"That's too big a subject to take up now. Still, you can understand that if you dam the stream high up, and divert all the water over a certain height into immense reservoirs, the water could be let down gradually later. But that all depends on the measurement, which is taken daily for years, often—as in the case I was in—from a cable stretched from bank to bank, from which a little 'bos'un's chair' is hanging on a pulley, so that sitting in this little framework you can reach up to the cable and pull yourself to and fro. The one over the Susquehanna, where I was, is over a mile long, and of course it's pretty high up to allow for the sag, which is not small on a wire of that immense span."

Roger had a host of questions to ask but kept silent, not wanting to monopolize the talk when older men were there.

"By the way, Roberts," asked Field, seeking to change the subject from a topic which was stale to all the members of the party except Roger, "how did you like the work in the lower Sacramento Valley?"

"Parts of it weren't so bad, Mr. Field," was the reply. "Indeed, I think I've struck worse going right up here and in the Mud Lake district, but the project down there is on so large a scale that one is bound to become enthusiastic in the work. The bush is very dense, of course, semi-tropical in character, but where the growth is heavy the swamp is not so bad, so that it becomes a mere question of bushwhacking. Then, too, that southern stuff is all soft to cut and much easier to get through. The tule grass, however, is different."

"I've never been down in that tule grass," said one of the party, "is it as bad as has been described?"

"It's never been adequately described on paper," was the ready answer. "Uncle Sam wouldn't let the report go through the mails."

Roger grinned.

"But what is it like, Mr. Roberts?" he said.

The newcomer thought for a moment.

"It's like what a field of wheat would seem to a very small dog," he answered. "It's too thick to walk through, too high to see over, and as stuffy as a tenement house with all the windows nailed down."

"How do you manage it then," asked the boy. "Do you go on stilts?"

"Stilts!" ejaculated the surveyor. "You'd have to be an opera dancer with legs about twelve feet long to manage stilts down there. And even after you cut it down, walking on the stubble is like tramping over bayonet blades stuck in the ground point up. No, what we do is to cut a sort of trail for a horse, who is hitched to a light buckboard. The horse goes through because he's got to, and the buckboard follows unless the harness breaks."

"But how do you get your tripods above the rushes," said the chief, "for you surely can't cut lines everywhere."

"We don't. The legs of the tripod are spliced to sticks long enough to raise them above the grass: and the topographer, standing sometimes on the body of the buckboard, sometimes on the seat, works with his nose just peering above the giant rushes, from a rod of extra length, deducting from his calculations the height of the tripod and the buckboard from the ground."

"And is it dry?"

"Mostly, except when the tide comes in at the lower part. At least, it's not soggy wet, like it is here. It's dead easy to get lost though, and you can't see any landmarks. You could chase your own back hair for a week and never know that you were going in a circle."

"Apropos of getting lost, Roberts," said the older man, "we had a little experience with the lad here that is worth repeating," and beginning from the snipe-hunt, he related the entire affair, showing first how well they had got the laugh on the tenderfoot, and how he had got back in return. Roberts laughed long and heartily at the picture conjured up of Roger sitting in the boughs above the party, hearing them discuss plans for his rescue and heroically resolving to leave nothing undone till they should find him.

"I think I told you," began the new assistant, "how hard that stuff is to make a way through, and though it is really almost as tangled as this marsh work up here, the ground is so flat that far fewer bench marks are required. We had taken a long sight, because there was a sort of depression at that point which we wanted to delimit, and I was quite a distance from the plane table. Suddenly I felt a swish of water at my feet, my first realization that the tide was coming in. This had often happened before, and the water usually rose to a little above the knee, when, as soon as the tide ebbed, it would flow out and leave all dry again.

"Of course I was aware that I was working in a slight depression, but as a matter of fact it never occurred to me that this would make any especial difference. I was surprised, certainly, at the strength of the tide as it flowed in, and I remember a little later wondering whether it was spring tide and not being able to find any reason for the heavy flow, but it was only casually that the matter occurred to me at all. Few minutes elapsed, however, before I realized that any greater increase of depth would be a really serious matter. The water was already above my knees and increasing at an alarming rate. I think I have shown you how hard it is to get through that stuff, and to cross a hundred yards of tule grass is a matter of half an hour's work. Still, at any moment, I thought the water would reach its maximum and I felt ashamed to start back after all the labor of reaching the point where I then was.

"Of course I am not usually the tallest man in the party [the speaker was not more than five feet six or seven] and the boys used to joke me about my height. I knew they would roast me to a turn if I had to let on that I was afraid of being drowned in a few feet of water. So I held on. But the water had crept up rapidly until it was well above my waist, and I determined, jesting or no jesting, that I was going to strike for higher ground, or, if possible, get as far as the buckboard. The other fellows couldn't see the trouble I was in because they were on a little crest of ground, and because the waving tule grass shut off all sight of the water.

"What's wrong?" I heard one of them shout, as I started back, but I didn't want them to get the laugh on me too soon, and I was coming back through that sodden grass just as rapidly as I could make arms and legs go. Well, sir, I suppose that tide came in slowly, but it seemed to me as though I could see it creep up my shirt inch by inch, and I had hardly got half the distance before it was up to my shoulders. I thought it was time then to let the boys know what was up, so I shouted:

"'Bring the buckboard here, fellows, or I'll be drowned in this infernal grass!'

"'Drowned?' I heard one of the men say questioningly, then immediately after, 'By Jove, he's caught with the tide down in that low spot.'

"But of course they couldn't bring the buckboard because the horse couldn't go through unless a path had been cut, and they couldn't very well cut a path, for the reason that in doing so they would have to stoop, bringing their heads under water, to say nothing of the difficulty of swinging an ax in the water. It looked pretty bad for me, but I thought it likely that Shriveter, one of the party, who was over six feet, would come to my aid, and six inches more of height made a considerable difference of time in the up-creeping of the water. Then I saw the chief pull out his watch and speak to the rest of the boys, and they began to laugh. I was about thirty yards away by this time and could hear them laugh quite distinctly. It made me as mad as a hatter, for the water was up to my chin.

"'It may be deucedly funny to you,' I called out, 'but you might come and help a fellow!' But they only laughed the harder and it made me sore. Can you imagine what it's like plowing through that infernal grass with water up to your chin? You can't stoop your shoulder to push yourself through, because, if you do, a mouthful of salt water comes to your share; all your clothes are sopping wet and heavy; the ground under your feet has become slimy and hard to walk on and the blades of grass are sodden and almost beyond a man's power to move. I found it harder work to make a five-yard line through that mixture of tule grass and tidewater than Harvard ever did on the gridiron against Yale."

"Easy, old man," said Field, "I'm Yale!"

"I know you are," grinned the other, "that's just why I said it. But, as I was telling you, it sure was a man's job to fight through that stuff yard by yard, and the salt water was just about level with my lips, so that when I wanted a breath I had to give a little jump and breathe before I came down. And those beasts on the buckboard were simply howling with laughter.

"'Look at the human jumping-jack!' I heard one of them say, imitating the voice and manner of a sideshow barker, 'The only original half-man, half-frog, in the world. See him hop! One hop is worth the money!' I tell you what," added Roberts, laughing in unison with the rest, at the picture he had conjured up, "I was just about hot enough under the collar to have ducked every one of those grinning oafs."

"But did you really think you were going to be drowned, Mr. Roberts?" asked Roger.

"I suppose if I had stopped to think, my boy," was the immediate response, "I would have known that the other chaps would have got hold of me long before that, but I felt more than half-way drowned as it was, hardly able to advance a step nearer safety, and only succeeding in getting breath by jumping up and down as if I was on a skipping rope. But when I thought I would have to give out, paying no attention to the jocose suggestions of the fellows, such as 'Get a balloon!' 'Talk about a grasshopper!' 'Look who's here, there's spring-heeled Jack on the trail!' and so forth, and when my strength was nearly at an end, it seemed to me either that I had reached a little hillock or that the water was receding. I stood still, and found that by throwing my head back I could just breathe without making any wild gymnastics, and I thought it a good time to take a breathing space. In a few moments I saw that the water really was receding and half an hour later I made my way to the buckboard, where all the boys had gathered and were sitting smoking, watching my frantic efforts.

"'You're a precious lot,' I said to them, as I clambered up out of the wet, 'to let a fellow half drown without coming to help him. I might have gone under out there for all you cared.' Oh, I was mighty sore about it, and I didn't care if they knew it.

"By the way," continued Roberts, when he had finished his story, and other members of the party had added their mite of comment, approval, or equivalent yarn, "Mr. Field tells me that you are new on the Survey. I suppose your name is Doughty, then?"

"Yes, Mr. Roberts," answered Roger, surprised that this man, who was almost a complete stranger to him, should know his name.

"Mr. Herold told me that I should find you here," he said, "and he asked me to give you this letter. He told me what was in it," added the new arrival with a smile, "and I think it should please you."

Roger took with eagerness the long official envelope handed him by Roberts, his first letter of instructions since he became a member of the Survey, and found therein a brief order, requiring him to report at the El Tovar Hotel, Grand Canyon, Ariz., on the first day of the month following. The same envelope contained, moreover, a personal letter from Mitchon, in which, though of course no official recognition could be made, was a phrase worded in such wise as to show that the boy had been well spoken of by Field, and that this new appointment was due to satisfaction with his first few weeks on the Survey. The lad colored with pleasure as he read it.

"I suppose, Roger," said Field, when the boy folded the two letters and put them back into the envelope, "that letter means that you are going to leave us?"

"Yes, Mr. Field," answered the boy, "I don't know just when I am supposed to leave, but I am ordered to report in Arizona on the first of June."

"Going on the desert work?" queried the chief. "My word, Mr. Herold wants to give you pretty sharp contrasts!"

"I think it must be somewhere about the Grand Canyon," answered the boy, his eyes sparkling with the thought of seeing that wonder of America, which he had so ardently desired to visit. "At least, I am told to report at a place called Grand Canyon."

Roberts nodded.

"That's right son," he said. "Grand Canyon is the tourist station for seeing the Colorado River gorge at its best."

"To whom do you report?" asked Field, "to Masseth?"

"Yes, Mr. Field, that was the name," answered the boy.

"Isn't that the man who did such clinking good work in the Little Colorado country?" asked Roberts.

"That's the man," replied Field. "You couldn't be under a better leader," he added, turning to the boy, "but you've got to keep both eyes and both ears wide open with him, for he has a knack of expecting every one with him to know everything. He'll teach you to think quickly, all right."

"Well, my present chief——" began the boy gratefully, but Field waved his hand petulantly.

"Cut that sort of thing out," he interrupted. "Any man will get along if he tries to do his work. But," he warned smilingly, "I don't know that it's such good discipline to play practical jokes on the head of the party. They might not all take it kindly."

"I had a letter from Mr. Mitchon," retorted the boy, "in which he bids me thank you for the snipe. He said they were much appreciated in the office. He writes awfully nicely."

"That snipe's an old joke on the Survey," answered Field, "indeed, it's pretty well known all over the West, but seeing that it was new to you, Mr. Mitchon wanted to enjoy the fun."

"I never met Mitchon until this last time I went to Washington," put in Roberts thoughtfully, "but I liked him very much."

"I had a little experience with Mitchon once," put in David, who had been listening, "and I found him white clear through."

"Mitchon's all right!" said Field.

"You bet!" affirmed the boy.

"Well," commented Roberts with a laugh, "that's a good enough epitaph for any man. Mitchon's a long way from being dead, and I guess no one's particularly anxious to start carving a tombstone, but at that, I guess he'd be satisfied with such a general opinion."

CHAPTER V.
PERIL IN THE GRAND CANYON

Throughout the past two or three hours of the trip, all the passengers had been speaking of the great sights that awaited them, and guidebooks and photograph collections without number had been scanned, bringing interest to fever heat. But in spite of all this preparatory ardor, those who had visited the Grand Canyon before and those whose friends had done so, bore testimony to the universal belief that nothing, no estimate of the wonders of that land, however extravagant, could discount the reality.

It was a little after four o'clock on the afternoon of the last day in May as the train drew into the station, and guides met the passengers ready to conduct them direct to the brink of the Canyon that they might gain their first sight of it. Roger's very toes were aching with the desire to follow them, particularly as he was not on duty until the following day, but still he felt that he was on government service and that he ought to report for duty at the appointed place immediately on his arrival. Then, the boy argued, should there be no one to meet him, his time would be his own until the following morning, and he could enjoy the pleasures of sight-seeing without feeling that he had in any way been neglectful of the strictest interpretation of his orders. His trunk had been checked through, so Roger, refusing the solicitations of the guides, picked up the small hand-grip he had carried for the necessities of the journey and set his face resolutely to the hotel.

Turning to view the country about him, Roger was as much disappointed as amazed to find how flat and uninteresting it seemed. Indeed, there was nothing in the region to suggest that a canyon was anywhere in the vicinity. So far as he could see, on either side of the railroad track up which he had come was a level treeless prairie, and in the direction whither the tourists had gone, there was naught to be seen but this same slowly rising plateau, which, a little further on, seemed to be bounded by a slight rise. The boy knew that the Canyon must be on the other side of this eminence, but there was nothing to bespeak its presence, not a sign to awake the consciousness that a few hundred yards away lay a view of the greatest scenic wonder that any man had beheld, primitive and untouched as since the days that antediluvian monsters roamed the plains whereon he now was walking.

When he arrived at the hotel, Roger walked straight to the desk.

"Is Mr. Masseth here?" he asked the clerk.

The latter, a being largely characterized by shirt front, gestured the boy to a slightly built man, sitting in the rotunda of the hotel reading a newspaper with an intensity of concentration which Roger immediately conceived to be typical of the man. He turned instantly at the boy's approach, however.

"Mr. Masseth?" queried the lad.

The reader rose with a quick though courteous motion of assent.

"I was told to give this letter to you," the boy continued. "I understand it contains my instructions to report to you. My name is Roger Doughty."

"I am extremely pleased," said the older man with a slight foreign timbre in his voice, "to be able to welcome you. I felt assured, from what Mr. Herold said when he wrote to me, that you would be here to-day, as he suggested that I should find you punctual. It is of the greatest service never to lose a minute, unless indeed, it be taken for a rest."

"I don't want to lose minutes, I want to make the most of them, and Mr. Field told me that I should never be losing any time as long as I was with you."

"In that case," replied the boy's new leader, with a quick smile, "what would you like to do now? You have never seen the Grand Canyon before?"

"Never!"

"And you are anxious to do so, of course?"

"You bet!" answered Roger. Then, with a laugh, "I pretty nearly mutinied on my first day; I came near going over with the tourists instead of coming here to report."

"I am quite glad that you did not," said the topographer, "for I should like to be with you the first time you see the Canyon in order to be able to tell you what it all means and how it came about. You would probably try to guess at the reason of things and you would guess wrong, and a false first impression is a bad thing, because it is so hard to take out afterward."

"I'd very much rather find out right at first," answered the boy.

"Very well, then, suppose we walk to a near-by point, where an unusually good view of the Canyon can be observed."

Taking up his hat, as he spoke, he waited while the boy arranged for his grip to be taken to his room, and then without further parley started toward the brink of the chasm with quick, nervous strides which taxed Roger's walking powers to the utmost. They walked on to the rounded hill, Roger so full of excitement that he could hardly answer his companion's questions about his former work on the Survey, and just as they were about to cross the summit of the slope, Masseth touched him on the arm, holding him back.

"Wait just a moment," he said. "Look back over the country and tell me what you see."

Roger turned. "I don't see very much," he said. "I think it's pretty flat except for a range of hills to the east, away off, and that to the south the ground seems to be falling away."

"Is the fall long?"

"I hadn't thought of that," said the boy, "but I suppose we must be quite high up, for the road has been on a gradual incline for miles and miles."

Masseth took a few steps onward.

"You noticed," he said, "how gradual that slope was. Now," pausing as they crossed the ridge, "this is not so gradual." He smiled at the boy's speechless wonderment.

Roger found himself standing not three yards away from a drop of 6,800 feet, the first couple of thousand sheer almost immediately below him. So near that he could have leaped to it, rose a fantastic pinnacle, elaborately carved, springing from a base 1,200 feet below. Beyond this, seamed and jagged, thrown across this cloven chasm as though in defiance of any natural supposing, flung a blood-red escarpment, taking the breath away by the very audacity of its reckless scenic emphasis. Further, again, in unsoftened splashes and belts of naked color, mesa and plateau, peak and crag, shouldering butte and towering barrier, through a vista of miles seeming to stretch to the very world's end, impelled a breathless awe.

And, in Titanic mockery of pygmy human work, the glowing rocks appeared grotesquely, yet powerfully scornful of the greatest buildings of mankind. Minaret and spire, minster and dome, façade and campanile, stood guard over the riven precipices, and not to be outdone by man, nature had there erected temple and coliseum, pyramid and vast cathedral, castle and thrice-walled fastness, until it seemed to the boy that there was thrown before his eyes a hysterical riot of every dream and nightmare of architecture that the world had ever conceived.

"But—but, I never thought it was anything like this!" exclaimed Roger.

The older man repressed a smile at the triteness of the speech, which is that usually educed from every new beholder of the scene.

"What do you think of it?" he said.

"It doesn't seem real," answered the boy. "It's like the places you see in your dreams that you know can't be so, and what's more, it's like one of those places all set on fire with flames of different colors."

"By wind and water," was the reply, "which have made and unmade many a thousand square mile of the earth's surface. If you will notice," he went on, "jagged and pointed as those peaks are, from this side clear across to the other, not one of them rises above the level on which you are standing or rather, above the level of the opposite side of the Canyon, which is a little higher, the slope being continued across. So, you see, you must not think of these like mountains as being built up, but of gorges as being cut down."

"And has the river cut it all down?"

"The river started it, and then of course every little stream helps, and indeed, every rain adds another fissure to the carving."

"But what makes such curious shapes?" asked the boy, still considerably puzzled.

"The relative hardness of the different kinds of rock," was the reply. "Not to seem too technical, the top stratum, that is to say the rock immediately under the soil of this plateau, while quite hard, is very thin, and underneath it are various other layers of rock, some fairly hard and others very soft. The Colorado River has a very swift current, and once it had cut through the hard rock on the top it quickly ate its way downward through the soft limestones and sandstones below. But some strata were quite hard and these, resisting the water, formed the terraces which you see on every hand."

"But I still don't understand," said the boy, "what it is that gives them such curious shapes. I can see how a hard rock would make a terrace, but why aren't the lines all regular?"

"Just because it has been done by water. Sandstone, you know, is made of sand, pressed, and sand is all sorts of rocks ground down fine. So every handful of sand may contain particles of a dozen different kinds of rock, and if there was any difference in the hardness of the rock of which the sandstone was made, or any difference in the pressure while it was being made, each difference would show up by its greater or less resistance to the action of wind and water. So, you see this bit is hard and cuts slowly, that bit soft, and cuts rapidly, giving a carved effect."

"But if it all follows a regular rule, why does it look so unnatural?"

"That is easy," replied his informant. "The strata are regular—that is what makes the masses look like buildings done by hand, there is a sense of proportion, but they look unnatural because the ground plan is capricious, the water having found its way to the bottom of its thousand canyons by the irregular and complicated way of least resistance."

"And the colors seem so glaring and so strange!"

"I will explain those to you after dinner," said the topographer, "and, by the way, it is nearly time we returned to the hotel or we shall be late. I can show you how the various reds are due to iron in the rock—you remember how a rusty nail stains everything red?—and other iron compounds give the green, while the blues of the slates and the dark belts of hornblende all play their part."

Masseth was as good as his word and all through the time spent in the dining-room he interested the boy in the country by his vivid descriptions of how all these rocks had first been made, then reduced to sand and built up again, and how the Colorado River was fast tearing them down and carrying them away to be built up somewhere else in some other way.

"Then geology isn't all over!" exclaimed Roger in surprise. "I always thought of it just as a sort of history of things that happened a great while ago."

"Geology is happening right along," said Masseth, "and that's why it is so necessary to do this work and find out both what has been and what is going to be, even though it is both difficult and arduous."

"Extremely so. The intense color, the glowing rays of the sun seldom shielded by any clouds, the lack of vegetation and the absence of landmarks all help to confuse the idea of distance, so that you cannot trust to your eyes to map a point until you have been there."

"And how do you get there?" queried the boy in wonderment.

"Climbing. There is an Indian trail on this side that helps a little, and there are three roads down to the river on this side and one on the north. This one through trail, called the Cameron or Tourist trail, has been partly rendered passable, so that by herculean effort and with trusted and well-trained animals it is possible to cross. Usually, however, the trail is left in loneliness, for there is absolutely no traffic between Utah and Arizona. Except for a little corner in each, these States are more widely separated than if an ocean rolled between them."

"And how about these corners?"

"Well, Utah can get to hers by taking a little trouble, but the northwest corner of Arizona is No Man's Land, so far as any jurisdiction goes."

"But you say animals can be made to tackle those trails. I should have thought that kind of work would kill any animal that tried it."

"It's pretty hard to kill a burro," answered Masseth, "and I've never lost one. Indeed, in all the Survey work I've done in the Grand Canyon, I've only had one accident, and that was a case absolutely unavoidable. I lost one of my favorite horses that time."

"How did it happen, Mr. Masseth?" asked Roger.

"It was on the north side of the Canyon," began the topographer, "and I was working on an outlying butte with my assistant. We had made quite a number of bench marks and I was working out the contours—those are the lines on a map which show the height or elevation of any point—while my assistant was sitting beside me, making out some of the necessary calculations. We were working out from a little side camp, the two of us, the rest of the party being at headquarters, several miles away. I was drawing in at full speed, because I wanted to change from that side station that evening, and for a couple of hours I suppose we had not exchanged a word, except with relation to figures.

"Before coming out on that sun-baked exposed butte, I had tied the animals—a pack-mule, my riding mare, and the assistant's horse—to the branch of a tree. Suddenly, as it afterwards appeared, the other fellow heard a sound as of a fall and went to see what it was. He was gone so long that I noticed his absence. When he returned I waited for him to volunteer an explanation but apparently he did not want to disturb me, so I said, questioningly:

"'Well?'"

"'Only two of them there now,'" he replied. 'Bella's gone over the edge. Neck's broken, so there's no use doing anything.'

"Now Uncle Sam, you know, is always willing to stand for accidents that can't be helped, but he's got to know all about it, and while I realized that it would really matter little in the long run, I was sure that the department would feel better satisfied if the manner of the accident were set forth. So I put away my pencil, folded up the plane table, and went to investigate. It was as puzzling a thing to decide as I ever saw. The tree was at least twenty yards from the brink of the precipice, although the ground sloped fairly steeply to the edge.

"When I arrived there I found the other two animals tied to the branch, as I had left them, and apparently undisturbed. The ground, however, between the tree and the edge of the chasm, was torn up with hoof marks and the struggles of an animal that evidently had fallen to the ground, and the spoor from the tree to the Canyon's edge was easily traced. Of the animal, I could at first find no evidence, but my assistant touched me on the arm.

"'Here, Mr. Masseth,' he said, 'you can see Bella from here.'

"Sure enough, on rounding the corner of a pinnacle which stood out a little distance from the edge, the body of the mare could be seen about one hundred and seventy-five feet down, lying on a sharply pitching bank of talus—that is, debris of rock and dust, fallen from the overhanging cliff above. It was still a wonder to me how the mare fell, and as she had been wearing a brand-new halter, this in a country where it is easier to get beast than harness, I told my assistant that I was going down to secure the halter and also to find out, if I could, what had been the cause of the accident.

"I think that was about as nasty a piece of climbing as I ever had. It would never come about in the regular course of business, you see, because we don't work that way, but I was going down to get that brute, no matter what labor it cost. At last I managed to make my way down to the point where she was lying. There, after studying the position in which she must have fallen, I gained some idea of the manner in which it had come about. Bella was from the ranches, where, you know, an animal is not muscle-bound like your eastern horses, and in trying to scratch her head—where possibly a fly had settled—with her off fore-leg, the calk of her shoe must have caught in the neck-strap of the halter, and of course, she could not get it out.

"The poor beast probably stood as long as she could on three legs, but the posture must have been cramped and painful after a few moments and she fell heavily, breaking the rope of the halter as she did so. Then, while lying on the ground, floundering about in an effort to free her foot from the thraldom of the halter-strap, she must have slipped nearer and nearer to the edge and then suddenly gone over, with her hind-foot still fast in the strap.

"Since I had got so far, though I did not much relish doing it, I determined to take off the halter, and at least save that out of the wreck. But you can readily see that the halter had been drawn fearfully tight, and I could not get slack enough to unfasten the buckle. At last I gave a hearty wrench, and was just about to be able to slip the prong of the buckle through the hole, when the insecure talus on which I was standing, and on which the animal had been resting, began to slide. Fortunately I am fairly quick on my feet, and in two or three springs I reached a little outjutting terrace. But I had scarcely reached that point of safety when poor Bella went over the edge another seventy-five feet into the chasm.

"That made me mad. I had come down a very nasty piece of climbing to get that halter, and I was bound to secure that bit of leather if I had to scramble down the gorge to the very bed of the river itself. So, as soon as I could find a way to start down, I went on and reached the mare, this time resting on a wide ledge where I could disentangle the halter with but very little trouble.

"I had gained the object of my quest, I had found out the cause of the accident to the horse, and I had recovered the halter, but in the achievement of these purposes I found myself two hundred feet down the gorge and I knew that it would be a great deal harder to get up that distance than it had been to get down, and even the latter had been no easy matter. Of course, my assistant was up above, and had been watching the proceedings, all the while, so that I knew he would get at me from the top in the course of time.

"I was anxious, however, to get back the way that I had come without taking a long trip to one of the side canyons, and after losing some time, and also some skin from knees and elbows and other parts of my body, I got back to the place where the horse had first lain. My assistant dropped me a rope—there is always a long rope carried by each party—and I climbed up that rope."

"Swarmed up a rope a hundred and seventy-five feet high!" ejaculated Roger, then, with a whistle, he added, "that's an awful climb."

"It was not a straight hand over hand climb, my boy," answered Masseth quietly. "You must remember that all those walls are in terraces and every other line of strata would give a ledge. Of course, in some parts they were overhanging and that made it all the harder, but there were plenty of places to rest on the way up and in due course I reached the top. That was the first misadventure, and I hope it will be the last in any of my camps in Grand Canyon work."

"And what part of the work are you doing now, Mr. Masseth?" queried the boy.

"I was just waiting for you to complete the party," was the reply. "We are going to tackle the Tourist's trail, that is the one I was telling you about, and will go up the other side. Then, from the north side, I will pick out a number of points which I want you—with other members of the party—to occupy. You will then do some work under my assistant, while I cross back to this side, and on an appointed day we will strike a level across the nine-miles gap."

"Then we will be working together though miles apart?" asked the boy in surprise.

"Yes, and months apart, too."

"But how in the world can you do that?" was the amazed response. "Do you carry a wireless telegraph outfit in your vest pocket, Mr. Masseth? Is there anything the Survey can't do?"

"You seem to think," responded the chief with a smile, "that the race of wizards has been reborn and christened the Geological Survey, as a visiting diplomat once said of us."

"Well, pretty nearly," answered the boy.

"We're not quite that," admitted the other, "but," with a smile of mystification, "I do carry a little device by which I can make use of a system of wireless telegraphy which was in existence thousands of years ago."

"And can I see it?"

"Certainly," replied the topographer, and drawing his hand from his pocket, he showed it open to the boy.

"That's just a looking-glass," cried Roger in disappointment, having expected to see some delicate and ingenious piece of intricate machinery.

"Just a piece of looking-glass," assented his chief. "What then?"

"But how do you work it? What can you do with that?"

"That, my boy," answered the older man, "is one of the very many things you will learn while you are in and about the Grand Canyon."