"Do you think you can clear the matter up?" asked Frank.
"I'll try my utmost. It's going to be hard, for Foley's no fool, and he's done a lot of work on it with no results. If I don't settle the matter, Enoch is going to be hag-ridden by Minetta Lane all his life. I know of a chap who was lame for twenty years because when he was about ten, he had a series of extraordinarily vivid dreams portraying a curious accident that he was not able to distinguish from actual happenings. It was not until he was a man and had accidentally come in contact with a psychologist who analyzed the thing down to facts for him that he was cured. I could cite you a hundred cases like this where the crippling was mental as well as physical. And nothing but an absolute and tangible proof of the falsity of the idea will make a cure. Some day there are going to be doctors who will handle nothing but ideas."
"The boy's worth saving!" Frank lighted his pipe thoughtfully.
"There's a power of will there for good or evil that can't be ignored.
And I have faith in any one the Canyon gets a real grip on. It sure
has got this boy. I never saw a more marked case."
The lawyer nodded and both men sat smoking, their eyes on the distant rim.
BOOK II
THE SECRETARY OF THE INTERIOR
CHAPTER III
TWENTY-TWO YEARS LATER
"It sometimes seemed to me that the Colorado said as it rushed through the Canyon, 'Nothing matters! Nothing! Nothing!'"—Enoch's Diary.
One burning morning in July, Jonas, in a cool gray seersucker suit, his black face dripping with perspiration, was struggling with the electric fan in the private office of the Secretary of the Interior. The windows were wide open and the hideous uproar of street traffic filled the room. It was a huge, high-ceilinged apartment, with portraits of former Secretaries on the walls. The Secretary's desk, a large, polished conference table, and various leather chairs, with a handsome Oriental rug, completed the furnishings.