“Go to it!” Frank laughed, as he followed the mules through the gate.

Nucky did not open his eyes until nine o’clock the next morning.  When he had finished breakfast, he found the guide waiting for him in the lobby.

“Hello, Frank!” he shouted.  “Come on!  Let’s start!”

All that day, prowling through the snow after Allen, Nucky might have been any happy boy of fourteen.  It was only when Frank again left him at dusk that his face lengthened.

“Can’t I be with you this evening, Frank?” he asked.

Frank shook his head.  “I’ve got to be with my wife and little girl.”

“But why can’t I—­” Nucky hesitated as he caught the look in Frank’s face.  “You’ll never forget what I said about women, I suppose!”

“Why should I forget it?” demanded Allen.

The sullen note returned to Nucky’s voice.  “I wouldn’t harm ’em!”

“No, I’ll bet you wouldn’t!” returned Allen succinctly.

Nucky turned to stare into the Canyon.  It seemed to the guide that it was a full five minutes that the boy gazed into the drifting depths before he turned with a smile that was as ingenuous as it was wistful.

“Frank, I guess I made an awful dirty fool of myself!  I—­I can’t like ’em, but I’ll take your word that lots of ’em are good.  And nobody will ever hear me sling mud at ’em again, so help me God—­and the Canyon!”

Frank silently held out his hand and Nucky grasped it.  Then the guide said, “You’d better go to bed again as soon as you’ve eaten your supper.  By to-morrow you’ll be feeling like a short trip down Bright Angel.  Good-night, old top!”

When Nucky came out of the hotel door the next morning, Frank, with a cavalcade of mules, was waiting for him.  But he was not alone.  Seated on a small mule was a little girl of five or six.

“Enoch,” said Frank, “this is my daughter, Diana.  She is going down the trail with us.”

Nucky gravely doffed his hat, and the little girl laughed, showing two front teeth missing and a charming dimple.

“You’ve got red hair!” she cried.

Nucky grunted, and mounted his mule.

“Diana will ride directly behind me,” said Frank.  “You follow her, Enoch.”

“Can that kid go all the way to the river?” demanded Nucky.

“She’s been there a good many times,” replied Frank, looking proudly at his little daughter.

She was not an especially pretty child, but had Nucky been a judge of feminine charms he would have realized that Diana gave promise of a beautiful womanhood.  Her chestnut hair hung in thick curls on her shoulders.  Her eyes were large and a clear hazel.  Her skin, though tanned, was peculiarly fine in texture.  But the greatest promise of her future beauty lay in a sweetness of expression in eye and lip that was extraordinary in so young a child.  For the rest, she was thin and straight and wore a boy’s corduroy suit.