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Title: The Enchanted BluffAuthor: Willa Cather* A Project Gutenberg of Australia eBook *eBook No.: 1304371h.htmlLanguage: EnglishDate first posted: July 2013Most recent update: July 2013Project Gutenberg of Australia eBooks are created from printed editionswhich are in the public domain in Australia, unless a copyright noticeis included. We do NOT keep any eBooks in compliance with a particularpaper edition.Copyright laws are changing all over the world. Be sure to check thecopyright laws for your country before downloading or redistributing thisfile.This eBook is made available at no cost and with almost no restrictionswhatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the termsof the Project Gutenberg AustraliaLicence which may be viewed online.
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We had our swim before sundown, and while we were cooking oursupper the oblique rays of light made a dazzling glare on the whitesand about us. The translucent red ball itself sank behind thebrown stretches of cornfield as we sat down to eat, and the warmlayer of air that had rested over the water and our clean sand bargrew fresher and smelled of the rank ironweed and sunflowersgrowing on the flatter shore. The river was brown and sluggish,like any other of the half-dozen streams that water the Nebraskacorn lands. On one shore was an irregular line of bald clay bluffswhere a few scrub oaks with thick trunks and flat, twisted topsthrew light shadows on the long grass. The western shore was lowand level, with cornfields that stretched to the skyline, and allalong the water's edge were little sandy coves and beaches whereslim cottonwoods and willow saplings flickered.
The turbulence of the river in springtime discouraged milling,and, beyond keeping the old red bridge in repair, the busy farmersdid not concern themselves with the stream; so the Sandtown boyswere left in undisputed possession. In the autumn we hunted quailthrough the miles of stubble and fodder land along the flat shore,and, after the winter skating season was over and the ice had goneout, the spring freshets and flooded bottoms gave us our greatexcitement of the year. The channel was never the same for twosuccessive seasons. Every spring the swollen stream undermined abluff to the east, or bit out a few acres of cornfield to the westand whirled the soil away, to deposit it in spumy mud bankssomewhere else. When the water fell low in midsummer, new sand barswere thus exposed to dry and whiten in the August sun. Sometimesthese were banked so firmly that the fury of the next freshetfailed to unseat them; the little willow seedlings emergedtriumphantly from the yellow froth, broke into spring leaf, shot upinto summer growth, and with their mesh of roots bound together themoist sand beneath them against the batterings of another April.Here and there a cottonwood soon glittered among them, quivering inthe low current of air that, even on breathless days when the dusthung like smoke above the wagon road, trembled along the face ofthe water.
It was on such an island, in the third summer of its yellowgreen, that we built our watch fire; not in the thicket of dancingwillow wands, but on the level terrace of fine sand which had beenadded that spring; a little new bit of world, beautifully ridgedwith ripple marks, and strewn with the tiny skeletons of turtlesand fish, all as white and dry as if they had been expertly cured.We had been careful not to mar the freshness of the place, althoughwe often swam to it on summer evenings and lay on the sand torest.
This was our last watch fire of the year, and there were reasonswhy I should remember it better than any of the others. Next weekthe other boys were to file back to their old places in theSandtown High School, but I was to go up to the Divide to teach myfirst country school in the Norwegian district. I was alreadyhomesick at the thought of quitting the boys with whom I had alwaysplayed; of leaving the river, and going up into a windy plain thatwas all windmills and cornfields and big pastures; where there wasnothing wilful or unmanageable in the landscape, no new islands,and no chance of unfamiliar birds—such as often followed thewatercourses.
Other boys came and went and used the river for fishing orskating, but we six were sworn to the spirit of the stream, and wewere friends mainly because of the river. There were the twoHassler boys, Fritz and Otto, sons of the little German tailor.They were the youngest of us; ragged boys of ten and twelve, withsunburned hair, weather-stained faces, and pale blue eyes. Otto,the elder, was the best mathematician in school, and clever at hisbooks, but he always dropped out in the spring term as if the rivercould not get on without him. He and Fritz caught the fat, hornedcatfish and sold them about the town, and they lived so much in thewater that they were as brown and sandy as the river itself.
There was Percy Pound, a fat, freckled boy with chubby cheeks,who took half a dozen boys' story-papers and was always being keptin for reading detective stories behind his desk. There was TipSmith, destined by his freckles and red hair to be the buffoon inall our games, though he walked like a timid little old man and hada funny, cracked laugh. Tip worked hard in his father's grocerystore every afternoon, and swept it out before school in themorning. Even his recreations were laborious. He collectedcigarette cards and tin tobacco-tags indefatigably, and would sitfor hours humped up over a snarling little scroll-saw which he keptin his attic. His dearest possessions were some little pill bottlesthat purported to contain grains of wheat from the Holy Land, waterfrom the Jordan and the Dead Sea, and earth from the Mount ofOlives. His father had bought these dull things from a Baptistmissionary who peddled them, and Tip seemed to derive greatsatisfaction from their remote origin.
The tall boy was Arthur Adams. He had fine hazel eves that werealmost too reflective and sympathetic for a boy, and such apleasant voice that we all loved to hear him read aloud. Even whenhe had to read poetry aloud at school, no one ever thought oflaughing. To be sure, he was not at school very much of the time.He was seventeen and should have finished the High School the yearbefore, but he was always off somewhere with his gun. Arthur'smother was dead, and his father, who was feverishly absorbed inpromoting schemes, wanted to send the boy away to school and gethim off his hands; but Arthur always begged off for another yearand promised to study. I remember him as a tall, brown boy with anintelligent face, always lounging among a lot of us little fellows,laughing at us oftener than with us, but such a soft, satisfiedlaugh that we felt rather flattered when we provoked it. Inafter-years people said that Arthur had been given to evil ways asa lad, and it is true that we often saw him with the gambler's sonsand with old Spanish Fanny's boy, but if he learned anything uglyin their company he never betrayed it to us. We would have followedArthur anywhere, and I am bound to say that he led us into no worseplaces than the cattail marshes and the stubble fields. These,then, were the boys who camped with me that summer night upon thesand bar.
After we finished our supper we beat the willow thicket fordriftwood. By the time we had collected enough, night had fallen,and the pungent, weedy smell from the shore increased with thecoolness. We threw ourselves down about the fire and made anotherfutile effort to show Percy Pound the Little Dipper. We had triedit often before, but he could never be got past the big one.
"You see those three big stars just below the handle, with thebright one in the middle?" said Otto Hassler; "that's Orion's belt,and the bright one is the clasp." I crawled behind Otto's shoulderand sighted up his arm to the star that seemed perched upon the tipof his steady forefinger. The Hassler boys did seine-fishing atnight, and they knew a good many stars.
Percy gave up the Little Dipper and lay back on the sand, hishands clasped under his head. "I can see the North Star," heannounced, contentedly, pointing toward it with his big toe."Anyone might get lost and need to know that."
We all looked up at it.
"How do you suppose Columbus felt when his compass didn't pointnorth any more?" Tip asked.
Otto shook his head. "My father says that there was anotherNorth Star once, and that maybe this one won't last always. Iwonder what would happen to us down here if anything went wrongwith it?"
Arthur chuckled. "I wouldn't worry, Ott. Nothing's apt to happento it in your time. Look at the Milky Way! There must be lots ofgood dead Indians."
We lay back and looked, meditating, at the dark cover of theworld. The gurgle of the water had become heavier. We had oftennoticed a mutinous, complaining note in it at night, quitedifferent from its cheerful daytime chuckle, and seeming like thevoice of a much deeper and more powerful stream. Our water hadalways these two moods: the one of sunny complaisance, the other ofinconsolable, passionate regret.
"Queer how the stars are all in sort of diagrams," remarkedOtto. "You could do most any proposition in geometry with 'em. Theyalways look as if they meant something. Some folks say everybody'sfortune is all written out in the stars, don't they?"
"They believe so in the old country," Fritz affirmed.
But Arthur only laughed at him. "You're thinking of Napoleon,Fritzey. He had a star that went out when he began to lose battles.I guess the stars don't keep any close tally on Sandtownfolks."
We were speculating on how many times we could count a hundredbefore the evening star went down behind the cornfields, whensomeone cried, "There comes the moon, and it's as big as a cartwheel!"
We all jumped up to greet it as it swam over the bluffs behindus. It came up like a galleon in full sail; an enormous, barbaricthing, red as an angry heathen god.
"When the moon came up red like that, the Aztecs used tosacrifice their prisoners on the temple top," Percy announced.
"Go on, Perce. You got that out ofGolden Days. Do youbelieve that, Arthur?" I appealed.
Arthur answered, quite seriously: "Like as not. The moon was oneof their gods. When my father was in Mexico City he saw the stonewhere they used to sacrifice their prisoners."
As we dropped down by the fire again some one asked whether theMound-Builders were older than the Aztecs. When we once got uponthe Mound-Builders we never willingly got away from them, and wewere still conjecturing when we heard a loud splash in thewater.
"Must have been a big cat jumping," said Fritz. "They dosometimes. They must see bugs in the dark. Look what a track themoon makes!"
There was a long, silvery streak on the water, and where thecurrent fretted over a big log it boiled up like gold pieces.
"Suppose there ever was any gold hid away in this old river?"Fritz asked. He lay like a little brown Indian, close to the fire,his chin on his hand and his bare feet in the air. His brotherlaughed at him, but Arthur took his suggestion seriously.
"Some of the Spaniards thought there was gold up here somewhere.Seven cities chuck full of gold, they had it, and Coronado and hismen came up to hunt it. The Spaniards were all over this countryonce."
Percy looked interested. "Was that before the Mormons wentthrough?"
We all laughed at this.
"Long enough before. Before the Pilgrim Fathers, Perce. Maybethey came along this very river. They always followed thewatercourses."
"I wonder where this river really does begin?" Tip mused. Thatwas an old and a favorite mystery which the map did not clearlyexplain. On the map the little black line stopped somewhere inwestern Kansas; but since rivers generally rose in mountains, itwas only reasonable to suppose that ours came from the Rockies. Itsdestination, we knew, was the Missouri, and the Hassler boys alwaysmaintained that we could embark at Sandtown in floodtime, followour noses, and eventually arrive at New Orleans. Now they took uptheir old argument. "If us boys had grit enough to try it, itwouldn't take no time to get to Kansas City and St. Joe."
We began to talk about the places we wanted to go to. TheHassler boys wanted to see the stockyards in Kansas City, and Percywanted to see a big store in Chicago. Arthur was interlocutor anddid not betray himself.
"Now it's your turn, Tip."
Tip rolled over on his elbow and poked the fire, and his eyeslooked shyly out of his queer, tight little face. "My place isawful far away. My Uncle Bill told me about it."
Tip's Uncle Bill was a wanderer, bitten with mining fever, whohad drifted into Sandtown with a broken arm, and when it was wellhad drifted out again.
"Where is it?"
"Aw, it's down in New Mexico somewheres. There aren't norailroads or anything. You have to go on mules, and you run out ofwater before you get there and have to drink canned tomatoes."
"Well, go on, kid. What's it like when you do get there?"
Tip sat up and excitedly began his story.
"There's a big red rock there that goes right up out of the sandfor about nine hundred feet. The country's flat all around it, andthis here rock goes up all by itself, like a monument. They call itthe Enchanted Bluff down there, because no white man has ever beenon top of it. The sides are smooth rock, and straight up, like awall. The Indians say that hundreds of years ago, before theSpaniards came, there was a village away up there in the air. Thetribe that lived there had some sort of steps, made out of wood andbark, bung down over the face of the bluff, and the braves wentdown to hunt and carried water up in big jars swung on their backs.They kept a big supply of water and dried meat up there, and neverwent down except to hunt. They were a peaceful tribe that madecloth and pottery, and they went up there to get out of the wars.You see, they could pick off any war party that tried to get uptheir little steps. The Indians say they were a handsome people,and they had some sort of queer religion. Uncle Bill thinks theywere Cliff-Dwellers who had got into trouble and left home. Theyweren't fighters, anyhow.
"One time the braves were down hunting and an awful storm cameup—a kind of waterspout—and when they got back to theirrock they found their little staircase had been all broken topieces, and only a few steps were left hanging away up in the air.While they were camped at the foot of the rock, wondering what todo, a war party from the north came along and massacred 'em to aman, with all the old folks and women looking on from the rock.Then the war party went on south and left the village to get downthe best way they could. Of course they never got down. Theystarved to death up there, and when the war party came back ontheir way north, they could hear the children crying from the edgeof the bluff where they had crawled out, but they didn't see a signof a grown Indian, and nobody has ever been up there since."
We exclaimed at this dolorous legend and sat up.
"There couldn't have been many people up there," Percy demurred."How big is the top, Tip?"
"Oh, pretty big. Big enough so that the rock doesn't look nearlyas tall as it is. The top's bigger than the base. The bluff is sortof worn away for several hundred feet up. That's one reason it's sohard to climb."
I asked how the Indians got up, in the first place.
"Nobody knows how they got up or when. A hunting party camealong once and saw that there was a town up there, and that wasall."
Otto rubbed his chin and looked thoughtful. "Of course theremust be some way to get up there. Couldn't people get a rope oversomeway and pull a ladder up?"
Tip's little eyes were shining with excitement. "I know a way.Me and Uncle Bill talked it over. There's a kind of rocket thatwould take a rope over—lifesavers use 'em—and then youcould hoist a rope ladder and peg it down at the bottom and make ittight with guy ropes on the other side. I'm going to climb thatthere bluff, and I've got it all planned out."
Fritz asked what he expected to find when he got up there.
"Bones, maybe, or the ruins of their town, or pottery, or someof their idols. There might be 'most anything up there. Anyhow, Iwant to see."
"Sure nobody else has been up there, Tip?" Arthur asked.
"Dead sure. Hardly anybody ever goes down there. Some hunterstried to cut steps in the rock once, but they didn't get higherthan a man can reach. The Bluff's all red granite, and Uncle Billthinks it's a boulder the glaciers left. It's a queer place,anyhow. Nothing but cactus and desert for hundreds of miles, andyet right under the Bluff there's good water and plenty of grass.That's why the bison used to go down there."
Suddenly we heard a scream above our fire, and jumped up to seea dark, slim bird floating southward far above us—a whoopingcrane, we knew by her cry and her long neck. We ran to the edge ofthe island, hoping we might see her alight, but she waveredsouthward along the rivercourse until we lost her. The Hassler boysdeclared that by the look of the heavens it must be after midnight,so we threw more wood on our fire, put on our jackets, and curleddown in the warm sand. Several of us pretended to doze, but I fancywe were really thinking about Tip's Bluff and the extinct people.Over in the wood the ring doves were calling mournfully to oneanother, and once we heard a dog bark, far away. "Somebody gettinginto old Tommy's melon patch," Fritz murmured sleepily, but nobodyanswered him. By and by Percy spoke out of the shadows.
"Say, Tip, when you go down there will you take me withyou?"
"Maybe."
"Suppose one of us beats you down there, Tip?"
"Whoever gets to the Bluff first has got to promise to tell therest of us exactly what he finds," remarked one of the Hasslerboys, and to this we all readily assented.
Somewhat reassured, I dropped off to sleep. I must have dreamedabout a race for the Bluff, for I awoke in a kind of fear thatother people were getting ahead of me and that I was losing mychance. I sat up in my damp clothes and looked at the other boys,who lay tumbled in uneasy attitudes about the dead fire. It wasstill dark, but the sky was blue with the last wonderful azure ofnight. The stars glistened like crystal globes, and trembled as ifthey shone through a depth of clear water. Even as I watched, theybegan to pale and the sky brightened. Day came suddenly, almostinstantaneously. I turned for another look at the blue night, andit was gone. Everywhere the birds began to call, and all manner oflittle insects began to chirp and hop about in the willows. Abreeze sprang up from the west and brought the heavy smell ofripened corn. The boys rolled over and shook themselves. Westripped and plunged into the river just as the sun came up overthe windy bluffs.
When I came home to Sandtown at Christmas time, we skated out toour island and talked over the whole project of the EnchantedBluff, renewing our resolution to find it.
Although that was twenty years ago, none of us have ever climbedthe Enchanted Bluff. Percy Pound is a stockbroker in Kansas Cityand will go nowhere that his red touring car cannot carry him. OttoHassler went on the railroad and lost his foot braking; after whichhe and Fritz succeeded their father as the town tailors.
Arthur sat about the sleepy little town all his life—hedied before he was twenty-five. The last time I saw him, when I washome on one of my college vacations, he was sitting in a steamerchair under a cottonwood tree in the little yard behind one of thetwo Sandtown saloons. He was very untidy and his hand was notsteady, but when he rose, unabashed, to greet me, his eyes were asclear and warm as ever. When I had talked with him for an hour andheard him laugh again, I wondered how it was that when Nature hadtaken such pains with a man, from his hands to the arch of his longfoot, she had ever lost him in Sandtown. He joked about Tip Smith'sBluff, and declared he was going down there just as soon as theweather got cooler; he thought the Grand Canyon might be worthwhile, too.
I was perfectly sure when I left him that he would never getbeyond the high plank fence and the comfortable shade of thecottonwood. And, indeed, it was under that very tree that he diedone summer morning.
Tip Smith still talks about going to New Mexico. He married aslatternly, unthrifty country girl, has been much tied to aperambulator, and has grown stooped and grey from irregular mealsand broken sleep. But the worst of his difficulties are now over,and he has, as he says, come into easy water. When I was last inSandtown I walked home with him late one moonlight night, after hehad balanced his cash and shut up his store. We took the long wayaround and sat down on the schoolhouse steps, and between us wequite revived the romance of the lone red rock and the extinctpeople. Tip insists that he still means to go down there, but hethinks now he will wait until his boy Bert is old enough to go withhim. Bert has been let into the story, and thinks of nothing butthe Enchanted Bluff.
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