CHAPTER XI

The Canyon

“There is a song in the canyon below me, And a song in the pines overhead,— As the sun creeps down from the snow-line And startles the deer from its bed; With mountains of green all around me, And mountains of white up above, And mountains of blue in the distance, I follow the trail that I love.”

When the verse ceased and Peggy had turned around, there was a little burst of applause.

The little poem she had just recited was so perfectly descriptive of the scene surrounding the Camp Fire party at this moment that it was almost as if it had been created for the place and the occasion.

They had come part of the way down one of the easier trails leading to the Grand Canyon and had reached a broad, flat rock like a table-land. On it there was a growth of scrub pine; way below the deep, subdued roar of the Colorado River and beyond the blue, snow-topped hills.

Peggy was standing at the edge of the plateau of rock looking down the trail which descended lower into the canyon, when the lines of the song had occurred to her and she had spoken them aloud.

She was one of a group of half a dozen or more persons near enough to hear what she was saying while the others were not far away in the background.

“That is charming, Peggy,” Gerry declared when the applause ended. “I do envy your being able to remember a thing so delightfully appropriate. I never can at the right moment. But it isn’t like you, Peggy, to be reciting poetry; one might have expected it of Bettina. I believe you are in love.”

She spoke good-naturedly but with a little teasing inflection that only Gerry had at her command among the Camp Fire girls.

However, Peggy laughed and shrugged her shoulders.

“Of course I am in love. I am in love with the whole world and I never have been half so much so before in my life. Who wouldn’t be in such a place on such a day and in such society?”

Peggy made a slight grimace and bowed to her assembled friends, but by accident her gaze rested last on Ralph Marshall’s eyes and she flushed a little.

“Who of you is going a portion of the way down the trail with Ralph and me before lunch?” she asked. “Mother says she is willing if we don’t go far and are depressingly careful. I have promised not to put one foot before the other without taking thought.”

“Oh, your mother will trust you to me. I have asked her consent,” Ralph protested.

Gerry and Sally both giggled. Ralph’s speech had been made in good faith and without the least idea of a double meaning, but they were apt to be silly and sentimental on subjects they had better not have been considering while they were Camp Fire girls.

Fortunately, Peggy did not even see the point in their sudden amusement. She was waiting to have some one except Ralph Marshall reply to her question.

“I do wish you would not go, Peggy. The rest of us are satisfied with this view of the canyon for today, at least. We did not plan to go further down,” Bettina Graham protested, looking anxious. “I would go with you if I dared, but you know how I hate looking down great distances.”

Peggy laughed. “Oh, you are not to come, ‘Tall Princess.’ We would not have you along for a great deal. Remember what a time we had with you on a much less difficult trail. But I thought some one of the others—” She turned toward Sally and Alice Ashton and their companions, Terry Benton and Howard Brent.

Terry shook his head, but for some unknown reason appeared a little uncomfortable.

“Not today, Miss Peggy. Under the circumstances I don’t feel I ought to make the third.”

But Peggy paid no attention to Terry Benton’s refusal, because almost immediately Howard Brent interrupted him.

“I am coming along,” he announced brusquely.

Peggy waved her hand.

“Good-bye; I ought to be safe with two escorts.”

Then, with Ralph Marshall in front and Howard Brent behind, the three started down the second trail.

From the fat plateau of rock a second trail descended to another ledge below. The first trail had been gentle and the Camp Fire party had come down to their present resting place without difficulty. But the second trail was a steeper and more dangerous kind.

It was cut into the side of the rock and filled with loose stones and gravel. After the first turn, the rocks on the one side rose up almost perpendicularly and descended with equal abruptness on the other.

There were other trails deeper and deeper, down toward the bottom of the canyon, but these Peggy had promised not to attempt. However, they would have taken too long a time to follow and would have required the service of a guide.

But this particular strata of rocks was still in what is known as the limestone formation. Now and then blocks of blood red showed through the scrubby patches of underbrush, and then there would be a line of grey sandstone, so that the red and grey looked like alternating ribbons.

Twenty feet below the starting place the little party of three stopped to wave to the group above them. They had previously come down through the white wall of stone which now rose like a mountain of snow above them.

Bettina, from her place up above, could not see Peggy’s face, but for two or three moments after they started down again she could see her figure.

Peggy moved with swift and certain grace. She seemed as totally unafraid and as sure of herself as her two companions. Indeed, she appeared rather more so, for there are persons with whom the art of climbing is a natural gift, and others who are extraordinarily awkward.

Ralph Marshall was in front although it was an unfortunate place for him. The rocky path was deeper than he had expected, and the stones under his feet slipped more uncertainly. The experience of descending so steep a precipice was a new and not altogether a pleasant experience. Ralph had not dreamed that one could be expected to walk down the face of a rock, but that was apparently what the three of them had set about doing.

Yet neither Peggy nor Howard Brent made any complaint.

Now and then Ralph could hear Peggy laugh as she slipped and regained her balance.

But he had no disposition to laugh. Once or twice he thought of asking Howard Brent to exchange places with him and lead the way. They had not planned to follow this second trail for any great distance, but only to come down a short way until they discovered a possible resting place where the view of the lower walls of rock and the river would be finer.

Yet Ralph hesitated to speak to Howard Brent. They were not friendly. Indeed, Howard had avoided his society as much as possible ever since the unfortunate conversation he had held with Terry Benton in reference to Peggy. Moreover, Ralph knew that Howard was also scornful of him in other ways. He was so strong and efficient himself in outdoor matters that he considered the Eastern man almost effeminate. It was true Ralph could dance and play tennis, but he was not athletic, because he never had been fond of really strenuous sports. They had always appeared too much like work.

Ralph now felt that he would rather come to grief than confess his nervousness to the other man. Peggy, he would not have minded. She was never disagreeable when people did not enjoy exactly the same things she did.

Indeed, Ralph was becoming convinced that Peggy Webster was one of the finest girls he had ever known. He had set about trying to be particularly friendly with her because of his wager. But, if he had not succeeded in making Peggy like him by his attentions to her, he had certainly succeeded in making himself fond of Peggy. He had no sentimental ideas about her, as he had about many girls with whom he indulged in mild flirtations. For one thing Peggy seemed too young; for another, she was too boyish and too frank in her acceptance of his comradeship.

Personally, Ralph considered that so far he had lost his wager. Peggy Webster did not care for him in the way he had announced he could influence her to care. But he had never again mentioned the matter of his bet with Terry Benton, not feeling proud of it. However, he had still continued to devote himself to Peggy, and ostensibly for the reason he had given his two companions about ten days before.

But, now, sliding down among the rocks, Ralph’s thought was undeniably fixed upon himself. He was hoping to get out of an uncomfortable position without loss to his own dignity. He would like to have gone back to their original resting place and rejoined the rest of the Camp Fire party without descending another yard deeper into the rocky bed of the earth. But the thing was impossible and he made the best of it. Ralph Marshall was lazy, but he was not a coward. Moreover, there was no spot where one could stop and turn back. His hope lay ahead. Once they reached a flat place, he meant to suggest returning.

Two or three times Ralph felt dizzy. He had not dreamed of such weakness in himself and would not give way to it.

Then he felt the dizziness coming on again. This time he did not care. There—just a few feet beyond—their trail widened and a ledge of rock jutted out over the precipice on their left side.

Here, at least, was a spot large enough to rest upon and to get one’s breath.

Peggy Webster was perhaps only three feet behind Ralph when he made his discovery.

He walked on to the ledge of rock, beckoning her to follow. As the flattened surface was so small, he was forced to go close to the edge in order to make room for her.

And Peggy did follow him. She was standing only a few inches away when the rock Ralph was on crumbled.

His reaching out and seizing her as he fell was not cowardly—it was only instinctive.

He went over backwards, but she was facing him and was able to keep her footing an instant longer.

However, it was only an instant because, as Howard Brent saw them, Ralph and Peggy appeared to slip over the side of the precipice together.

Howard was a few yards further back, yet in the briefest possible time he had dropped flat on his hands and knees and crawled out on the crumbling ledge.

There had been no outcry except Ralph’s first exclamation of horror. But, how far down they had fallen, Howard Brent could not discover until he, too, was able to look over the side of the cliff.

Then he discovered that Peggy was only a few feet below, and that Ralph Marshall was just beneath her. But Ralph had released his clutch—it was Peggy Webster who was clinging tenaciously to him. She had managed to get one hand inside his coat, so that she was holding Ralph suspended as if he had been a wooden image.

This would not have been possible except for the fact that Peggy’s other arm was wound about a small tree, growing upright among the rocks as serenely as if it had been planted in the earth.

As the girl slid down, this tree had been directly in her way, so that it was intuitive to seize hold on it. The strange fact was that Ralph Marshall had not made the same effort as he went past. But the truth was, the back of Ralph’s head had struck a heavy stone as he went over and he had almost at once lost consciousness. Yet his weight was not altogether held up by Peggy. Fortunately, a rock jutting out from below gave a kind of resting place. But Peggy had to keep his body in position. When she let go Ralph must fall face forward.

And Peggy could not hold on much longer.

Howard Brent realized that he must do something at once. Yet what was he to do?