come up to
congratulate him as to his marriage.

"But Willomene, she says when she saw me, 'Oh, I am so glad!' and we
shook hands right friendly. And I wished I'd told her good-bye that
day at the Mammoth. For she bore no spite, and maybe I had forgot her
feelings in thinkin' of my own. I had talked to her down at the
Mammoth at first, yu' know, and she said a word about old friends.
Our friendship was three weeks old that day, but I expect her new
experiences looked like years to her. And she told me how near she come
to gettin' killed.

"Yu' ain't ever been over that trail, seh? Yu' cert'nly must see
Pitchstone Canyon. But we'll not go there with packs. And we will get
off our hawsses a good ways back. For many animals feels that there's
something the matter with that place, and they act very strange about
it.

"The Grand Canyon is grand, and makes yu' feel good to look at it, and
a geyser is grand and all right, too. But this hyeh Pitchstone hole,
if Willomene had went down into that--well, I'll tell yu', that you may
judge.

"She seen the trail a-drawin' nearer and nearer the aidge, between the
timber and the jumpin'-off place, and she seen how them little loose
stones and the crumble stuff would slide and slide away under the
hawss's feet. She could hear the stuff rattlin' continually from his
steps, and when she turned her haid to look, she seen it goin' down
close beside her, but into what it went she could not see. Only, there
was a queer steam would come up now and agayn, and her hawss trembled.
So she tried to get off and walk without sayin' nothin' to Hank. He kep'
on ahaid, and her hawss she had pulled up started to follo' as she was
half off him, and that gave her a tumble, but there was an old crooked
dead tree. It growed right out o' the aidge. There she hung.

"Down below is a little green water tricklin', green as the stuff that
gets on brass, and tricklin' along over soft cream-colored formation,
like pie. And it ain't so far to fall but what a man might not be
too much hurt for crawlin' out. But there ain't no crawlin' out o'
Pitchstone Canyon, they say. Down in there is caves that yu' cannot see.
'Tis them that coughs up the stream now and agayn. With the wind yu'
can smell 'em a mile away, and in the night I have been layin' quiet and
heard 'em. Not that it's a big noise, even when a man is close up.
It's a fluffy kind of a sigh. But it sounds as if some awful thing
was a-makin' it deep down