A family story from the days when Walter Beatty led park horses in Zion. A woman from Chicago hires him to take her to the highest mountain in the park, and she hasn't told him why. Boone tells how the ride ended, and what became of a diamond ring.
If a stranger ever asks you to take her to the highest cliff you know of, you slow down and you listen. Walter Beatty led the park's horses in the early days, and Grace McDonald of Chicago hired him. Take her to the highest mountain in Zion. She didn't say why. This is a family story, and I'll tell you so up front. It comes from Beatty's daughter, Lola Campbell, who told it into a tape recorder in two thousand four. I know of no other witness but the horses. He took her up the West Rim, clear across the big canyon from this high country. It's a long way up, and a long way from Chicago. They rode a good while, saddle leather creaking, the floor of Zion dropping farther off with every turn of the trail. Up top he asked her what was wrong. She'd been jilted at the altar in Chicago, she told him, and she'd come to throw her diamond ring as far off the highest cliff as she could send it. Now look where that leaves Walter Beatty. He's a working man with a wife at home, and a diamond is about to go over the side of Utah. I've known men who'd have held out a hat. "Go pawn it," he told her. "I don't need the money," she said. The way Lola told it, her people owned the McDonald Chocolate Company. "Well, don't throw it," he said. "Give it to someone." She looked at him a while, I expect. Then she asked if his wife had a diamond ring. "Well," said Walter Beatty, "sort of." The only way he'd ever raised the money for one, he told her, was saving up the rings off coffee cans. So there they sat, up in all that air, with two rings between them, one left over from a man who never came through, the other paid for a can at a time. "Here," she said. "Give this to her." Down the mountain it went, in whatever pocket a man who leads horses for a living keeps a diamond. In two thousand four that same diamond was still in the family, and Lola held it up for the fellow with the tape recorder. That ring was supposed to be at the bottom of a canyon. Nobody's story says what became of the coffee can ring. I'd wager it never left the house.
Photo: Courtesy Zion National Park, Photographer Fred R. Brueck, Zion Museum and Archives Image 008_01_056, ZION 7634 · Public domain (NPS; PD-USGov-NPS)