Enoch interrupted. "Has our friendship grown less since we camped at the placer mine?"
Diana flushed slightly and went on, "Only, Enoch, surely the end of your adventure is not a Dark Tower ending!"
"Yes, it is, Diana! It can never be any other." Enoch's fingers trembled a little as he toyed with his pipe bowl. Diana slowly looked away from him, her eyes fastening themselves on a buzzard that circled over the peaks across the river. After a moment, she said, "Then you are going to shoot Brown?"
Enoch started a little. "I'm not thinking of Brown just now. I'm thinking of you and me."
He paused again and again Diana waited until she felt the silence becoming too painful. Then she said,
"Aren't you going to tell me some of the details of your trip?"
"I want to, Diana, but hang it, words fail me! It was as you warned me, an hourly struggle with death. And we fought, I think, not because life was so unutterably sweet to any of us, but because there was such wonderful zest to the fighting. The beauty of the Canyon, the awfulness of it, the unbelievable rapidity with which event piled on event. Why, Diana, I feel as if I'd lived a lifetime since I first put foot on the Ida! And the glory of the battle! Diana, we were so puny, so insignificant, so stupid, and the Canyon was so colossal and so diabolically quick and clever! What a fight!"
Enoch laughed joyfully.
"You're a new man!" said Diana, softly.
Enoch nodded. "And now I'm to have the ride back to El Tovar with you and the trip down Bright Angel with you and your father! For once Diana, Fate is minding her own business and letting me mind mine."