the magazine y - Desert Magazine of the Southwest

would do anything for him. One day he
decided that this steed could jump the
Grand Canyon, and he determined to
make him do it. He believed that the allimportant
thing was to get a good start
before taking off. So he went back three
miles and ran his horse full speed to the
rim. The take-off was very successful.
" 'But,' said Hance, 'I wasn't half way
across before I saw that he couldn't make
it. We hadn't taken a big enough start.'
"Well, what happened?"
" 'Oh, I just turned him around and
went back.' "
In the Captain's cabin hung a pair of
snowshoes that his guests used to view
with admiration. One day a heavy fog
completely filled the gorge. A group of
tourists were hanging about the rim trying
to see down into the canyon. Hance
came along and took a look into and
across the depths.
"Well," he remarked, the canyon's
just about right to cross.'
'What do you mean?" ' someone
asked.
" "Why, I can put on my snowshoes
now and go right across on the fog." '
"He then told how one time he had
gone over thus, and had stayed too long.
The fog went out and left me on
the other side, without food or drink. I
had been marooned three or four days
when it returned, though not so thick as
before. I had grown very light by this
time and got across all right, though the
fog was so thin in spots that several times
I thought I was going to hit the bottom.
I sure did fill up when I got back on this
side.' "
"Hance was once out hunting his pack
animals. Trailing them over to where
This picture was made by Emery C. Kolb about 1917. The men are (left to right)
Dick Gilland, Jimmie McMurdo, Capt. Hance, S. D. Pippin and Leo Krauskop.
cane up with a band of Supai Indians
who were hunting rabbits with bows and
ai rows. They came across the track of an
o d bear that had wandered out that way,
and one of the hunters shot an arrow into
him. The bear at once took after the
Indian; but he was no sooner in pursuit
than up rode another brave and discharged
an arrow at him. Again the bear
wheeled to chase his latest assailant—
oily to receive a shaft from a third Indian
who now entered the fray. So it
went for a long time, until the enraged
Fedhorse wash enters the canyon, he
This is a picture of the Hance camp at Grand Canyon in the '90s. Courtesy Fred
Harvey covpany.
beast looked like a huge porcupine, and
bellowed and frothed with fury.
" In chasing back and forth,' said
Hance, they got up near where I was,
and the bear was now so mad that I began
to think he might take after me. And
sure enough, after me he came. I made
a dash, with the old bear right behind
me. Every minute I thought he'd get me
by the pants. I sighted a big pine ahead
with a limb about 30 feet up, and I
concluded I would have to get that, or
the bear would get me. So I made a big
jump for that limt>—the biggest jump I
ever made in my life. I missed it entirely!
That is, I missed it going up, but 1
caught it coming down.'
One of Hance's oldest surviving
friends is Mrs. Elizabeth B. Heiser of
Flagstaff. Of German extraction, lowly
origin, and endowed with an original and
pungent gift of language, she is scarcely
less colorful than Hance himself. In the
'80s she shared the rough life of the cowman
and the prospector, and was often
in the saddle with them—a brave and
valuable comrade. Naturally, therefore,
her diction is blunt and racy with a
strong smack of the soil and the corral.
It cannot, of course, always be rendered
verbatim. Hance was her near neighbor,
and they were loyal friends to the iast.
She recounts his deeds and interprets his
personality with almost lyric fervor.
"I met him first about 1890. At that
time he lived in his own cabin and had
his own trail. Me and Heiser had a few
cattle up near the canyon and I was out
on the range with the men a good deal.
The way Hance came to go out there
JULY, 1940 17