"Take my picture," he shouted; and while she bent over the kodak, he
uttered a prayer, threw his arms up, and leaped _backward_ into the
Canyon. He had not been able to face it and destroy the life God had
given him. Hours later rangers recovered his body, and in his pocket
found the paper on which he had written: "You wouldn't go with me to Los
Angeles, so it's goodbye!"

Ranger West came in one day and told me that there was a lot of sickness
among the children at an Indian encampment a few miles from
Headquarters. I rode out with him to see what was the matter and found
that whooping-cough was rampant. For some reason, even though it was a
very severe winter, the Supai Indians had come up from their home in
Havasu Canyon, "Land of the Sky-Blue Water," made famous by Cadman, and
were camped among the trees on a hillside. The barefoot women and dirty
children were quite friendly, but the lazy, filthy bucks would have been
insolent had I been alone. They lolled in the "hewas," brush huts daubed
with mud, while the women dragged in wood and the children filled sacks
with snow to melt for drinking purposes. To be sure they didn't waste
any of it in washing themselves.

They would not let me doctor the children, and several of them died; but
we could never find where they were buried. It is a custom of that tribe
to bury its members with the right arm sticking up out of the ground. In
case it is a lordly man that has passed to the Happy Hunting Ground his
pony is shot and propped upright beside the grave with the reins
clutched in the dead master's hand.

I thought I might be able to reach a better understanding with the women
if the men were not present, so I told them to bring all the baskets
they made to my house and I would look at them and buy some of them.