In caves still higher up beneath the bridge we discovered bits of baskets and pottery fashioned by ubiquitous cave-dwellers a thousand years ago. Then turning a corner, we came upon a fairy grotto, a shallow rock-basin filled with shining water; walls covered with moss and glossy maiden hair fern, over which a sparkling cascade fell. All this, built out like a Juliet balcony high over the babbling brook.
NATURAL BRIDGE, PINE, ARIZONA.
From here it was only a short scramble back to the ranch-house, the barn, gardens and orchards on floor three, from which a steep canyon road leads to the upper world. Years ago when Dave Goodfellow, hermit and prospector, built his shack here the undergrowth was so wild that a calf who wandered into the brush and died within ten feet of the house was not found till a month after. Now the tangle has been smoothed and planted to alfalfa. Under the huge fruit trees he planted, meanders a brook edged with mint, violets and water-cress. Visitors drop down only occasionally, but they are always sure of good food, a clean bed, and a whole-hearted Scotch welcome. When news finally seeped in to us that spring had melted the snow-packed mountain roads, leaving them dry enough to travel, we departed with regret. “Pa” Goodfellow built us a food box out of two empty gasoline tins, “Ma” Goodfellow gave us a loaf of fresh bread, a jar of apricot preserves, and a wet bag full of water-cress, which provided manna for two hot, dusty days.
Spring had wrought marvels to our thrice traveled Apache Trail. The hills were gay with blue lupin, the color of shadows in that hot land. The valleys blazed with the yellow blossoms of the prickly holly bush, sweeter in odor than jasmine. Dozens of times we stopped to collect the myriad varieties of spring flowers, more prodigal than I have seen anywhere else in the world; poppies, red snap-dragons, Indian paint brush, the blue loco-weed which gives permanent lunacy to the cattle and horses which eat it; little delicate desert blooms like our bluets and grass flowers, shading from blue to white, and daisies of a dozen kinds, yellow, orange, yellow with brown centers, with yellow centers, and giant marguerites.
At the mining camp we stopped for a how-d’y-do with the Kellys. “The old woman,” who had arrived from Providence recently, was brought out to meet us. A short, asthmatic and completely suburban lady, the beauties of the lovely scene rolling away to the horizon left her blank. She still panted in short gasps from the terrors of the Apache Trail.
“Awful!” she told us. “Awful! I was so scared I thought I’d die. Straight up and down. Straight up and down. My heart was in my mouth all the trip. I’m homesick. Look at this place,—no stores and no neighbors—not a bit like Providence.”
Her dampening presence seemed a little to have affected her husband’s effervescence. However, he still had the finest mine in Arizona, and Arizona was the finest state in the Union.
“She’ll get used to it by and by,” he said. “Horizontal fever,—that’s what the old lady’s got. Ought to heard her squeal on them turns.”
They pressed us to stay over night.