Roy hurried to the library. Singularly enough, in addition to U. S. Survey reports on the Grand Canyon of Colorado and the mighty Green River chasm and an ethnological report on the Navajo and Ute Indians, Roy—rather guiltily—asked the librarian for a map showing the west coast of Florida.
For a time he diligently applied himself to the volumes concerning the region he was about to visit. But, when it came time to close the library for the day, any one looking over Roy’s shoulder would have seen him tracing out Anclote Island, the waters of Pensacola Bay and the wild, swampy stretches of the mysterious Everglades of Florida.
“Anyway,” he said to himself, “even if this isn’t for me I’ve learned a little geography. Good luck to the southern kids. It’s me for Utah and the desert.”
Roy was determined to get his western outfit in Chicago. So there was little to do in the few days before his departure except to visit the library and read up on the history of the west.
Among other things, he learned that the great Navajo reservation, on the edge of which he would undoubtedly operate, was yet a mountain and mesa wilderness sealed against even the boldest white men. Many who had ventured to penetrate into the Indians’ jealously guarded domain had never returned.
He learned, too, with a little shock to him, to tell the truth, that the adjoining Ute land (along which he would have to travel in going to Bluff) was the home of the desperadoes of the last of the red men. “Renegade Utes” the books called them—outcasts, not even fit to mingle with other Indians. Among them, he read, were to be found specimens of all savage villains, Indians who made no pretense of work or self help, cattle and horse thieves and even murderers who were watched by the government as recognized criminals.
But, above all others in gripping interest, was the vague story of the hidden Indians, savages buried in the uncharted wastes of the southwestern Utah mountains, who had as yet evaded the white man. As Eskimos are known to dwell on the ice fields of the far northern British America who have never seen human beings other than of their own race, so, it was reported, a like remnant of Indians concealed themselves between the deep canyon of the Colorado and the terrible Death Desert to the west.
The next day was Saturday. When Mr. Osborne came home at noon, he was the bearer of a parting gift from Mr. Atkinson, who seemed to have taken a strong liking to Roy. The present was a thin, open-faced gold watch and a plain leather fob.
“I noticed you didn’t have a watch,” Mr. Atkinson said, in a note, “and since you are going to run an aeroplane express you must have a good timepiece.”