From the Improvement Era, 1939 –

The Cable

By Helen B. Owens

Chapter 1

“What care we when mad winds blow?
The sun’s hot kiss, the wild gale’s hiss
Are greetings that well we know.
Though torrents dash as lightnings flash,
Still ‘cross the mountains we go.”

For nearly seven years there has nestled beneath the shelter of the Vermillion Cliffs a lively little settlement which bears the name of the fickle, turbulent stream flowing by its borders and watering its gardens. The heart of a great grazing center, from its earliest days Kanab had need of easy communication with the cities of the country. True it is, the Deseret Telegraph from Salt Lake City to St. George had been extended by way of Pipe Spring to Kanab in its first years, but — a pair of boots cannot be delivered on a telegraph wire.

A post office was established in 1871, served by a Star Route, sometimes from Marysvale, sometimes from St. George along the road through Pipe Spring. In either case the route was long, so that Kanab felt quite grown-up when Nephi Johnson signed a contract to bring mail regularly twice each week. Contentment with this was short-lived. Need for a daily mail increased. Then Brother Johnson secured a contract to carry a daily mail, except on Sunday, to Kanab from the Virgin River Valley.

If this mail must be carried by way of Hurricane and Pipe Spring it would involve twelve hundred miles of travel every week. Brother Johnson pondered the question and consulted with his neighbors concerning a trail from Rockville to Kanab. Repeatedly the high plateau had been explored by men searching in vain for a roadway. That road was first to be secured half a century later when the mountain was tunnelled north of the Virgin River. No other direct road exists today.

The road to Rockville and Shunesburg was, for the early eighties, a good road. At Shunesburg it ceased. An old Indian trail, twisting and precarious, furnished the only path eastward over the Shunesburg Hill, towering a thousand feet above the Parunaweap River at its base.

The first white man to go into the canyon of the Mukuntaweap, which enters the Parunaweap at this point, had been Nephi Johnson, coming up river thirty years before, searching new farm lands for the Saints. How well he could remember those great cliffs which cut off progress to the east, making of it a true Forbidden Land. From this memory of nearly vertical cliffs came the idea which brought Jacob Hamblin, Jr., and Frank Farnsworth across thirty miles of rock and shale, through forests of pinon and cedar where no human being found habitation, to stand at the crest of Shunesburg Hill, their riding horses and pack train beside them.

“There lie the Temples of the Virgin,” said Jacob, pointing to the towering cliffs rising northwest beyond the river. “Did you ever hear the story the Indians tell of them?”

When Farnsworth replied that he knew no story of these parts, Jacob continued:

“My father heard the story many times. Once was when he acted as guide to the one-armed Gentile who went through this country a dozen years ago. Old Chief Chuaruumpeak told it then. Many years ago the Indians who lived toward the summer’s setting sun beheld a fire on top of that great white butte over there, the one with the broad flat top.”

“You mean the one that looks like the very throne of God Himself?” queried Frank.

“That’s the one. It does look like a great white throne for a fact. Well, from its top rose a mighty blaze, a signal fire the Indians thought, warning of danger. Their greatest enemies were the Navajos toward the rising sun across the Colorado River. They thought the Shivawits were warning of an attack. Then other fires came on other peaks; so all the tribes gathered. They sent runners everywhere, and all their kinsfolk to the north and west were warned. But when the warriors gathered in the Mukuntaweap Canyon, the Straight Canyon, they saw the fire still burning high up where no path led, where no man could climb. So they knew it was an evil spirit which had lighted the blaze to cause them trouble. They thought they heard those spirits in the Roaring Waters — that’s what Parunaweap means.

“They were afraid; so they went away from here. Those Indians of the southwest would not venture in these parts again for many years.

They still call it Tumuurrugwait Tuweap, that is, the Rock Rovers’ Land. You can read about it in Major Powell’s story of his trip out here, which was printed a few years ago.”

“Some story, but if we are to get this contraption rigged up before noon tomorrow we’d better get started. Where do we put it?”

“Brother Johnson said ‘where the cliff is steepest.’ This is certainly that place. He said, too, that there was a tall rock near the edge and a tree back of the rock.”

“No doubt about it, then,” rejoined Frank, and began loosening the diamond hitches ready to pull off the ropes from packs.

As the sun climbed high the next morning it gazed on a strange scene. On the edge of the cliff stood a sturdy frame of rough timbers supporting a heavy windlass on which Frank was winding a stout new rope from a coil at his feet.

“There, it’s all on at last,” he sighed. “I’m glad it isn’t my job to wind up that quarter mile of rope every day.”

“What do you think it will be like with a hundred-pound weight on it?” laughed Jacob.

“Do you suppose the contraption will work?” asked Frank.

“Brother Johnson says it will. He generally knows what he is talking about. It will sure help Kanab if it does.”

“And Brother Johnson’s pocketbook, too,” added the other. “It takes the full time of two men to give twice-a-week mail. I hear he’s calculating on giving three times that with only four men.”

“He is putting his own money into it. This wire and rope and all the rest are costing a lot and he’s got to fix that trail better than it is now if he expects a man to follow it.”

Farnsworth stood with the end of a slender telegraph wire threaded through a strongly built pulley. The wire lay wound on a spool at the edge of the cliff, new wire winking at the sun as if promising soon to share with him some happy secret.

Jacob gave the wire a final tug.

“Better be sure that pulley is fastened tight to the rope on the windlass. It wouldn’t be fun if it rolled off with the wire.”

“Done on time,” said Frank, squinting at the noon-high sun.

“And there are the Shunesburg boys.”

Far below, a small group of horsemen was calling as they waved hats and gazed up the cliff side.

“Are you ready?”

The calls had ceased.

“All ready. Stand clear below,” called Jacob as he and Frank rolled the spool of shining wire to the cliff edge. They held it poised till the men had ridden far to one side. Then the call came, “Let her roll!”

The spool started downhill, the wire playing off more and more quickly as the mass gained momentum. The coil struck a rock, bounded far out, fell, struck again, starting loose stones rattling in a young avalanche. Once more it bounded out, whirling as it went, until with one tremendous fling the wire end tore loose from the hurtling spool, flipped out in the sunlight like the lash of a giant serpent’s tongue, then dropped to lie quivering against the face of the precipice. Swiftly the horsemen closed in, grasped the wire, fastened their lariats to it and dragged it from the rocks to anchor it high on a solid tree which was growing a hundred yards or more from the base of the cliff.

The wire swung free, a silver thread stretched between its rock support a thousand feet above and its living standard near the base.

Here it would hang for many years. Riders would bring letters from Kanab to the crest, fasten the mail sack to the pulley at its upper end, let it slide down that slender wire, to be picked off by another carrier at the foot. He would exchange for the outgoing mail his own sack, bound for Kanab, to be hauled up the cable as the windlass gathered up the rope.

This way came the daily mail to Kanab.

Until a roadway should be built over the divide between Kanab and Marysvale, the cable would remain faithful to its work, greeting each new carrier as he came, bidding him farewell when the desperate loneliness of the upper trail drove him from the work.

The novelty of the daily mail at Kanab had worn off. Sixty miles of riding over rough trail wore down man and beast. Winding a heavy load up a thousand-foot cable was a trying task. Traveling for two days through land where no man dwelt, where the only greeting word each day came from the rider on the opposite trail, made cheerless days. Men took the work, rode the trails for a few weeks, and turned to other tasks.

Nephi Johnson looked up from his desk to find before him one of his father’s youngest boys, Aunt Margaret’s second son. Tall for his fourteen years, straight and slender as a young birch he stood, a little anxious but facing the older man unflinchingly. Clear, gray eyes, honest and unafraid, met the other’s stern glance as the question snapped, “Why aren’t you in school?”

“I guess you know the answer,” the boy answered, mustering a rather tremulous smile. “Since Father died there has been mighty little school for me, or Joseph either. We’ve just had to keep at the farm work.”

He hesitated a moment and then continued, “Mother and Joseph and the girls can manage the work at the farm now but we need some cash. I want to ride with the mail to Shunesburg Hill.” .

Whatever doubts the older man felt he left unexpressed. His father when nearing sixty had taken to wife a pretty girl of twenty years, the English Margaret. A hard life for all it was. The devoted father had gone on many missions and died an honored Patriarch. All his children were grown save only six of Margaret’s family. The boy before him was her second son; four young children, one less than two years old, were dependent on her labors. It was right that Ezekiel should take a man’s work.

Long he looked at his young half-brother before he spoke.

“You start to work on Monday, Ezekiel. The pay is seventeen and a half dollars a month and I furnish the horses and their feed. You get your own food. Dick Shumway rides the other shift. Mind you, no skylarking.”

To a boy whose spirits could never be long depressed, the first day on the trail was a grand adventure. Alone on a trail he had never before traveled, holding the responsibility of bearing the sealed mail sacks of the United States of America! What proud fancies raced through his active brain.

Three miles north of Kanab he forded the stream and began that long, steep climb which brought him out on a wooded plateau where the trail twisted its way among pinons and the ground was covered with last year’s ungathered harvest of toothsome pine nuts. At Cottonwood Springs he filled his waterbag and mounted to ride on, his fresh young voice, which led the Sunday School singing, lifting in the stirring words:

All hail the glorious day,
By Prophets long foretold.
On Zion’s hill,
His praise proclaim.

His frugal lunch was eaten as he sat on a great mound of rock, looking far across Antelope valley to the Kaibab plateau. Some day he would herd cattle across that valley, learn the mysteries of the dark crown of forest. So he dreamed briefly. New sights were near at hand.

The trail climbed laboriously for several hundred feet only to slither down a series of sharp terraces across a bare rock channel and begin again the upward climb. Crowded between fragrant cedars or sliding insecurely along slick rock ledges, that trail might become a hated thing . This day it was a thing of joy. He reached the windlass nearly an hour ahead of schedule and stood looking for the first time from above at that marvelous vari-colored valley — forty years before it would be advertised to the world as Zion National Park.

Great peaks of rose and saffron and white, peaks whose towering caps he knew from a distance, peaks which had cut the skyline when as a little child he first journeyed to Parowan or drove across the treeless mesa to Pipe Spring, stood so close before him it seemed that if he but stretched forth his hand he could touch their ruddy faces.

So entranced was the lad that a hail from below startled him, crashing in on a hundred wordless dreams. Hastily he snapped the mail sack to position and lowered away swiftly, letting out the rope hand over hand while the windlass whirled merrily. When the sack had reached the bot- tom and been replaced by the heavier incoming mail the signal was given to hoist away.

Eagerly Zeke bent to the new task. Grasping the handle firmly he began to turn too rapidly. Over and over turned the wheel. Over, press down, pull back and up, thrust over, press down, pull back — The work brought into play muscles which the boy scarcely knew he possessed. They tired; they protested; they shrieked for relief. The speed of the windlass slackened. How slowly now the rope crept round its spool. Would the end never come? Discouraged and wondering, Zeke snapped the ratchet and looked over the cliff edge. There it hung. The pulley, over halfway down, straight on the wire, held the bag swaying below while the rope, sagging by its own weight, marked a perfect catenary in its curve. Such mathematical niceties held no mystery or fascination for the boy. Heaving a sigh he drove tired muscles to the task and slowly but surely brought the mail bag to the crest. Many a heavier one would he lift, but never one which would carry the same thrill to rest tired muscles as this one did.

Five miles back on the trail the carriers had pitched a primitive camp beside a tiny spring, one which would be dry in late summer but now flowed freely, its waters gurgling over its stone bed singing to the ragged pinons above. A tiny shelter tent stood with rough bed beneath it. A mass of charcoal and ashes, remnants of a cooking fire, and a long-handled skillet completed the arrangements. Zeke was growing up. He was about to experience his first night far from all human companions. Hobbling his horse he built a small fire and sliced some bacon into the skillet. The sun sank behind the cliffs, sending forth a blaze of crimson which glowed through the trees, filling the very air with a flush of rose. It cast its friendly smile over the tent, leaving it softly pink; it blended with the smoke from the frying bacon and showed how yellow flames can be.

(To be continued)