though the afternoon was not far spent, the party immediately went into camp in the gorge. if mary’s sprain was severe, the doctor told the others gravely, it would be impossible for her to touch the injured foot to the ground for many days. the men might carry her back, but it would be next to impossible, and altogether reckless, to carry her forward. what were they to do?
mary was suffering silently beside the campfire, and the others had withdrawn to a distance to hold their conference. then came her snappy voice:
“that’s mighty impolite. i know what you’re talking about. come over here by the fire and i’ll relieve your minds.”
when they had congregated about her she said placidly:
“now, there’s just one thing for you to do. that is to go on, and leave me here in the cañon with enough grub to last me until you give up hope of ever finding the valley of tomfoolery. which will be in a few days, at most, i’m thinking.”
“mary temple,” charmian told her firmly, “we’ll do nothing of the sort. we’ll stay with you till you can walk or carry you over the back trail right now—and[114] that ends that. we were only trying to decide which of the two would be the better plan.”
“charmian,” said mary, “will you kindly remember that it is my ankle that is sprained. i’m running that ankle myself, and whatever i say that has that ankle for a subject goes. this is not the first time that i have been in the wilderness, and a little thing like this doesn’t trouble me in the least. this expedition, foolish though it is, means a lot to you. and i’m not going to allow you to come this far and have to give up because of me. you’ll see this thing to the bitter end or i’ll never move from this country, this cañon, this fireside, or this rock on which i’m sitting. you, and all of you—even old marblehead—have browbeaten me, bullied me, overrun me since we lost those rascals, leach and morley, on the desert. but now at last, because of my sprained ankle, i am in command of the situation. and i mean to be obeyed. you’ll leave me here, with provisions and an ample supply of firewood within arm’s reach, while you continue on to the end of the bonehead country. you’re not going to all this expense and deprivation and hardship for nothing. the sky’s still clear. henry’s late winter seems assured. you may not have another chance in years to even come as far as you have. and you’re going to shoot the piece while you’re about it.”
“why, mary temple!” laughed charmian. “what atrocious slang!”
“it’s time for slang,” mary declared testily. “shoot the piece!”
[115]“but, mary, it’s perfectly—perfectly hideous to leave you here in this god-forsaken wilderness all alone—and you a woman with a sprained ankle. neither the doctor nor andy will consent to such a thing.”
“they’ll either go one way and leave me, or go the other way and leave me. this rock on which i’m sitting is my throne, and i won’t move from it until i have my way. i’ll die right here on this rock, i tell you, before i’ll give in one inch!”
“but a mountain lion might attack you, mary temple!”
“go on! you talk as if i were good to eat! lions don’t kill for the fun of it; they kill for meat. only rats eat leather.”
dr. shonto was regarding her thoughtfully. his examination of her ankle had puzzled him. it was not swelling, and when he felt the bones he had been unable to detect any evidence of sprain whatever. but her contorted features and white lips spoke plainly of pain. now mary surprised him by winking at him desperately, and, wondering, he held his peace.
“now all of you but doctor shonto go up the cañon, around that bend, and stay there till we call you,” ordered mary. “maybe you can talk some sense into one another’s heads. i want the doctor to examine my ankle, and i’m too modest to have the bunch of you staring at me.”
with a queer look at shonto, charmian led the way up the cañon for henry and andy, and they went out of sight around the bend.
[116]“well, mary, what’s all this about, anyway?” asked the doctor. “you haven’t sprained your ankle, and you know it as well as i do.”
“of course not,” replied mary complacently. “but i’ve broken at least a couple of ribs.”
“what!”
“i didn’t want charmian to know.”
“are you in pain?”
“doctor,” said mary, “if you ever tell charmian that i said what i’m going to say i’ll never, never speak to you again. it hurts like hell! there—now you know, i guess.”
“well, for the love of mike!” gasped shonto. “let me help you into your tent. strip to the waist in there, while i rummage through the pack for my supplies.”
“i don’t need your help,” snapped mary. “you forget that my ankle isn’t sprained. i can walk, but i can’t crawl. and we’re getting close to the crawling ground, henry tells me.”
“oh, i understand,” said shonto.
nevertheless he helped her to her feet and held her arm as she walked slowly and painfully to her and charmian’s tent. the doctor pawed through the pack, found his medicine case, and brought forth a tin spool of wide adhesive plaster. a little later, stripped to the waist and blushing furiously, mary temple came from the tent and stood before him.
shonto’s skilful fingers kneaded her torso as gently as possible, but mary’s lips were colourless and beads of perspiration stood out on her forehead.
“that hurt?”
[117]“humph! of course!”
“and that?”
“i guess you know it does as well as i do.”
“well, mary, i guess you’ve cracked one of them,” remarked shonto, after his careful examination.
he stepped behind her and flattened one end of a strip of adhesive plaster at the middle of her back, then brought it around to her right side.
“now get all the breath out of you,” he ordered. “deflate your lungs as much as possible.”
mary took a deep breath, and then obediently blew lustily through her white lips until her lungs were free of air. as her chest went down, shonto put his strength on the plaster and brought it around the front of her body, binding her tight. he put on one more strip, then told her he could do nothing else for her—that the plasters would hold the rib in place while it was knitting, and that, at her age, nature would not complete this process until the end of about three weeks.
“don’t let charmian know anything about it,” cautioned mary, coming from the tent again. “i’ll keep on pretending that i sprained my ankle. she’d worry if she knew i had a rib broken. and i could manage to walk back this way, couldn’t i, doctor?”
“yes, if you walked slowly and carefully you might get by.”
“that’s what i thought. in fact, i’ve had a broken rib before, and while it pained me a lot—especially in bed at night—i was able to move around. so make charmian think my ankle is sprained and that i can’t[118] walk a step. then she’ll think it’s just as well for the rest of you to go on for a few days as to turn back—seeing that i can’t walk either way. as i said, however, i can walk, after a fashion, but i can’t crawl a single inch. you get the idea, don’t you? i don’t want to break up the expedition.”
“but, mary,” he reminded her, “you have been against it from the start. it strikes me that now you have an excellent excuse to call it off.”
“oh, i’m against everything, doctor,” she chuckled grimly. “at first, anyway. i have to be to keep charmian from going to extremes. did you think for one moment, back there at el trono de tolerancia, that i’d allow her to go on this wild-goose chase without me? not in a thousand years! and last night, before we went to sleep, she told me something, with her head resting on my lean old shoulder, that would keep me going to the end of time if she asked it.”
“and what was that?” asked shonto.
“well, that queer country we just passed through seemed to work a sort of spell over her. up until we struck the high altitudes this thing has been more or less of a lark with her. but up there, it seems, the queer things she saw made her mighty thoughtful. that was a weird, queer country, you’ll admit yourself. it gave me the creeps; but it fired charmian with the realization that this is, after all, a big undertaking, and that there’s nothing foolish or childish about it.
“charmian always wanted to do something different—something[119] outstanding. she hates a commonplace existence. she told me last night that at last she saw a way to realize her ambition. other women have climbed the alps, she said, explored the andes, and nosed into all sorts of queer places. she said that she had the strength and the courage to do as much as any woman can. and she thought her trip to the valley of arcana would make a good beginning. it really amounted to a lot, she said, for a girl to be the first, so far as anybody knows, to enter that hidden valley. it would add something to the geographical knowledge of the state, and who knew what she might not discover?
“i never before saw her so enthusiastic over anything. and now that she has come so far, i’d be the last one on earth to turn her back. so you must go on—you and charmian and andy and marblehead. i can live here quite comfortably till you get back. i’m used to it—but i know now that i am too old to have considered coming along.”
“mary,” said the doctor—and his unhandsome face was aglow with appreciation—“i am proud to know you. your devotion to that girl is wonderful. but i think your present sacrifice is too great. charmian will never—”
mary temple lifted a lean hand to stop him. “i won’t have it any other way,” she said. “to-morrow a couple of you men go back to the cache and pack in all that you can of the provisions we left there. that will give me an assurance of plenty, and you can start out, loaded to capacity again, from this point.[120] i’ll be all right. don’t worry about me. and what better plan have you to offer, anyway?”
“we could all camp here until you are fit to travel back,” suggested shonto, “and then—”
“absolute nonsense!” mary objected. “what’s the use in wasting your opportunity that way? don’t try to be frivolously chivalrous, doctor. this is no time for useless sentiment. winter is close at hand, and this is a hard, hard country. it’s time to look at the matter seriously.”
“i’ll go and talk with the others,” said shonto abruptly, and swung away up the cañon.
it was a difficult situation. no one wanted to leave a middle-aged woman alone in that wild cañon, with a vast, rugged wilderness between her and the comforts of life. but mary remained tyrannically obdurate, so they decided that they would think the matter over during the two or three days which it would take andy and shirttail henry to go for more provisions and return.
early next morning the two set off on the back trail. the doctor busied himself at making a more or less permanent camp for mary, provided they decided in the end to accept her ultimatum. charmian spent hours at bringing her diary up to date. mary, though in pain and obliged to move about with caution, feigned a limp and kept busy in order to deceive charmian.
the afternoon of the third day of henry and andy’s absence brought boredom to all three. the sky still was clear as crystal, with no suggestion of[121] clouds; and down in the cañon it was warm while the sun remained overhead. mary was confined to camp, of course, but she insisted that charmian and shonto go on a short trip of exploration either up or down the gorge.
the pair set off about two o’clock. the cañon floor was a mass of nigger-head boulders, through which snaked the rushing green creek. the walls were all but perpendicular in places and of a height close to two hundred and fifty feet. few trees grew near the floor of the cañon, but there were numberless entanglements of driftwood from which to draw upon for fuel.
the birds were singing their praise of the comforting sunlight. delicate ferns, unmolested by the frost, waved their green fronds above stones set in the cañon walls, their stems upreared from soft, vari-coloured mossbanks as lustrous and yielding as oriental rugs and sparkling with diamonds of dew. a pensive languor pervaded the cañon, a sort of armistice between the mellow sun warmth and the gorge’s lifelong heritage of clammy coldness. it made these human beings moody. the warmth was the gipsy warmth of early springtime, when the smells of earth are sweetest, as, deep down within the soil, the sleepy seeds begin to rub their eyes and stretch in their great awakening to a short life of ceaseless struggles. the pair were moody because they realized that it was not spring, that the half-hearted promise of the sun was altogether insincere. and while they were susceptible to the indolence of this tantalizing afternoon, the false[122] warmth stirred their blood and kindled their imaginations to deeds of high emprise and thoughts of life as it ought to be, but never is. they were filled with vague feelings of unrest; they spoke but little and dreamed ambitious girlish and boyish dreams.
“let’s sit down,” said charmian, when they were a mile or more from camp.
an ancient bleached pine log had drifted into a little nook of rocks, where it was upheld from the floor by short, broken-off, horizontal limbs to a convenient height for a seat. it looked like a great white thousand-legged worm with porcupine quills in its back, said charmian, as she seated herself between two of the upper-side stumps of limbs.
“what a day!” she continued. “i never was more ambitious in my life, doctor, but i just want to sit here and ambish with my eyes half closed. i didn’t know one could be lazy and ambitious at the same time. i imagine dope must affect one something like this. gee, but i could slay pirates on the spanish main this afternoon—that is, if they’d move the spanish main up here to this log and i could keep from gaping long enough to draw my cutlass. don’t know that i’d want to kill pirates, either—i’d rather be a pirate myself and murder honest people. but either would be an effort—unless i could sit here and slay ’em with the evil eye.”
she made an arm-rest of one of the stumpy branches and sank her round chin in one hand. the posture pushed up one ruddy cheek and caused her red lips to show a pout, and that odd little upward flirt at one[123] corner lent them an unconscious smile. the long dark lashes, so delicately upturned at the end, drooped downward. her profile stood out clean-cut against the flimsy light of the winter sun. her throat showed soft and dimpled and dusky. her hoard of hair had loosened and slipped downward in artistic disarray. she relaxed, eyes half closed, and her sinuous body slackened as it settled into unrestrained repose. her full bosom rose and fell as softly and smoothly as the oily ground swell of a lazy tropic bay.
inman shonto likened womanly beauty to that of flowers. he knew lily girls and primrose girls, daisy girls and violet and pansy girls, even sunflower girls. but here was a rose girl—a great passionate american beauty rose, bold in colouring, strong and stanch, upright and unafraid, dominant, outstanding amid the other flowers, but owner of all the loveliness and grace of the lesser blossoms, as delicate of texture and as compelling in its tenderness.
the firm, puckered, rather thick lips of dr. shonto made a corrugated horizontal line as he drank in the beauty of the picture the drooping girl unconsciously posed for him. he thought of his own pale-blue eyes, his sparse sandy eyebrows, his thin, neutral-coloured hair, his pitted, gargantuan nose. but he straightened. he had the body of a gladiator, the heart of a knight, the soul of a poet, and his intellect had brought both fame and wealth to his feet. the doctor knew all this; he knew himself, his possibilities and his limitations. he wanted this girl—he deserved her—he had given up his important work to go with[124] her on this impulsively planned expedition and shield her and win her. she was a combination of all that he desired in a wife. to let andy jerome take her away from him would be an injustice to all concerned. his brains and his character and his manhood had made an appeal to her, he felt. were these attributes enough for her? was not he possessed of attributes of sufficient worthiness to offer in exchange for her beauty and womanly charm? and some women, he knew, were strangely attracted by an ugly man who offers them virility and a masterful personality. and nearly all such women, he had noted in his vast experience of life, were lovely women and intensely feminine.
“charmian,” he said suddenly, in a voice just loud enough to be heard above the boisterous laughter of the creek, “i’ve been thinking, since the night andy and i first saw you at el trono de tolerancia, that maybe you’re the woman i have been waiting for and longing for ever since i became a man. i came upon this trip with you to find out if my intuition had told me right. it has. the last week of you has shown me that you and i will not be doing our full duty to life unless we are together.”
her supple body tensed a trifle, then relaxed again. her long lashes had lifted until he saw the silken sheen of her dark eyes, but now they were dropped once more.
“i’ll admit that i have gone about this thing with practicality,” he continued. “it is, perhaps, my scientific nature that caused me to. it’s better that way.[125] it’s safest. boys don’t make love as i am making it, but i’m no boy, though i’m none the less sincere. i look upon successful marriage as the ideal partnership. and you will realize when you are a little older, as i do, that companionship is the most important feature of married life. don’t think that i don’t love you. i do—deeply. but i’m not offering you the blind, fiery, uncontrolled passion of a youth in his twenties. i’m offering you the sincere love of a mature, reasoning man. what do you think of it?”
charmian reemy opened her eyes and stole a quick glance at him. the colour in her face was heightened only a little; and, though her heart may have beat a little faster, she was not greatly confused. but a feeling of triumph glowed warm within her. that she, by the not consciously exercised force of her personality and feminine charm, had intrigued this man of big achievements into a proposal of marriage was thrilling.
he was so desperately in earnest that his homely face was transfigured. facial ugliness she saw only in the light of great strength. his broad smile was winning, tolerant, unutterably tender. his eyes were kind, whimsical, wistful; and there was in them now a lustre that she never had seen glowing there before.
inman shonto was not ugly now. the great soul of the man had enthroned itself in his countenance. the effect was spellbinding.
charmian had told herself that, if ever she married again, she would marry a big man, a man of accomplishment. her husband had been a big man[126] in his small way. he had been a money-maker, a george f. babbitt, but the girl-wife had not been able to interest herself in his activities. he had created nothing, discovered nothing, added nothing to the knowledge or welfare of the race. walter j. reemy had been commonplace in every way—a man whose commonplace mind followed a daily routine of commonplaceness.
“you and i, charmian,” the doctor was saying while she dreamed, “can make our life together an ideal one. won’t you even consider it?”
she had closed her eyes again, but now she opened them and smiled at him half bashfully.
“i am considering it,” she said.
shonto grasped her hand with eagerness and pressed it. “thank heaven for that encouragement,” he whispered fervently.
“but—but could i ever understand you?” asked charmian. “i’m nothing—nobody—a dreamer. they say that i am pretty. if so, isn’t it merely that which has attracted you to me, doctor? if we were married, wouldn’t you shut yourself away from me, treat me generously and courteously and devotedly, but at the same time never take me into your confidence? don’t you want me merely as an ornament for the mantle of your success?”
“why should that be, charmian?”
“haven’t you already declined to take me into your confidence about your work—about the glands? i didn’t ask much, did i? i wasn’t trying to pry into your secrets—the mysteries of your profession. i was[127] just looking for a little enlightenment on a subject that has interested me ever since it was brought to the attention of the general public. and you shut up like a clam.”
shonto’s face showed troubled lines.
“i tried to explain, very carefully,” he pointed out, “that, in this instance, there is a peculiar reason why i cannot tell you what you want to know. but there may come a time when i shall feel at liberty to tell you all. please trust me—and believe me when i say that, if you can look on my proposal in a favourable light, i will tell you everything. don’t you think me worthy of such trust, charmian?”
there was a pleading note in his tones, though they were none the less manly, that caused her to say impulsively:
“of course i trust you. i know you must have an excellent reason for not talking over your work with me. i’m afraid i’m pretty much of a kid at times, doctor. and i’ll—i’ll— well, i’ll think about what you said. oh, but what a matter-of-fact way we’re taking to talk about such a subject! i think— my goodness! here comes andy—alone!”
