Frank stopped in the sandy wash. A jumble of car-size boulders lay across the canyon, blocking their path. He could hear Linda’s even breathing in the morning stillness.
“We’re almost there. Once we’ve climbed the rocks, the canyon opens up into a small meadow. It’s the surprise in Surprise Canyon.”
“How do we get up?” Linda’s voice was tight.
“We work our way up the left side.”
Frank gestured with his arm. Boulders spilled out of the dark mouth of the canyon. They seemed caught in a frozen avalanche, waiting to tumble out of the shadows and come crashing down the narrow wash to the valley floor. “We cross over to the middle. There’s a gap there. Then we’re home free.”
She turned and walked back about twenty feet and looked up at the rocks. Frank tried to sound reassuring. “It looks nasty from here, but it’s not so bad if you know the way.” He casually waved her on and headed for a house-size rock tucked up against the canyon wall. Her footsteps crunched in the sand behind him.
“We don’t climb this one.” Frank slipped through a wedge-shaped gap between the rock and the canyon wall and scrambled from rock to rock, pausing now and then to observe Linda’s progress. She had hardly drawn a short breath coming up the steep climb from the valley floor, but now she seemed tentative. “How ya doin’?” he asked.
She stepped across a narrow crevice, teetering awkwardly before regaining her balance. “Okay, but I’m not used to hiking around in the dark.”
They climbed up an uneven stairway of huge boulders that were sharp-edged and angular, then emerged on the flattened surface of a two-story basaltic dome. Frank felt momentarily relieved. She’d made it this far, but the tough part lay ahead. The traverse across the rocks would require a jump of four or five feet between the tops of two upright monoliths. Frank and Linda stood near the edge of the drop.
They seemed to be standing on silvery sheets suspended in the soft light. Frank carefully scanned the other side. Linda peered into the void between the rocks. The gap dropped away into the bottomlessness of pitch-dark. The top of the far rock appeared to be floating above the dark of the canyon, its surface softened by deceptive undulations interspersed with patches of narrow shadow.
“We take a little jump—from here to over there.” His attempt at reassurance sounded hollow. It was no more than five feet. He had done it many times, but now, in the darkness of false dawn, the other side seemed far away, the blackness of the pit palpable.
Linda continued to stare down into the darkness. “How far is it to the other side?”
“Four, maybe five feet, and where we are is quite a bit higher than the other side. That makes it easier.” Silence. “Jumping downhill.” He knew that if she thought about it too long, she’d lose her nerve, work up some real fear. It wasn’t really that far. He hoped it was a matter of just doing it.
“Watch when I jump. I’m going to land on that flat spot right there.” He pointed toward the other rock. “Take a small run; then give it your best. You’ll clear it with no problem.”
Frank stepped back, poised for the jump. “When you take off, keep your eye on the flat spot, where you’re going to land.” He ran forward and leaped easily to the other side.
Linda stood motionless in the moonlight, still staring down into the black space between the rocks.
“Take off your pack and toss it over.”
“It’s got my camera case in it.”
“Not to worry. I was first-string shortstop for the Lone Pine Warriors.”
She shrugged off the pack and stood with it hanging indifferently from her right hand. Frank waited. Then she stepped to the edge. “Here it comes.” She swung it back and forth underhanded and then tossed it in a high arc. It was all Frank could do to keep it from going over his head.
“Hey, some arm. You can pitch on my team anytime.” He laid the pack down, being careful not to bang it. “There, that should help your balance when you land.”
He waited. He hadn’t figured on this. She’d seemed so assured, so fit, and now she was freezing up. It would be more than difficult to leap back. It was uphill. If he tried it, he’d be taking a hell of a chance of falling. It would take at least half an hour to get back to her by taking the long way around, following the trail that skirted the slide by going around the shoulder of the canyon. He very much didn’t want her to be hurt. “If you don’t think you can make it, Linda, don’t do it. We’ll wait for light. There’s another way. It just takes longer.”
“There’s another way? That’s just great.” Her voice was tight with anger.
She walked back about twenty feet to the middle of the rock, then turned and sprinted for the edge. Frank watched as she sprang into the air, almost two feet from the edge, too far back. He stepped forward as she hurtled through the air, just in time to be knocked sprawling as she drove her knee into his stomach. He fought for breath as Linda scrambled to her feet. He tried to ask if she was all right, but all that came out were indecipherable wheezy sounds.
Her face was invisible in the dark, but her shoulders were shaking. He wondered if she was sobbing with relief. No, she was making gurgling sounds, not sobs of relief. She was laughing.
He tried to say, Thanks a lot. But all that came out were more wheezy grunts and squeaks. Her spluttering giggles exploded into a raucous belly laugh that echoed eerily in the canyon, a dissonant chorus against the vast silence of the place.
Frank felt a flash of humiliation and anger, and then, as he replayed the scene in his mind, it struck him as funny, too. He hadn’t sufficiently regained his breath to laugh normally, so he made chuffing sounds interspersed with gasps for air.
Linda reached out her hand and helped him to his feet. “There’s another way. Now you tell me. Thanks, Frank. I thought I was going to die. I’m very nearsighted. I have practically no depth perception, and you’ve got me leaping the Grand Canyon in the dark. No way am I coming back this way.”
He felt like an idiot. “We can’t come back this way anyhow—the jump back is uphill.” He studied her face in the rising light. “Why didn’t you tell me you’re nearsighted? You’re not wearing glasses or anything.”
“Contacts, Frank. I’m wearing contact lenses. They make them in the big cities, because ‘Men seldom make passes at …’”
“‘Girls who wear glasses,’” he finished
“How come you’re familiar with Dorothy Parker?”
“Indians read books, too.” He felt better.
Puffs of cool, damp air carried the smells of plant life into the dry desert air. A tiny waterfall spilled from the rocks above them at the head of the canyon, watering a small meadow where the sheep came to drink and graze in the cool of the morning. They had arrived in time. He turned, pointing, directing her gaze back toward the Sierras. “Look.” As he spoke, the high tips of the range turned yellow-white in the first rays of morning light, melting the shadows in the valley below. Color seeped into the land, pastel browns brightening into brilliant yellows, the timeless transformation from night to day, unspoiled by urban light.
They moved almost noiselessly along the right side of the canyon, heading toward a low wall of rocks that extended from the canyon wall and butted up against a dark outcropping jutting out from the cliff’s face. The wall and outcropping formed a rough semicircle close to twenty feet in length and six or seven feet wide at the broadest point. He watched as Linda placed her hand on the top of the wall and vaulted easily over the barrier. She could jump, no doubt about it. Frank led her toward the point of the enclosure nearest the spring.
“We wait here,” he said, his voice almost a whisper. “If we’re lucky, they’ll come. The adults don’t need to drink every day. But the lambs need water more frequently.”
“How long can they go without water?”
“The old rams can go six or seven days. They’re pretty amazing. They can drink a quarter of their body weight at one time.”
They waited in the morning chill of the rock blind. Now there was enough light to reveal the petroglyphs along the face of the cliff—stick figures of fat-bellied sheep and ancient hunters caught in a ritual dance of death on the rock surface. Linda looked at the prehistoric pictures, touching them gently with her fingertips. “Actually seeing these up close, where you can touch them, is different from seeing them in a book or on slides. They seem oddly alive”—she paused—“and so strange. It’s like the past is still right here.”
“In a way, it is. Hunters have waited for the sheep to come here for thousands of years. My mother’s people, and now …” He paused, not wanting to offend her.
“And now the white people.”
“Yeah, the only difference is we’re not waiting to kill them.”
“Who built the rock walls—the people who made the petroglyphs?”
He nodded. “We’re sitting in a blind, a place for hunters to hide. They would wait for the sheep to come and drink, then raise up with their atlatls, hurling spears into the sides of the sheep. They had to be close. The atlatl probably wasn’t very effective much over fifty feet. I made one once, copied it from one found in a cave burial in Arizona. The best I could do with any accuracy was more like thirty or forty feet. But then, I hadn’t been practicing with it all my life, either.”
He made a small sweeping gesture, confining the motion behind the low wall. “The rocks in these walls were probably piled up more than three thousand years ago.”
“How can you tell?”
“The petroglyphs depict atlatls—that means the pictures were made before the bow and arrow. So by inference, the guys who were
sitting around pecking at the rock face, waiting for sheep or trying to make magic, were the same guys who built the blind.”
He could see her wrinkling her forehead, mulling it over.
“Of course, I could be wrong. The New Age people think all these pictures were made by aliens from space. Maybe that’s where my ancestors came from. Maybe that’s why I can become a raven or a coyote and wander the earth, unseen by human eyes.”
“Wrong. I can see you being a smart-ass right now, even though you’re sitting back there in the shadows.”
She brushed the hair away from her face. “Where will the sheep come from, if they come?”
“From up above. They always approach things from above and run uphill if something frightens them. Nothing can catch them when they’re running uphill. If they come, they’ll be cautious. Here, take these.” He held out his 10 x 50 navy spotting binoculars. “I’ve got a pair of pocket binoculars in my fanny pack.” He pointed to the opposite canyon wall, a talus slide that dropped for almost a thousand feet down into the canyon. “Search the slopes, but don’t move around much. You won’t have to worry about sunlight reflecting from the lens, because we’re on the shady side for a while, but stay down. Sheep have an especially sharp sense of movement.”
Frank scanned the slopes and ridges. He thought he saw something about halfway up the east slope. He fished into his fanny pack for the pocket binoculars. Sure enough, an old ewe stepped easily down the steep slope, pausing now and then, sniffing the air. She was followed by two younger ewes, probably yearlings.
“Linda, be very still. See where the piñons are clustered above that dark outcropping?”
She shaded her eyes from the bright sunlight striking the opposite canyon wall.
“Use the binoculars.”
She lifted the binoculars, focusing on the grove of twisted pines that clutched the rock. “I don’t see anything,” she whispered in a voice husky with anticipation.
“Okay, now come down from there a bit.”
“Oh, yes, I see them. Three of them. I don’t see any males, just females. Where’re the guys, Frank, off doing guylike things?”
“Could be. Rams will be rams. Actually, the rams usually travel separately. Sometimes they don’t come at all. If they do, they’ll wait until the ewes and lambs have had their fill.”
The old ewe came first, leading the rest of the ewes and lambs down to the spring. She stood patiently as the others knelt by the water, folding their forelegs under them to drink from the spring.
“Frank, why isn’t that one sheep drinking?”
“She’s watching out. Usually, the flock is led by the oldest ewe. She acts as lookout while the others drink.”
Linda smiled. “These are very smart animals, aren’t they? Maybe I can get a couple of articles out of this. One for Ms. magazine. Let’s see—maybe ‘Ewe are a Born Leader. The Genetics of Group Process.’”
“Yeah, well, keep your eyes open. They won’t be here long. If one of the old boys shows up, I think you’ll be impressed.”
As the last of the lambs rose from the pool, the old ewe knelt and drank deeply from the spring, the others watching patiently for her to finish. As she led them back up the talus slope to the cluster of pines, a mature ram stepped into the sunlight, his huge horns spiraled into a full curl.
“Linda, do you see him? There’re a couple of rams in this area buttin’ heads.” He grinned. “Literally buttin’ heads over the ewes.” The smile disappeared. “Well, no, not anymore. Now there’s only one.”
She let out a small gasp. “Wow, he’s really something.”
They watched as two more rams moved out of the piñons into the increasingly bright sunlight. They were much younger, their horns not yet reaching into a half curl.
“What’s the matter with the big one’s horns?” she asked. “They’re all broken on the ends.”
“He’s been rubbing them against the rocks. He has to do that to see. Otherwise, the horns would curl around and block his side vision. It’s called ‘brooming.’”
Linda set aside the binoculars, taking an aluminum camera
case from her backpack. She attached a telephoto lens to the camera, fiddled with the setting, and squinted into the viewfinder. Frank watched in consternation as the camera whirred and clicked, capturing images of the ram as it made its progress down the slope.
“Linda,” he said, “I hope you won’t use those pictures in your article.”
“Why not? God, this is what I came for. There’re some great shots here.”
“Linda, this old guy is a trophy ram, one for the record book. If you publish his picture, it’ll be his death warrant. There’ll be guys out here in helicopters hunting him down.”
“Aren’t you exaggerating a bit?” She clicked away.
“Last year, one of the desert bighorn permits went for over a hundred thousand dollars at a government auction—a hundred thousand just for the chance to hunt one.”
She looked up from the camera to face him.
“How would they know where to look?”
“They’d start with the paper. Read your article and then track your sources. The rest would be a matter of deduction and paying people to scout around. Believe me, they’d find him.”
They watched as the rams approached the spring. They seemed especially cautious. She squinted into the camera but didn’t click the shutter.
“If you look closely at his horns, you can see where they’re battered and cracked from combat. See how they flare out at the tips? He’s worked hard to wear them down. He’s maybe seven or eight years old. Probably only has a couple more years as top ram, at best. Then he’ll be solo. But right now, he’s the king of the mountain. I’d like to see him around when I come up here, or at least know his head isn’t on some wall as a conversation piece, providing bragging rights for some urban white hunter.” He’d done it again. He couldn’t seem to stop commenting on white skin. Just great, he thought. They watched the ram’s unhurried progress as he made his way down the steep slope, moving with easy grace.
“I would, too.”
“Would what?”
“Would like to see him around here when we come up the mountain again.” She smiled, and Frank recognized the familiar stirring that drew him into the life of a woman. It passed between them, an elemental linking, far older than the dancing figures on the face of the cliff.
“Good, that’s good.” He knew he was grinning foolishly, but he didn’t care. He turned his attention back to the sheep. Now they were both watching the old ram, sharing a sort of spiritual communion. His chest ached with the pleasure of life.
The ram had stopped to sniff the morning air, puffs of condensation disappearing into the brittle dryness of the desert. Then all three rams stood motionless, poised for flight. Frank had seen them sniff like that, give a guttural cough of alarm, and bound away into the rocks. For the briefest moment, he felt the old ram staring at him where he and Linda lay in the place of ancient ambush.
Then the old ram seemed to stagger sideways, falling to the earth, its slender legs kicking into the air. The crack of a high-powered rifle boomed and echoed in the canyon. Linda gasped, her “Oh my God” swallowed by the reverberation of a second shot. The two younger rams lunged up the steep slope, one of them falling behind, bright blood spraying from its nostrils. Linda stood up, as if about to run toward the fallen ram. Frank reached up and pulled her roughly to the ground.
“Stay down. We probably haven’t been seen yet. If we have, we’re in serious trouble.” He looked at his watch. “We’ve got to move. The sun won’t reach into the canyon until midmorning. So we still have time.”