The Weird Sentinel At Squaw Peak
: ALONG THE ROCKY RANGE: Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land
There is a cave under the highest butte of the Squaw Peak range, Arizona,
where a party of Tonto Indians was found by white men in 1868. The white
men were on the war-path, and when the Tontos fell into their hands they
shot them unhesitatingly, firing into the dark recesses of the cavern,
the fitful but fast-recurring flashes of their rifles illuminating the
interior and exposing to view the objects of their hatred.
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The massacre over, the cries and groans were hushed, the hunters strode
away, and over the mountains fell the calm that for thousands of years
had not been so rudely broken. That night, when the moon shone into this
pit of death, a corpse arose, walked to a rock just within the entrance,
and took there its everlasting seat.
Long afterward a man who did not know its story entered this place, when
he was confronted by a thing, as he called it, that glared so fearfully
upon him that he fled in an ecstasy of terror. Two prospectors
subsequently attempted to explore the cave, but the entrance was barred
by the thing. They gave one glance at the torn face, the bulging eyes
turned sidewise at them, the yellow fangs, the long hair, the spreading
claws, the livid, mouldy flesh, and rushed away. A Western paper,
recounting their adventure, said that one of the men declared that there
was not money enough in Maricopa County to pay him to go there again,
while the other had never stopped running--at least, he had not returned
to his usual haunts since the thing looked at him. Still, it is haunted
country all about here. The souls of the Mojaves roam upon Ghost
Mountain, and the bad men's hunting-grounds of the Yumas and Navajos
are over in the volcanic country of Sonora. It is, therefore, no unusual
thing to find signs and wonders in broad daylight.
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