“There are places in there where the sun never shines, even for a second a day,” Walker declared. “And that water goes through there with power enough in it to grind a man’s bones against the rocks. There must be a fall of more than a thousand feet.”