When we climbed out and were once more
on a level I asked him what he thought of the place. "Some hole--I'll
say!" he panted, breathlessly.
The rancher told me that the summer rains began there about July, and
the snows about the first of the year. Snow never lay long on the
lower slopes. Apaches had lived there forty years ago and had
cultivated the soil. There was gold in the mountains of the Four Peaks
Range. In this sheltered nook the weather was never severely cold or
hot; and I judged from the quaint talk of the rancher's wife that life
there was always afternoon.
Next day we rode from Natural Bridge to Payson in four and a half
hours. Payson appeared to be an old hamlet, retaining many frontier
characteristics such as old board and stone houses with high fronts,
hitching posts and pumps on sidewalks, and one street so wide that it
resembled a Mexican plaza. Payson contained two stores, where I hoped
to buy a rifle, and hoped in vain. I had not recovered my lost gun,
and when night came my prospects of anything to hunt with appeared
extremely slim. But we had visitors, and one of them was a stalwart,
dark-skinned rider named Copple, who introduced himself by saying he
would have come a good way to meet the writer of certain books he had
profited by. When he learned of the loss of my rifle and that I could
not purchase one anywhere he pressed upon me his own.
Pages:
218
219
220
221
222
223
224
225
226
227
228
229
230
231
232
233
234
235
236
237
238
239
240
241
242