The Last of the Plainsmen 



called Powell s Plateau. I remembered, also, that 

 he had said it was twenty miles distant, was almost 

 that many miles long, was connected to the mainland 

 of Buckskin Mountain by a very narrow wooded dip 

 of land called the Saddle, and that it practically shut 

 us out of a view of the Grand Canon proper. If 

 that was true, what, then, could be the name of the 

 canon at my feet? Suddenly, as my gaze wandered 

 from point to point, it was arrested by a dark, conical 

 mountain, white-tipped, which rose in the notch of 

 the Saddle. What could it mean? Were there such 

 things as canon mirages? Then the dim purple of 

 its color told of its great distance from me; and then 

 its familiar shape told I had come into my own 

 again I had found my old friend once more. For 

 in all that plateau there was only one snow-capped 

 mountain the San Francisco Peak ; and there, a hun 

 dred and fifty, perhaps two hundred miles away, far 

 beyond the Grand Canon, it smiled brightly at me, 

 as it had for days and days across the desert. 



Hearing Jones yelling for somebody or everybody, 

 I jumped up to find a procession heading for a point 

 farther down the rim wall, where our leader stood 

 waving his arms. The excitement proved to have 

 been caused by cougar signs at the head of the trail 

 where Clarke had started down. 



&quot; They re here, boys, they re here,&quot; Jones kept 



