The Enchanted Canyon. Honoré Morrow
smile, "I have a new gelding I'd like to try out, to-morrow morning. If you'll join me at seven-thirty on that rack of bones you call a bay mare, I'll tell you all I know."
"You will, like thunder!" laughed Johns-Eaton. "But I'll be there and jolly well give you the opportunity!"
Señor Juan Cadiz was prompt and so was Enoch. For a long hour the two sat in the breathless heat of the July night while the Mexican answered Enoch's terse questions with a flow of dramatic speech, accentuated by wild gestures. Shortly after eleven-thirty Jonas appeared in the doorway with two tinkling glasses.
"You are sure as to your facts about this bandit leader?" asked Enoch in a low voice.
"Of an absolute sureness. If I—"
The Secretary interrupted. "Could you go to Mexico for me, in entire secrecy?"
"Yes! Yes! Yes! If you could but see him and he you! If he could but know an American of your type, your fairness, your kindness, your justice! We have been taught to despise and hate Americans, you must know."
"Who has taught you?"
"Sometimes, I think partly by the Germans who have come among the people. But why should Germany do so?"
"Why indeed?" returned Enoch, and the two men stared at each other, deep intelligence in the gaze of each. Jonas tinkled the glasses again and Señor Cadiz jumped to his feet.
"I know, Señor Jonas!" he laughed. "That is the good night cap, eh!"
Jonas grinned acquiescence, and five minutes later he turned off the lights in the library. Enoch climbed the stairs, somewhat wearily. His room was stifling despite the wide-flung windows and the electric fan. He slowly and thoughtfully got himself into his pajamas, lighted a cigarette, and walked over to the table that stood in the bay window. He unlocked the table drawer and took out a large blank book of loose leafed variety, opened it, and seating himself he picked up his pen and began to write.
"July 17.—Rather an easier day than usual, Lucy, which was fortunate, for the heat has been almost unbearable and at the end of the office day came that which stirred old memories almost intolerably. A letter from Frank Allen! You remember him, Lucy? I told you about him, when I first began my diary. Well, he has written that his daughter, Diana, is coming to Washington to ask me for a job which he does not wish me to give her. I cannot see her! Only you know the pain that such a meeting could give me! It would be like going to Bright Angel again. And while the thought of going back to the Grand Canyon has intrigued me for twenty-two years, I must go in my own way and in my own time. And I am not ready yet. I had forgotten, by the way, that Frank had a daughter. There was, now that I think of it, a little thing of five or six who went down Bright Angel with us. I have only the vaguest recollection of what she looked like.
"Minetta Lane and the Grand Canyon! What a hideous, what a grotesque coupling of names! I have never seen the one of them since I was fourteen and the other but once, yet these two have absolutely made my life. Don't scold me, Lucy! I know you have begged me never to mention Minetta Lane again. But to you, I must. Do you know what I thought to-night after I left the British Ambassador? I thought that I'd like to be in Luigi's second floor again, with a deck of cards and the old gang. The old gang! They've all except Luigi been in Sing-Sing or dead, these many years. Yet the desire was so strong that only the thought of you and your dear, faithful eyes kept me from charging like a wild elephant into a Pullman office and getting a berth to New York."
Enoch dropped his pen and stared long at the only picture in his room, a beautiful Moran painting of Bright Angel trail. Finally, he rose and turned off the light. When Jonas listened at the door at half after midnight, the sound of Enoch's steady, regular breathing sent that faithful soul complacently to bed.
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