Enchanted Park: A Story

Enchanted Park BY WILL ROSE

Cochrane, the Forest Ranger, came to the park late that night, and so delayed my dishwashing. By the time I had cleared np and peeled the potatoes for breakfast most of the camp was asleep. When I started to the cellar to hang- out the beef it was so dark I conld hardly find my way. The breeze that had been blowing all that spring day was now dead. The moonless sky was black with sullen clouds. The dim candle in my cook- shack and the dull red glow of the big fire-box down at the mill were the only traces of light to be seen. Nowhere could I make out the faintest outline of a tree, yet I could feel the gloomy nearness of the big, yellow pines all about me. The strange si- lence of that great forest oppressed me more than did the black- ness of the night. I fancied the proud old giants were mourning over their doom. For tomorrow the mill would run. Everything had been waiting on Cochrane. At daylight he would take his hatchet and begin stamping the "U. S." on the trees to be cut. The choppsrs would follow, and soon the loggers would be piling the bleeding logs on the skidway. Already steam was up in the big boiler and the great circular saw filed and set. To me this lumber-making in Enchanted park was little less than murder. For the forest was new and impressive to me, and Enchanted park was a strangely beautiful place. Its great trees, ages old, were living beings to me, whispering to each other of the strange happenings in Earth's childhooT They seemed to hold themselves with all the sober dignity of ancient priests. The first time I walked into their midst I found myself baring my head as I would in a temple. That is why a sawmill in Enchanted park was to me a desecration. But of course I realized bitterly that I was a dreamer and fit only to be a sawmill cook. Then, too, I reflected that the history of En- chanted park had too much increased my sympathy for its trees. Enchanted park is on the Kaibab plateau, wdiich is the front dooryard of the Grand Canyon of Arizona. Timbered with yellow pine, Douglas fir, spruce, balsam and aspen, this plateau is one of the best deer ranges in the West, as well as a national play- ground of surpassing beauty. In the higher parts are hollows so densely wooded that a horseman cannot- force his wav through. Mostly, however, the woods are open, affording delightful, flower- strewn vistas. Then there are the parks. These are little valleys

containing" open meadows of timothy and wild clover, which give way to a carpet of upland flowers billowing up the gentle slopes to meet the circling forest. These little bowls of enchantment, cupped like the palm of an open hand, are scattered here and there all over the plateau. Of them all, Enchanted park is the most desirable. Besides the magic of its unearthly beauty, it holds the only really large spring on the plateau. That is why the sawmill came there first to begin its destruction. The history of the park, as we know it, begins when the Indians of the early days, coming on the plateau to hunt, found Old Cap Davis in possession of their favorite camp ground. They were in mortal terror of Davis because he had a glass eye which never closed, day nor night. So instead of attempting to kill him, they waited until he had gone to Kanab for supplies, and held an all-night pow-wow in the park. This was to call down on the intruder the vengeance of the evil spirits at their command. At first Cap Davis laughed at the bad medicine of the red men, but a steady run of bad luck finally frightened him away from the park. It remained deserted by Indian and wdiite man alike until Wild Jack Murray took possession. It seems certain that Wild Jack was crazy. At least he was queer. He always boasted of the spell that lay on his home, and he gave it the name of Enchanted park. He snaked his house-logs over two ridges from another hollow rather than offend his spirit friends by cut- ting a tree in the park. When Ralph Huntington went up to the park to buy Wild Jack out and start a sawmill there, it is said that Wild Jack an- swered not a word to the proposal, merely shading his eyes with Ms hand while he stared the mill man out of countenance. When Huntington's eyes finally fell before that insane leer, Wild Jack broke into a maniacal laugh that sent the visitor shuddering on his way. "He amused the spirits, too," was Jack's boastful comment on the incident, "mortal man will never cut timber in Enchanted park," and again his crazy laugh rang out. But Wild Jack was snowed in the park the following winter, and died all alone there of pneumonia. So Huntington came back in the summer and put up his mill without hindrance. He, too, hauled his great, hewn mill timbers from outside the park, not from fear of the spell, but because he wanted Douglas fir and there was none in the park. Before his mill could get going, however, a lawsuit put the owner out of business. The mill lay until next season, when a Panguitch man named Stevenson bought it. When he came to prepare for a run he found that a fire in the pine needles had ruined his saw by taking out the temper. Being superstitious, he quit at once.

Then came Jim Carr, from Flagstaff, the following season, with a new saw and a mill-crew of Mexicans. One day Carr kicked a humble Greaser once too often, and died with a swift knife in his back. Once more mill work was put off. Nothing more was ever attempted until now Billy Powers had taken hold for the Northern Arizona Lumber Company. It was Powers who had hired me as cook. Billy had heard all about the hoodoo, and boasted that he had come out to break it. Healthy, cheerful, with a college education and an iron will, he seemed the man to do it. But he had to fight. The first difficulty he met was getting a permit from the Forest Service, for the Kaibab plateau is a National Forest. Some mysterious tangle of red tape delayed action on his bid for stumpage. But Billy went after the Forest Service personally and through his senators, and nagged the local Forest Supervisor until life was a misery to him. Finally things began to move, and Powers smiled his satis- faction, even crowing mildly over local backers of the hoodoo. I

think that he felt that the moment he could cut a tree in the park the enchantment would be broken. He never forgave the local supervisor for refusing to oblige him by marking a few trees before authority came from Washington. But at last the ranger had come with authority, and tomorrow would begin the stamping- of two hundred thousand feet. "Better get busy, you spirits," I mocked at them with bitter- ness, as I stood a moment in the dark by the cellar. As I started for my bunk, the sound of a distant halloo put all else out of my mind. It sounded like someone lost. I stopped to listen. Again it came, far away but distinct. Someone hunt- ing the mill, I thought. Or was it an owl or night-bird? No: it sounded the third time, so distinctly that I answered involuntarily. At this, most of the hands awoke, and the dogs began to bark. Cochrane's ugly brindle hound woke the echoes with a baying that seemed to curdle my blood. I never did like hounds. A buzz of questioning began. "Listen !" was all I said. Again the cry sounded, miles away it seemed, but distinct in the stillness. The human note was unmistakable. Three or four yelled an answer. "What the devil is the matter up there?" Powers called an- grily from his bed in the mill. "Somebody lost!" Joe Sampson answered. Powers opened up the steam whistle and filled the park with its lonesome bellow. Old Man Salton, camped up at the spring, fired his Winchester three times, then kindled a blaze. The calling ceased and the silence became tense with listening. "Must be coming," someone muttered. But the calling began

again, weak, elusive, yet convincing to the listeners. Some human was certainly out there lost. Most of the hands dressed hastily and gathered in the dark to listen. Becoming chilly, we were soon drifting up to the fire. Here we stood and waited for the lost to appear, and speculated and argued for perhaps an hour. All the time the Boss was blowing the whistle every ten minutes. But the calling seemed to become fainter if anything. This sug- gested the theory that a man was hurt out there, or pinned down under a wagon or horse. "I doubt it most dreadful," Old Man Salton said, "but I'm goin' to see. Better come along if you like. Better to be fooled in goin' than in stayin'." Here Cochrane came into the circle. He was new to the Service and new to forest life. Such men can no longer get ap- pointments in the Forest Service. It seems he had spent all this time searching hurriedly through the Forest Manual for directions to follow in searching for the lost. He was now ready for action. "That's the idea, Mr. Salton," he approved, "we'll organize a posse for the search. I'm very much afraid that Supervisor Alton is out there injured, as has been suggested. He intended being here for the opening of the millwork. Mr. Powers has agreed to keep the whistle going at intervals as long as the steam lasts. Mr. Sampson, will you please remain and keep a large fire going? The rest of us will place ourselves about thirty yards apart and advance in line in the direction of the sound. I shall take the lead with my bloodhound." Under Forest regulations, we were supposed to do as he said in all such cases. So we marched on into the black darkness under the direction of a man who had spent most of his life running a street car. As we went, we listened and called by turns. On account of the trees and the darkness, we had trouble keeping a line. After an eternity of this, say three hours, we had climbed out of the park, and were dropping off the south rim into the steep hollows and canyon heads that lead off in all directions but north. It was here we had expected to find Avhoever was calling. We lost our formation instead. The hollows divided us into groups of two and three. I was with Salton and Kenner, the sawyer. We blun- — dered about helplessly for hours and hours years and years seemed more like it. In the dark, time stops. I could swear that we went all over the Kaibab plateau.. We were still plodding about rihculously when dawn found us tired and bruised. Feeling like fools, we straggled back to the mill. With the •

daylight the forest became alive and gay. laughing at us for our wild-goose chase. By that night all the hands had returned but ;

Cochrane and his hound were still missing. Young Billy Powers was the angriest man I ever saw. What he had to say about the Forest Service and its ways, and about our of it- fool Rangers in

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776 I MPROVEMENT ERA particular, used up all the most powerfully wicked words in three languages. If he could have found the "U. S." marking hatchet he would have marked his trees himself, then chopped off Coch- rane's head with it. At least, so he said. But he kept sane enough not to cut a tree without the "U. S." on it. The second day came and passed without Cochrane. Firing shots and blowing the steam whistle did no good. So on the third day Powers sent us out to search for the guardian of the forest and his brindle hound. Tracking is so difficult over heavy sod and pine needles that we were two days following Cochrane's trail. He had been so certain that the hound would lead him straight to the supposedly injured man we were hunting, that he had followed the animal clear out of that part of the forest. We found him alone trying to follow an old Bar-Z bull to water. The hound had left him to his fate. He was game, with all his greenness we had to admit that. We were another day getting him back to the mill. "The joke's on me, Mr. Powers," was his greeting to our boss, "but we'll saw lumber tomorrow." "The deuce we will !" the Boss snarled viciously, "go read that notice." On the wall of the cook-shack was a copy of President Roose- velt'sproclamation newly posted, making of the Kaibab plateau a National Park. Hunting and the cutting of timber were forbidden. So the mill would never run, after all. An executive order was afterwards issued allowing the cut- ting of timber on certain areas of the Kaibab plateau, but En- chanted park is still protected with all its primeval splendor intact. Whether it is guarded by spirits or only the servants of a great nation, is more than I can say. KANAB, UTAH

A big home-grown, corn-fed girl may not be able to tango as gracefully as her slender, hot-house sister, but she is there with bells on when it comes to doing the kitchen scrub and the dust rag dip — and the broom stick balance and the cook stove canter. Gadson (Ala.) Times News.

A representative in Congress from the West tells of an amusing request which he received from one of his constituents. "Dear Gen- eral," the letter said, "for a long time you have failed to send me any bound volumes containing eulogies of dead members of the House. If convenient, please remember me, in this respect, for there is nothing that I enjoy more than reading obituaries of dead Congressmen."

Jack: "My mother paid nine dollars for this coat." Jill: "My mother has a charge account. She never pays for any- thing."