they left mosquito the next morning, their pack replenished with a generous supply of beef. also, as the mountain ranch had a quantity of stores on hand, they were allowed to purchase enough to bring their supplies up to the limit of the burros’ carrying capacity. so now, over a hundred miles from the desert ranch where they had left the automobiles and at the beginning of their gruelling march to the valley of arcana, they were as well equipped for the ordeal as at the very start.
four hours from mosquito they topped the summit of the ridge, and looked down upon a smiling lake three miles in length by one in width. a carpet of dying grass surrounded the lake, near which but few trees grew, because of the strongly alkaline soil. they wormed their way down to the floor of the level mountain valley, and here they loosed the saddle horses and cached their equipment in a near-by cañon. shirttail henry guaranteed that the animals would not stray from the grazing ground. once more he took the lead, and, driving the reluctant burros ahead of him, worked around the eastern end of the lake.
when they had completed a half-circle of the sheet of blue water and were on the south side opposite the grazing horses, shirttail henry made an abrupt turn[102] to the left and hazed the string of burros up a little creek. for two miles or more the creek flowed through virtually level land, with mountain meadows on either side of it. then gradually the land grew steeper, and the creek banks narrowed. the forest grew denser as they left the valley, and before half an hour had passed they were in a country as wild and rugged as that below mosquito ranch.
they camped for a late nooning before attempting the fierce climb that awaited them. when the burros had browsed an hour they were away again, up the ever narrowing cañon.
the little creek was a plunging torrent now, leaping over boulders, bellowing madly about snarls of ancient driftwood. often there stood in the burros’ path a huge boulder or outcropping that it seemed impossible for them to surmount, but henry always found a way to get them over or around each obstacle. the burros climbed like goats when forced to it. several times the men were obliged to take off their pack-bags so that they could squeeze through some gateway between gigantic stones.
the party was still in the cañon when the early mountain night closed down upon them. they fortunately had come upon a tiny level spot on which there was room to move about with comfort. here they camped to await the coming of another day.
the night was cold and still, the sky cloudless. nevertheless shirttail henry set up his rain gauge, muttering that he could not imagine how he was to send in his report if the gauge showed moisture in[103] the morning. but no rain or snow fell to discomfit him, and the weary trailers passed the night in peace.
an hour after sunup the following day they came to the end of the cañon, to find that the source of the creek was a series of springs in a hillside. from the springs henry set a course southwest through unbroken forest land, across which the going would have been easy but for the fact that the trail led continually up and down over a seemingly endless system of ridges. the party would struggle wearily up one steep hill, only to be obliged to clamber and slide down the other side of it into a deep v-shaped cañon—and then up the near side of another hill as steep as the one just mastered. then down again, and up again—forever and ever, it seemed.
“henry,” said mary, as they stood panting on the top of about the fifteenth rise that they had negotiated, “is this ever going to end?”
“why, yes’m,” henry told her meekly. “these here little rises here get bigger and bigger until we’re top o’ th’ mountains. then we begin to crawl.”
“crawl!” puffed mary. “i’ve done nothing else but crawl up and slide down since we left the creek back there. i don’t feel like a human being any more. i’m a four-footed beast. i growl and show my teeth when a rock or a root gets in my way.”
“but what i’m talkin’ about,” said henry patiently, “is reg’lar crawlin’. sure enough on yer hands an’ knees, ma’am. an’ f’r miles an’ miles at that. th’ patch o’ chaparral we’ll have to go through ain’t got its match in th’ whole west, i’m thinkin’.”
[104]“do you mean, henry, that we’re actually to crawl for miles and miles? like a father playing bear with his baby on the floor?”
“jest crawl, ma’am,” replied henry softly. “unless we cut our way through with th’ axes—an’ that would take forever ’n’ ever ’n’ after.”
“and you realize that, do you, charmian?” mary asked of the head of the party.
“oh, yes—it’s all been explained to me,” charmian assured her.
“all right,” said mary. “then let’s find a place to eat. i’m so hungry i could eat quirkus.”
“which is?”—andy’s question.
“quirkus,” mary explained, “is the stuff you skim off the top of a kettle of fruit when you’re cooking it for canning. or it’s the stuff that grows on the bottom of a watering trough in summer. or sometimes it’s any soft stuff that you don’t know the name of, and that isn’t fit to eat, but looks too valuable to throw away.”
they spent two nights in the forest, forging onward throughout the short, cold, crystal days in the same southwesterly direction, up and down, up and down, but always gaining in altitude. they had left the canadian zone and were well into the hudsonian, which constitutes the belt of forest just below timberline. lodgepole pine, alpine hemlock, silver pine, and white-bark pine had replaced the jeffrey pine, red firs and aspens of the life zone immediately below them. they were over eight thousand feet above the sea, henry told them, when at last, about ten o’clock of the third day after leaving the creek, the woods began to grow[105] thinner, and they encountered frequent patches of short chaparral, bleak and rugged and rock strewn. they were entering the arctic-alpine zone, comprising an elevation of from ten thousand five hundred feet to the tops of the highest peaks.
on and on, always climbing higher into an atmosphere more breath-taking, more crystalline. the chilled silences became awesome. unfamiliar growths presented themselves, stunted, grotesque. an occasional patch of snow was crossed. a snow-white bird as large as a pigeon fluttered down to their camping ground, cocked his head on one side, and surveyed them with comical curiosity. a few grains of rolled barley, left by the wasteful burros, lay on the ground, for a small quantity had been brought along to tempt them back to camp when they wandered, browsing throughout the nights. the white bird pecked contemplatively at these, chattered his bill over one, and dropped it as unfit for avian consumption. as he hopped about, still intent on trying the unfamiliar particles that looked like food, his course took him directly over the foot of charmian, who was standing very still and watching him. utterly without fear of these human beings, he hopped upon the toe of her hiking shoe, and from that vantage point lifted his body and gazed about as a robin does for worms.
“the dear thing!” breathed the girl. “i guess he’s never before seen a human being, and can’t have any conception of what brutes we are. i wonder if i could pick it up!”
“try it,” urged the doctor softly.
[106]charmian stooped, her hands outspread. the movement caused the bird to hop from her shoe, but it did not make away. the girl stooped lower and lower, outspread fingers on either side of it. her hands closed in to within six inches of the warm, white body. the bird looked up at her and hopped off sedately, without a sign of fear, but as much as to say, “familiarity breeds contempt.”
“i could have grabbed it, but i wouldn’t!” maintained the widow. “but i did just want to touch it once!”
they decided that their visitor was an albino robin, probably a native of the regions above the line of perpetual snow, and that never before had it seen a human being.
“it makes me sort of shuddery,” said mary temple. “that’s no way for a bird to act, even if he is a country jake. it isn’t right that he shouldn’t be afraid of us. it’s uncanny—and this is getting to be mighty uncanny country. things get queerer and queerer every day, and i feel queerer and queerer every hour. i can just barely breathe in this light air. my head is on a spree and my feet are dead drunk.”
“it only goes to show,” argued charmian, “how the wild creatures would consider us if only we were as decent as they are. there is no reason on earth why any wild thing should fear a human being. i have read arguments built up about the hypothesis that wild animals fear man instinctively, that they naturally recognize him as their master. more of man’s monumental egotism! when an animal distrusts[107] man, that distrust is bred in him by reason of his ancestors having been obliged to escape from human ruthlessness. or the individual itself has suffered at the hands of man.”
and not many days had passed before she proved, in part at least, that her contentions were correct; for the farther they forged into that untamed wilderness the more trusting the wild life became. small, queer birds which none of them could name, most of them with long bills and heads that seemed almost as large as their bodies, followed them on the trail, perched above them in the chaparral and cocked their heads one side to stare down in puzzlement, and often flew to their very knees or alighted on their shoulders.
upward and ever upward, over the sprawling toes and then over the generous knees of dewlap mountain. the only bird seen now was an occasional rosy finch; the mammals encountered consisted of the alpine chipmunk, the grey bushy-tailed woodrat, and that quaint and ingenious native of the bleak altitudes, the yosemite cony. this little animal, called variously rock rabbit, little chief hare, pika, or cony, is less than seven inches over all, and, much more so than the rabbit, has a tail which “mustn’t be talked about.” it has short rounded ears, dense hair, and, though closely resembling the rabbit, it runs an all fours, with a hobbling gait. it never sits up on its haunches, as does the rabbit, nor does it leave the alpine zone for a warmer clime when blizzards rage. its home is in rock slides, where it cuts, dries, and stores up hay for use when the land is covered deep with snow. often the[108] travellers saw one perched on a lofty granite rock and heard its strange bleating cry of alarm.
the actinic quality of the light in this boreal zone made the few plants that the trailers came upon present rare, pure colours delectable to the eye. most of these plants were cushion plants, spread out over the barren rocks where a little soil had gathered, and from the centre of the cushion the flower stalks arose. the doctor named the golden draba, the alpine flox, and others; but the yellow columbine—not a cushion plant—was most remarkable of all. on the highest peaks flourished the alpine buttercup, the sierra primrose, and small alpine willow trees, not above an inch in height. and at the very outskirts of snow banks they discovered the steer’s head, a queer relic of pre-glacial times, whose flowers, modestly lopped over, resembled the heads of a sleepy bunch of cattle. often this flower grew with snow all about it and seemed to thrive.
they were in a land of nothingness—cold and bleak and comfortless. on all sides wastes of loose stones and snow patches swept away from them. about them were the lofty peaks, so diamond clear in their dazzling whiteness that it pained the eye to look at them. they were crossing the knees of dewlap mountain, making toward the south. they camped on windswept reaches, their mattresses the cold, hard rocks. melted snow formed their water supply, and fuel that they had picked up in the warmer zone below them was nursed with miserly discretion.
after a day and a night in this forbidding land[109] shirttail henry loosed the burros, for nothing grew for them to eat except the inch-high dwarf willows, and these were few. burros will continue content for days and days without food or water, but charmian demanded their release after twenty-four hours of deprivation. with indignant snorts, they kicked up their heels, and the bell burro set a bee-line course over the backward trail. when they reached the hudsonian zone, henry said, they would browse their way gradually down through the canadian, and into the transition, where they would find an abundance of chaparral; and later they would reach the horses at the lake and remain close to them until snow drove the entire band to the lower contours, from whence they might wander even to the home ranch on the desert.
a rather serious catastrophe overtook the united states weather bureau on the day before the burros were released. shirttail henry had installed his rain gauge for the night, and had no more than turned his back on it when the bell burro was attracted by the brightness of its brass. she approached it with mincing steps, and, as is the custom of her kind, began trying to eat it. a burro seems incapable of deciding whether an object is for food by looking at it or smelling of it. he starts in to eat it, assuming that all things are good to eat until proved otherwise. the burro soon decided that in this instance she had made a grave mistake, and forthwith dropped the gauge. but not until the thin cylinder of brass had been dented and pinched in so that, as a recorder of the fall of rain, it was absolutely useless.
[110]mary temple witnessed the desecration, but shouted too late. henry wheeled in time, however, to capture the miscreant. he held her by the leather band that encircled her neck, and to which her tinkling bell was fastened, and looked her fiercely in the eye.
“ass,” he said, “ye ain’t my canary, an’ i know ye ain’t got no sense. but if ye was mine, d’ye know what i’d do to ye? i’d hold ye by this here strap here, an’ i’d get me a club, an’ i’d take it an’ i’d knock yer gysh-danged head off. heh-heh-heh!”
snow covered the greater part of the land where the explorers had loosed the asses. henry rigged up his drag, and on it stowed the outfit. henry and andy took the lead ropes, and dr. shonto walked behind to push. by following a zigzag course the leaders were able to keep the sledge running upon snow for the greater part of the time, and when only bare rocks lay before them the party portaged the cargo and the sledge to snowy stretches beyond.
their up-and-down course continued, and many a slope taxed the strength of all to get the laden sledge to the summit. but the general trend was downward, for they were crossing the knees of dewlap, the only divide which gave access to the country wherein lay the mysterious valley of their quest. gradually, after days of slow travel, the snow patches grew fewer and fewer, and the air grew noticeably warmer as they worked downward into the hudsonian zone once more. then altogether the snow disappeared; scattering trees greeted them, alpine hemlocks, silver pines—trees more friendly, it seemed to the awed wanderers, than[111] any they ever had seen before. they saw a wolverine—infrequent animal—a white-tailed jackrabbit, and on one rare day a pure white squirrel, with pink-lidded eyes, quite curious and friendly.
they discarded the sledge, cached such tin-protected provisions as they could not carry on their backs, and forged on into a land of growing delights. they left the semi-bleak hudsonian zone above them and entered the friendly canadian, where the yosemite fox sparrow, the sierra grouse, and the ruby-crowned kinglet greeted them; and among the mammals the jumping mouse, the yellow-haired porcupine, the sierra chickaree, and the navigator shrew. the forest was heavy again, and there was firewood and the shelter of companionable conifers. straight into the south shirttail henry led the way, down into a gigantic cup of the mountain range where grasses grew and sunlight flooded the land.
the forest became patchy, broken by occasional mountain meadows, rubble slides, cañons through which fires had spread their devastation and left sentinel trees and slopes covered with chaparral. deep, impassible gorges forced them miles and miles to the east or the west, and sometimes turned them in the direction from whence they came. and in descending into one of these, after having followed its grim lip for many miles in search of a crossing, the redoubtable mary fell, rolled down a steep incline, and terminated her mad descent in an ice-cold creek.
“well,” she remarked, as her anxious friends stumbled and slid down to her, “it’s lucky i landed[112] close to water, for right here i stay until the rest of you forsake your life of sin and come back to me on your way home. i’ve sprained my ankle terribly. two of you hold me while doctor shonto pulls my leg.”
