CHAPTER X
THE APACHE TRAIL AND TONTO VALLEY
FEARING the wrath of John, we made a guilty start in the freshness of the next morning. But when we paid our bill and left, John was still heavily under the influence of vanilla, and to Miss Susan’s relief, we did not encounter him. Even in bright daylight with no traffic we were an hour and a half driving the sixteen miles to Fish Creek. Salt River Valley became a narrow chasm, dark and gloomy but for the glint of emerald cottonwoods edging the stream at the bottom. A chaotic heap of brilliant-hued peaks filled the valley.
The road was all that had been claimed for it. Had we not been inoculated with horizontal-fever serum on the still more precarious Winkleman trail, we might have fallen over the precipice in sheer giddiness. The natural hazards of a road which skipped from top to bottom of a series of thousand-foot rocks were increased by tipping outward up-hill and around corners, so that frequently we lurched over steep chasms at a far from reassuring angle, while our long wheel-base increased complications. Boulders loosened from the crumbling cliffs above, cluttered the road at the most dangerous turns. A glance ahead at a dizzy drop of several thousand feet, then beyond to a corresponding climb, and still further to dips and swoops exceeding the most breath-taking devices of Coney Island, would make me weak-kneed. But taking the road in a near-sighted way, after one quick glance over switchbacks to make sure we should meet no traffic, and meeting each problem in driving as it came abreast the steering wheel, I found the Apache Trail as safe as a church.
We breakfasted under the highest peak of all, at the little Fish Creek inn. Here the scenery resembled the landscapes of impressive grandeur our grandmothers received for wedding presents, with crags and waterfalls, jungles, mountains and valleys gloomily heaped together in a three foot canvas. Our breakfast was a simple affair of stewed fruit, oatmeal, fried ham, fried eggs, bacon, hot biscuits, coffee and griddle cakes. Thus securely ballasted, our chance of being toppled off a cliff’s edge was materially lessened. Now came the climax of the drive,—the climb to Lookout Point.
Two thousand vertical feet of rock would seem a sufficient barrier to turn humanity back into the fastnesses whence it came. But moccasined feet had won to the summit, and motor cars with the power of many cayuses now roar over the same trail, a tortuous mile upward to Lookout Point. Whether this spot was named for its scenic beauty or for a warning, matters not: the name fits. We looked our fill. I cannot describe what we saw. Go and see it for yourself, even at the risk of breaking a neck. The safety of one’s neck is always inversely as the beauty of the view.
Miles on jagged miles of mountain tops lay below us. It was not long before we became aware of the extreme unimportance of ourselves and our tiny affairs. The mountains shouted to each other, “GOD IS!”
With a suggestion of Bunyan, we reached Superstition Mountain next, and left it behind. Then the scenery, having had its last triumphant fling of grandeur, settled down to levels of gray and brown. The world which a moment since had stood on its head for joy tumbled flat, and became content with mediocrity.
Five miles more, and the reason for Roosevelt Dam lay before our eyes. Five miles of blistering country, so dry, as a guide said, that “when you spit you can’t see where it lands”; a country burnt to a crisp by withering sunshine so intense that shadows, sharp-edged as razor blades, look vermilion purple. Only horned reptiles, poisonous and thorny-backed, can exist here, and plants as ungracious, compelled to hoard their modicum of moisture in iron-clad, spiny armament. And then, a line of demarcation the width of a street, and the Water-God has turned this colorless ache of heat to emerald green. Thwarted cactus gives way to long rows of poplars and leopard-spotted eucalyptus bordering blue canals. We saw a corner of Southern France where the hills of Provençe edge the fertile plains of Avignon. We were in the famous Salt River Valley, the boast of parched Arizona.
We followed these shady canals into Phoenix, bumping over dismally paved roads, and making wide detours where some irrigator greedy for water had flooded the street. After leaving our friends at the station, we returned, sand blowing in our faces, to the San Marcos Hotel at Chandler. Neither town nor hotel has geographic or commercial reasons for existing, but both are examples of one man’s patient persistence in a fight with stubborn Nature. Chandler is typical of the whole Valley. Sand-besieged from the north, it sets a flame of verdure to meet the devastating onslaught of the desert, blossoming defiantly till the air is saturated with perfume. A contrast to the uncompromising shoe-box fronts of most Western hotels, the San Marcos displayed low plaster arcades hung with swinging plants inviting all the song birds of the valley, cool corridors and carefully planned interiors, and gardens framed by distant lilac mountains. Across from the hotel little shops repeated its design of reposeful Mission. Only on the outskirts of this little town did we meet with the crude unsophistication of the Rockies. Yet before a week passed all this artificial fertility and prettiness palled. It was not Arizona. Beyond the orange and olive groves of the Valley, beyond the blooming roses and the song of the nightingale, and all the daintiness of eastern standards inlaid upon the west we felt the threat of the arid waste circling this little island of fruitfulness. The dam, beneficent as it is, harnesses but does not destroy the desert.