rtment, Washington, who rescued Sheriff Woods
of Holbrook from a lynching party in the old sheep and cattle war days.
Stevenson can tell that story as few men know it; and dozens of others
he can tell of the old, wild, pioneer days when a man had to be all man
and fearless to his trigger tips, or cash in, and cash in quick. At
Holbrook you can get the story of the Show-Low Ranch and all the $50,000
worth of stock won in a cut of cards; or of how they hanged Stott and
Scott and Wilson--mere boys, two of them in Tonto Basin, for horses
which they didn't steal. All through this Painted Desert you are just on
the other side of a veil from the Land of True Romance; but you'll not
lift that veil, believe me, with a patronizing Eastern question. You'll
find your way in, if you know how; and if you don't know how, no man can
teach you. And at Adamana, don't forget to see the pictograph rocks.
Then you'll appreciate why the scientists wonder whether the antiquity
of the Orient is old as the antiquity of our own America.

Flagstaff, frankly, does not live up to its own opportunities. It is the
gateway to many Aztec ruins--much more easily accessible to the public
than the Frijoles cave dwellings of New Mexico. Only nine miles out by
easy trail are cliff dwellings in Walnut Canyon. These differ from the
Frijoles in not being caves. The ancient people have simply taken
advantage of natural arches high in the face of unscalable precipices
and have bricked up the faces of these with adobe. As far as I know, not
so much as the turn of a spade has ever been attempted in excavation.
The debris of centuries lies on the floors of the houses; and the adobe
brick in front is gradually crumbling and rolling down the precipice
into Walnut Canyon. Nor is there any doubt but that slight excavation
would yield discoveries. You find bits of pottery and shard in the
debris piles; and the day we went out, five minutes' scratching over of
one cliff floor unearthed bits of wampum shell that from the
perforations had evidently been used as a necklace. The Forestry Service
has a man stationed here to guard the old ruins; but the Government
might easily go a step further and give him authority to attempt some
slight restoration. You drive across a cinder plain from Flagstaff and
suddenly drop down to a footpath that takes you to the brink of circling
gray stone canyons many hundreds of feet deep. Along the top ledges of
these amid such rocks as mountain