“It’s impossible to turn here, Enoch!  Look up, man!  Look up!  And just trust old Spoons!  Are you cold?  It was only eight above zero, when we left the top.  But the snow’ll disappear as we go down and when we reach the river it’ll be summer.  See that lone pine up on the rim to your right?  They say an Indian girl jumped from the top of that because she bore a cross-eyed baby.  Look up, Enoch, as we round this curve and see that streak of red in the wall.  An Indian giant bled to death on the rim and his blood seeped through the solid rock to this point.  Watch how the sky gets a deeper blue, the farther down we go.  And now, Enoch look out, not down.  You may come down Bright Angel a thousand times and never see the colors you see to-day.  The snowfall has turned the world into a rainbow, by heck!”

Slowly, very slowly, Nucky turned his head and clinging to the pommel, he stared across the canyon.  White of snow; sapphire of sky; black of sharp cut shadow.  Mountains rising from the canyon floor thrust scarlet and yellow heads across his line of vision.  Close to his left, as the trail curved, a wall of purest rose color lifted from a bank of snow that was as blue as Allen’s eyes.  Beyond and beyond and ever beyond, the vast orderliness of the multi-colored canyon strata melted into delicate white clouds that now revealed, now concealed the mountain tops.

Nucky gazed and gazed, shuddering, yet enthralled.  Another sharp twist in the trail and his knee scraped against the wall.  He cried out sharply.  Frank turned to look but he did not stop the mules.

“Spoons thinks it’s better to amputate your leg, once in a while than to risk getting too close to the outer edge of the trail in all this snow.  He’s an old warrior, is Spoons!  He could carry a grand piano down this trail and never scrape the varnish.  Look up, Enoch!  We’ll soon reach a broad bench where I’ll let you rest.”

“Don’t you think I’ll ever get off this brute till we reach bottom!” shuddered Nucky.

The guide laughed and silence fell again.  The mules moved as silently through the snow as the mists across the mountain tops.  In careful gradation the trail zigzagged downward.  The snow lessened in depth with each foot of drop.  The bitter cold began to give way to the increasing warmth of the sun.  Sensation crept back into Nucky’s feet and hands.  By a supreme effort for many moments he managed to fix his eyes firmly on Frank’s broad back, and though he could not give up his hold on the pommel, he sat a little straighter.  Then, of a sudden, Spoons stopped in his tracks, and as suddenly a little avalanche of snow shot down the canyon wall, catching the mule’s forelegs.  Spoons promptly threw himself inward, against the wall.  Nucky gave a startled look at the sickening depths below and when Frank turned in his saddle, Nucky had fainted, half clinging to Spoons’ neck, half supported against the wet, rocky wall.