I Married a Ranger | Page 7

and topazes found in the
center of the logs. Formed probably by resin in the wood, these jewels
are next hardest to diamonds and have been much prized. One famous
jeweler even had numberless logs blown to splinters with explosives in
order to secure the gems.
The wood is very little softer than diamond, and polishes beautifully for
jewelry, book-ends, and table tops. The ranger warned us against taking
any samples from the Reserve.
We could have spent days wandering around among the fallen giants,
each one disclosing new beauties in color and formation; but we finally
left, reluctantly, each determined to come back again.
It was quite dark when we reached the Canyon, and I was glad to creep
into bed. My kitten snuggled down close to the pillow and sang sleepy
songs, but I couldn't seem to get to sleep. Only cheesecloth nailed over
the windows stood between me and all sorts of animals I imagined
prowled the surrounding forest. The cheesecloth couldn't keep the
noises out, and the cry that I heard might just as well have been the
killing scream of a cougar as a bed-time story of a tree frog. It made my
heart beat just as fast. And although the rangers declared I never heard
more than one coyote at a time, I knew that at least twenty howling
voices swelled the chorus.
While I was trying to persuade myself that the noise I heard was just a

pack rat, a puffing, blowing sound at the window took me tremblingly
out to investigate. I knew some ferocious animal was about to devour
me! But my precious flowers were the attraction. A great, gaunt cow
had taken the last delectable bite from my pansy bed and was sticking
out a greedy tongue to lap in the snapdragons. Throwing on my
bathrobe, I grabbed the broom and attacked the invader. I whacked it
fore and aft! I played a tune on its lank ribs! Taken completely by
surprise, it hightailed clumsily up through the pines, with me and my
trusty broom lending encouragement. When morning came, showing
the havoc wrought on my despoiled posies, I was ready to weep.
Ranger Winess joined me on my way to breakfast.
"Don't get far from Headquarters today," he said. "Dollar Mark Bull is
in here and he is a killer. I've been out on Tony after him, but he
charged us and Tony bolted before I could shoot. When I got Tony
down to brass tacks, Dollar Mark was hid."
I felt my knees knocking together.
"What's he look like?" I inquired, weakly.
"Big red fellow, with wide horns and white face. Branded with a Dollar
Mark. He's at least twenty years old, and mean!"
My midnight visitor!
I sat down suddenly on a lumber pile. It was handy to have a lumber
pile, for I felt limp all over. I told the ranger about chasing the old beast
around with a broom. His eyes bulged out on stems.
Frequent appearances of "Dollar Mark" kept me from my daily tramps
through the pines, and I spent more time on the Rim of the Canyon.
Strangely, the great yawning chasm itself held no fascination for me. I
could appreciate its dizzy depths, its vastness, its marvelous color
effects, and its weird contours. I could feel the immensity of it, and it
repelled instead of attracted. I seemed to see its barrenness and

desolation, the cruel deception of its poisonous springs, and its
insurmountable walls. I could visualize its hapless victims wandering
frantically about, trying to find the way out of some blind coulee, until,
exhausted and thirst-crazed, they lay down to die under the sun's
pitiless glare. Many skeletons, half buried in sand, have been found to
tell of such tragedies.
It was only in the evenings, after the sun had gone down, that I could
feel at ease with the Canyon. Then I loved to sit on the Rim and look
down on the one living spot far below, where, almost a century ago, the
Indians made their homes and raised their crops, watering the fields
from the clear, cold spring that gushes out of the hillside. As the light
faded, the soft mellow moon would swim into view, shrouding with
tender light the stark, grim boulders. From the plateau, lost in the
shadows, the harsh bray of wild burros, softened by distance, floated
upward.
On a clear day I could see objects on the North Rim, thirteen miles
away, and with a pair of strong field glasses I could bring the scene
quite close. It looked like a fairyland over there, and I wanted to cross
over and see what it was really like. White Mountain advanced the
theory that if we were married we could go over there for