After
Emett had left the ferry, I returned. My instructions were to remain
at the ferry until replaced and I didn't know how long that would be
but I hoped not too long. I wouldn't sleep near the old
dwellings
there, John D. Lee's cabin or the old two-story driftwood home that
Emett had built for his family. I went out in the orchard a little
ways away and threw my bedroll down there. I was sound asleep one
night when I was awakened by voices calling intermittently from the
direction of the ferry, about a quarter of a mile from where I was.
Now the ferry is hemmed in by tremendous, perpendicular, impassable
ledges and by the Colorado River. It would be impossible for anyone
to pass through the area without crossing the ferry, which would
require my help, or by coming down the river in boats which hadn't
been done since Major Powell did it in 1869. So I supposed it was
Navajos who had swam their horses across the river. They were coming
along the trail toward the ranch and as they drew closer, I decided
they were not Indians; I could tell from their conversation they were
white men and I could tell they didn't have horses but were walking.
I was happy to know they were white men. While I was a friend of the
Navajos too, I was glad to see somebody, even though I couldn't
figure out how they
got
there. It was pretty lonesome country. When they got about within a
rod of me, I spoke up and I says, “Hello," and they all ran
back up the trail. And they sure went, boy. I says, Come on back.
We're friends, down here." They came back and one of them
introduced himself as Julius F. Stone and in turn
introduced
his three companions. One of their names was Galloway and one was a
photographer. I can't remember the other.3° He informed me that he
was from Columbus, Ohio, and that he and his
companions
were the much advertised Julius F. Stone Expedition going through the
Colorado River from Green River, Utah, to Needles, Arizona. And he
said, as I knew, that this was the first expedition down the river
since the initial successful exploratory expedition of Major Powell.
Stone's trip, essentially a picture-taking one, was news to me as I
hadn't seen a newspaper for months nor had I seen
anyone
who had heard of this. They had run out of food and so I cooked them
up what I had, and boy, did they eat. I thought they was going to eat
everything myoId alforjas held. They said, HWell, we'll have some
food for you tomorrow." They wanted to know where the owner or
the operator
of
the ferry was and I said, HNo one here but me." And Mr. Stone
was quite concerned. But he said, uWell, we'll still find food
tomorrow morning." He says, HI have a letter where they're to
bury this
cache
of food in case there's no one here." He handed me a copy of the
letter he had sent to Emett. In it Stone outlined the essential foods
that they would need to make it possible for the continuation
of
their trip. He listed all these and enclosed a fifty dollar money
order to compensate for the items. Then he underscored the following
words: "In case there's no one at the ferry, make a cache of
these articles within a twenty-five foot radius of the north support
of the cable that pulls the ferry." So Stone asked me to meet
them there at daybreak and to bring a shovel if I could find one.
Well, I was so excited with the events and the prospects of having
company that I couldn't sleep and was glad when the first colors of
morning shot up over the red ledges. I pulled on my boots and was
successful in finding a broken-handled shovel. I hurried up the river
to join Stone and party, who were still asleep there in their
sleeping bags. My saddle horse was so excited when he saw the three
brightcolored boats that he stampeded and I let out a war whoop. I
caused such a commotion that my friends thought the Navajos had found
them and they scrambled out of their sleeping bags. They were happy
to see it was only me. As soon as they were dressed, we went Up to
that ferry mooring, you know, that cable mooring there. And we dug
all that day until dark and all the next day until noon. Five of us
out there, blisters on all our hands, everyone helped. But we
couldn't find that cache. There wasn't one, by the way.31 By using my
food and some powdered milk of Stone's, we prepared some meager
meals.
They
decided, because of the food situation, they couldn't stay any longer
and they asked me how much bacon I had, and how much flour and how
much dry fruit. And I had some beans, too, by the way. I didn't have
very much. Just one man don't need very much, you know. And so I said
they could have all of it except about one pound of flour and a half
a pound of salt bacon; I was expecting a
relief
to come around the ferry, anytime, maybe tomorrow, maybe It is
interesting to compare Rider's version with Stone's. uWednesday,
October 27,
1909
... We reach Lee's Ferry at 12:35 and go into camp among the willows
opposite John
D.
Lee's stone fort . . . the fort is deserted, as is also the ranch
house that was occupied by
Mr.
Emmett [sic] when we were here before, he having sold out to a cattle
company and
gone
to Kanab, so Mr. Ryder [sic], a cowboy whom we find here, tells us. A
careful search
for
the supplies we were expecting to find in the place where they were
to be cached is
fruitless.
We also ransack the ranch house and corn crib with the same result,
except that
we
find about three pounds of dried apples and half a pound of raisins.
Galloway, who
knows
Emmett [sic] better than I says, 'I believe the old cuss has kept the
money and
purposely
forgot the supplies.' If so, it is very awkward, because we have but
three or four
pounds
of flour, very little coffee, no baking powder, bacon, or anything
else. In fact it is
an
aggravating situation. When I was planning this trip I wrote to
Emmett [sic] who then
lived
here and whom I knew, sending him a check for fifty dollars, with the
request that he
have
ready for us at the time of our probable arrival enough provisions,
flour, bacon, one
ham,
coffee, baking powder, et cetera, for five men for ten days, also in
case he should be
away
to cache the stuff, properly boxed, at the upstream side of the stone
fort. This he
wrote
he would do." Julius F. Stone, Canyon Country; the Romance of a
Drop of Water and a
Grain
of Sand (New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1932), pp. 83-84.
Ironically,
Rider says that a few days after Stone had left, an Indian came with
the supplies. Stone didn't know this until twenty-one years later
when Rider and Stone met in
Columbus,
Ohio, at Rider's instigation and Stone honored him with a banquet.
64
the
next day. I didn't know. Well, nevertheless, I gave them that and
they decided to go. They estimated that by doubling their daily
traveling hours and with scant rations they would be able to make it.
Mr.
Stone, during the time of our searching, had unloaded everything from
the three boats and had dried out all the wet equipment and discarded
every possible item that he thought would be unnecessary for the
hazardous journey through the Grand Canyon. Now they reloaded their
boats and every pound of equipment not absolutely necessary was left
on shore. About one o'clock, after a scanty
meal
of rice and bread, they bade me goodbye. They got into their boats
and buttoned up around their necks a waterproof jacket which was
attached to the boat with fastenings. The boats had been built
in
Grand Rapids, Michigan, especially for this trip, and contained
watertight compartments in either end. They also contained waterproof
food compartments. Mr. Stone manned the first boat, Mr. Galloway the
second, the photographer and boatman manned the third boat, and in
this order they rowed out into the river and swung their boats into
the halfmile rapids. I mounted my gray saddle horse; I had to ride
along the bank at quite a trot and a slow gallop sometimes to keep up
with them. 32 This was really an experience for me as I expected all
of them to be lost before they reached the quiet water at Marble
Canyon at the end of the rapids. They were expert boatsmen and kept a
distance between them of thirty or forty yards, following the course
set by Mr. Stone. I saw each of them disappear in one extra bad spot
but they reappeared and soon entered the box canyon at the entrance
to
the Grand Canyon area. I had ridden my horse out onto a large flat
shelf protruding about
a
foot above the water level and extending into the center of the river
about twenty feet, and was waving and shouting goodbye and good luck,
when to my surprise, all three boats swung into the eddy
below
the projection on which I was and rowed their boats right up to me.
They unfastened their jackets and all came out upon the rock with me.
They gave up the trip. Stone said he'd decided they
~2Stone
records: uThursday, October 28, 1909 ... And so at 1:23 P.M., having
had a light lunch, we start. Mr. Ryder [sic] ... [is] on the bank to
see us run the first rapid which we do in a little over four minutes,
and at its foot say good-by to Ryder [sic] who has ridden along the
bank at a gallop." Ibid., p. 84.65 wouldn't go. No mail for
them, no nothing there, no food. So I says, ttyou guys are crazy. You
go on down there and you'll find all kinds of food down that canyon."
I'd ridden every point all along there
and I'd seen a few mountain sheep up high on the Marble Canyon
ledges, way up. But I'd never seen anything in the bottom because no
one had ever been down there since Powell went through.
But I
thought they certainly would find something. I was just a kid, you
know, I was only eighteen. I've kept the Word of Wisdom all of my
life and I've been prompted so many times that saved my life-maybe I
was prompted to tell them that they would find food. I don't know. I
was just an ordinary cowboy, I didn't know if there was anything but
grasshoppers there, if that. But anyway, I says,
You
go ahead, Mr. Stone." After they had shaken hands and left
again, I was sure that I was going to be the cause of their death. I
hoped that they'd change their minds again and come back, but as they
disappeared around abend, I reluctantly turned back to my camp in the
orchard and soaked my blistered hands. My humble prayer to God that
night, as I crawled in my blankets and closed my eyes, was that they
would make it through the canyon. But I didn't think they would. I
didn't know that their trip had been successful until I got back to
Kanab, six or eight months or a year later, where there were letters
and a picture he had taken of me waiting there.33 But ironically
enough, it wasn't until twenty-one years later in August, 1930, that
I was informed at a banquet given in my honor as the guest ofJulius
F.
Stone in Columbus, Ohio, that my predictions of food for their
journey came true. Mr. Stone addressed an audience of 250 men and
said, uThis cowboy saved our lives by predicting that we would find
food down the river. Through an act of Divine Providence, we found
five head of domestic sheep about twenty-five miles below Lee's
Ferry. We preserved every bit of that meat by drying it and boiling
it and making jerky out of it and it supplied us with ample
provisions for the balance of the expedition."34
