Newer and newer colour schemes, each more imposing than the other, opened at every turn of the Grand Canyon. The bright blue and pink haze of early morning scattered. We stopped at some parapets and looked into the abyss. It was now apricot in colour. At a distance of a mile below us could be seen a river growing ever more luminous. We shouted for all we were worth, calling forth an echo, and for a long time our Moscow voices hopped over the cliffs, returned to us, and finally perished in space.

At last we passed the exit booth. There was no one there. Today was an important holiday—a day of thanks—Thanksgiving Day. And many of the employees did not work. However, on the glass of his booth there was a note which read: "Good-bye. Call again."

"Gentlemen," said Mr. Adams instructively, "put that down in your little books."

And he began to tell us long and interesting stories about American service. He talked like one inspired until we had driven some forty miles away from the canyon. Then he put his left hand over his eyes, and was petrified.

"Becky," he said, no longer inspired, "did you take my watch out from under my pillow?"

"No," said Becky, throwing a red-hot glance at her husband.

"But, but. . ." moaned Mr. Adams, "please don't look at me. You mustn't do that. Look only at the road."

"You left the watch in the camp," said Mrs. Adams, without taking her eyes off the road.

"No, no, Becky!" Mr. Adams spoke in excitement. "I did not leave it in the camp. I left it under the pillow."

We stopped. We learned that the watch cost a hundred and twenty-five dollars, but that wasn't the main thing. The real misfortune was that the watch had been given as a gift to her husband by Mrs. Adams herself.

We began to figure which was more to our advantage, to make an extra eighty miles to recover the watch or to forget about the watch and to go on. We decided that it paid to go back, especially since the object left behind was precious as a memento, which could in no way be said about the petrol.

Nevertheless, we did not turn back. We telephoned to the camp from the nearest petrol station. The camp replied that the worker who had cleaned our house had gone away at the moment, but there was no doubt that he would immediately turn over the watch to the management of the camp, provided the watch was under the pillow.

"Well," said Mrs. Adams, "in that case, we will not go back. You pan send the watch to us in San Francisco, General Delivery."

The man from the camp replied that all that was very well, but at the same time asked that the key to the house, which Mr. Adams had taken along with him, be sent back. Mrs. Adams cast a withering glance at her husband and said that we would immediately return the key by mail.

In view of these circumstances, we drove for two whole hours in utter silence.

27 The Man In the Red Shirt

OUT OF Grand Canyon there was a new road, untravelled yet by tourists. The tall thick forests of the National Park became gradually thinner and finally disappeared altogether. They were succeeded by yellow cliffs which ended in a descent into the new desert. The road fell down in sharp curves. It was one of the most remarkable of American automobile roads, a scenic road, which meant a landscape road. The builders of it made it not only durable, broad, convenient, and safe during rain, but they even attained this: that every one of its turns compelled the traveller to admire ever newer and newer landscapes, scores of various facets of one and the same landscape.

"No, seriously," said Mr. Adams, sticking his head out of the machine every minute, "you want to understand what American service is. It is the highest degree of knowing how to serve. You don't have to climb over cliffs in order to find a convenient point for observation. You can see everything while sitting in your machine. Therefore, buy automobiles, buy petrol, buy oil!"

We had become accustomed to deserts, we had come to love them, and so we greeted the new desert, which opened before us from a considerable height, as an old friend. Here began the reservation of a nomad Indian tribe, the Navajo. This is one of the largest Indian tribes. It consists of sixty thousand people. Five years ago this region was altogether inaccessible, and only recently, with the advent of the new road, did tourists gradually begin to penetrate.

The Navajos loathe and detest their "white-faced brothers," who have been exterminating them for two centuries, driving them into worse and worse places, and finally into a fruitless desert. This hate is unmistakable in the Indian's every glance. He will attach his new-born baby to a little--' board and put it right down on the dirty earthen floor of the wigwam rather than take from the white man any part of his culture.

The Indians almost never mix with the whites. That is an age-long opposition of theirs, evidently, one of the most remarkable phenomena in the history of mankind.

The government, which formerly devoted itself to destroying the Indians, is now trying to preserve their small number of descendants. At the head of the Indian Department in Washington is a liberal gentleman. So-called Indian reservations have been built where the whites are permitted to trade with the Indians under state control. Having chased the Indians away from the fertile ground, they have reserved for them only a few pathetic parcels of desert, and this is regarded as a great act of beneficence. They have opened museums of Indian art. They buy from the Indians, for a pittance, their drawings, rugs, painted clay bowls, and silver bracelets. They have built several well-equipped schools for Indian children. Americans are rather proud of their Indians: even so does the director of a zoo take pride in a rare old lion. The proud beast is very old and is no longer dangerous: his claws are dull, his teeth have fallen out, but his skin is magnificent.

While arranging the reservations, schools, and museums they forgot that the foundation of a people's development is their native tongue. In Indian schools only white men teach, and they teach only in English. There is no Indian writing. True, every Indian tribe has its own peculiar language. But that is no obstacle. Where there is a will there is a way. And many American scientists, specialists of Indian culture, could create a written language for them in a short time, if only for a few of the more important tribes.

Toward noon we arrived in a habitation called Cameron. Here were a few houses—a post office, a trading post where merchandise is sold to Indians, a small but excellently equipped hotel with a little restaurant, a camp, and two adobe Indian wigwams.

We went into one of these. The father of the family was not at home. On the floor sat an Indian beauty who looked like a gypsy (Indian men are usually handsomer than the women). She was surrounded by a whole brood of children. The smallest, a suckling infant, was tied to a little board which lay on the floor. . The oldest was about seven years old. The children were dirty but very handsome, like their mother.

"Becky, Becky!" Mr. Adams cried excitedly, "come here, quick! I found some children!"

The Adamses missed their baby and never let a youngster get by without taking him up in their arms, petting him and giving him a bit of candy. Children were very fond of Mr. Adams, went to his arms gladly, prattling something about lambs and ponies. Their mothers, flattered by this attention, regarded Mr. Adams with a grateful glance and in farewell would bid him a tender good-bye, as if he were not a casual traveller met on the road but a kind grandfather who had arrived from Kansas City for a visit with his dearly beloved grandchildren. In brief, the Adamses derived great pleasure from such meetings.