Neither of the Boltwoods had seen the Grand Canyon of the Colorado. The
Canyon of the Yellowstone was their first revelation of intimidating
depth and color gone mad. When their car and Milt's had been parked in
the palisaded corral back of the camp at which they were to stay, they
three set out for the canyon's edge chattering, and stopped dumb.
Mr. Boltwood declined to descend. He returned to the camp for a cigar.
The boy and girl crept down seeming miles of damp steps to an outhanging
pinnacle that still was miles of empty airy drop above the river bed.
Claire had a quaking feeling that this rock pulpit was going to slide.
She thrust out her hand, seized Milt's paw, and in its firm warmth found
comfort. Clinging to its security she followed him by the crawling path
to the river below. She looked up at columns of crimson and saffron and
burning brown, up at the matronly falls, up at lone pines clinging to
jutting rocks that must be already crashing toward her, and in the
splendor she knew the Panic fear that is the deepest reaction to
beauty.
Milt merely shook his head as he stared up. He had neither gossiped nor
coyly squeezed her hand as he had guided her. She fell to thinking that
she preferred this American boy in this American scene to a nimble
gentleman saluting the Alps in a dinky green hat with a little feather.
It was Milt who, when they had labored back up again, when they had sat
smiling at each other with comfortable weariness, made her see the
canyon not as a freak, but as the miraculous work of a stream rolling
grains of sand for millions of years, till it had cut this Jovian
intaglio. He seemed to have read--whether in books, or in paragraphs in
mechanical magazines--a good deal about geology. He made it real. Not
that she paid much attention to what he actually said! She was too busy
thinking of the fact that he should say it at all.
Not condescendingly but very companionably she accompanied Milt in the
exploration of their camp for the night--the big dining tent, the city
of individual bedroom tents, canvas-sided and wooden-floored, each with
a tiny stove for the cold mornings of these high altitudes. She was awed
that evening by hearing her waitress discussing the novels of Ibanez.
Jeff Saxton knew the names of at least six Russian novelists, but Jeff
was not highly authoritative regarding Spanish literature.
"I suppose she's a school-teacher, working here in vacation," Claire
whispered to Milt, beside her at the long, busy, scenically
conversational table.
"Our waitress? Well, sort of. I understand she's professor of literature
in some college," said Milt, in a matter of fact way. And he didn't at
all see the sequence when she went on: "There is an America! I'm glad I've found it!"