Arizona -- Fiction; Grand Canyon (Ariz.) -- Fiction; Western stories
Enoch went into his brightly lighted room and stopped before his desk
with a low exclamation of pleasure. A large photograph stood against
the book rack. Three little naked Indian children with feathers in
their hair were dancing in the foreground. Behind them lay an ancient
cliff dwelling half in ruins. To the left an Indian warrior, arms
folded on his broad chest stood watching the children, his face full of
an inscrutable sadness. The children were extraordinarily beautiful.
Diana had worked with a very rapid lens and had caught them atilt, in
the full abandonment of the child to joy in motion. The shadowed,
mysterious, pathetic outline of the cliff dwelling, the somber figure
of the chief only enhanced the vivid sense of motion and glee in the
children. The picture was intrinsically lovely even without that
haunting sense of the desert's significance that made Diana's work
doubly intriguing.
Enoch's depression dropped from him as if it had never been. "Oh, my
dearest!" he murmured, "you did not forget, did you! It is your very
self you have sent me, your own whimsical joyousness!"
Jonas tapped softly on the door.
"Come in, Jonas! Isn't it fine! How do you suppose a photograph can
tell so much!"
"It's Miss Diana, it ain't the camera!" exclaimed Jonas, with a
chuckle. "Na-che says she ain't never seen her when she couldn't
smile. That buck looks like that fellow Wee-tah. Boss, do you
remember the night he took me out to see that desert charm?"
"Tell me about it, Jonas. It will rest me more than sleep."
Enoch sank back in his chair where he could face the photograph, and
Jonas established himself on the hearth rug and told his story with
gusto. "I got a lot of faith in Injun charms," he said, when he had
finished.
"They didn't get us our trip down Bright Angel," sighed Enoch, even as
he smiled.
"We'll get it yet, see if we don't!" protested Jonas stoutly. "Na-che
and I ain't give up for a minute. Don't laugh about it, boss."
"I'm not laughing," replied Enoch gravely. "I'm thinking how fortunate
I am in my friends, you being among those present, Jonas."
"As I always aim to be," agreed Jonas. "Do you think you could maybe
sleep now, boss?"
"Yes, I think so, Jonas," and Enoch was as good as his word.
Nearly two weeks passed before the attack on the Department of the
Interior was renewed. This time it was a deliberate assault on Enoch's
honesty. The Alaskan decision served as a text. This was held up as a
model of corruption and an example of the type of decision to be
expected from a gambling lawyer. Followed a list of half a dozen of
Enoch's rulings on water power control, on forest conservation and on
coal mining, each one interpreted in the light of Enoch's mania for
gambling. A man, the article said in closing, may, if he wishes, take
chances with his own fortune or his own reputation, but what right has
he to risk the public domain?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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