A CASE FOR REJUVENATION
CHARMIAN REEMY received the news of the flight of Leach and the Morleys
with equanimity.
“I have been afraid for some time,” she asserted at breakfast, “that
there was something wrong. Oh, well, it doesn’t greatly matter. I never
should have considered buying the opal claims, anyway, if it hadn’t
been necessary to do it in order to get the location of the Valley of
Arcana. And Shirttail Henry ought to be able to at least show us how to
get a peep at it.”
“Charmian Reemy, you’re going home,” announced Mary stiffly.
“Wrong again, Mary Temple. We’re going to find the Valley of Arcana and
explore it.”
“Then I’ll not move another foot, Charmian. That’s flat.”
“So is the desert,” said Charmian demurely, “and to spend the remainder
of your life on it, Mary Temple, would be frightfully monotonous.”
“You know what I mean well enough,” snapped Mary. “I’ll find a way to
get home without you.”
“Mary Temple, your miner’s bread is simply exquisite this morning,”
Charmian told her placidly. “You haven’t forgotten our delightful days
in Alaska, I see. Mary Temple, hereafter I intend to refer to you as
my companion at arms. You’re so companionable that I couldn’t think of
existing without you, and you’re always up in arms. Companion at arms
is right. I’m glad I thought of that one. Naming things is my hobby,
you know, Doctor.”
“Charmian,” quoth Mary in a sepulchral voice, “have you forgotten what
Madame Destrehan saw in your Valley of Foolishness?”
“Let’s see. It was a madman bending over me, wasn’t it?--and stretching
out his talonlike fingers toward my throat?”
“It was--and you know it. Well, haven’t you had warning enough?”
“You are well aware, Mary Temple, that I put no faith whatever in the
second sight of Madame Destrehan or any other swindler,” Charmian
reminded her.
“But in this case, isn’t her prophecy working out? Haven’t we had the
madman right here in our camp? What better evidence of her powers can
you ask for, Charmian?”
“In camp,” said the perverse young widow, “I always take two cups of
coffee for breakfast, Doctor. One with the trimmings, and one black.
May I trouble you to pour me another cup? And do you really think
Shirttail Henry is a nut, Mary Temple?”
“Putting aside what Leach and Morley told us about him,” Mary replied,
“didn’t we see him strike off for the mountains when he saw a tiny
cloud no bigger than a pancake? And think of him writing to the
President when his puny little check fails to come on the dot! I
wouldn’t call him a nut. I wouldn’t call anybody a nut, because that’s
vulgar. But he’s a subject for a padded cell, and he’ll choke you to
death in your old Valley of Tomfoolery if you persist in going up there
and giving him the chance.”
“That would be a rather unique experience, don’t you think, Andy?”
asked the girl. “I’ve never even had a madman’s fingers at my throat,
let alone being choked to death by one. I think, if I barely succeeded
in escaping alive, that my life would be fuller ever afterward. And
if Henry wants to give me the delicious experience I mean to let him
have his chance. But he mustn’t overdo it. You’ll keep close and see
that Henry doesn’t go too far, won’t you, Doctor Shonto? When my tongue
lolls out and I’m beginning to get blue in the face, just yell, ‘Look
at that cloud drifting over your rain gauge, Henry!’”
“Funny, ain’t you?” sniffed Mary.
“Trying to be,” said Charmian humbly.
The four ate in silence after this, Charmian’s roguish brown eyes
hidden by the long lashes. Now and then she looked up and smiled
mischievously at Andy or the doctor, for all the world like a contrary
little girl who knows she is exasperating and glories in it.
“When do we start?” asked Mary suddenly.
“For where?”
“For the mountains and Henry Richkirk’s place.”
“Why, we don’t just know how to find him,” said Charmian, winking at
the two men. “But he’s calling on us to-day, you’ll remember. I guess
we’ll just have to stay here and wait for him. Well, we’re all through
eating, and I suppose, as hostess, I ought to rise first. But I’m so
stiff from yesterday’s ride. Won’t you get up and help me on my feet,
Andy?”
“‘Mr. Jerome’ would sound better, wouldn’t it, Charmian?” There was a
decided corrective note in Mary’s tone.
“Oh, we can’t bother with mistering and missising and missing one
another,” protested the girl. “I call Doctor Shonto ‘Doctor,’ and
I’ve simply got to have a brief name for Mr. Jerome. Andy’s mighty
handy. And, if you don’t mind, I’d like to have you two gentlemen,
or overgrown boys, or whatever you call yourselves, address me as
Charmian. It takes all the kick out of camp life to go about mistering
and missising one another. Which would sound more practical, Mary
Temple?--‘Doctor Inman Shonto, I think that rattlesnake is about
to bite you’ or ‘_Jiggers, Doc! Rattlesnake!_’ I think our eminent
physician would jiggers more promptly if he heard the latter, don’t
you? Why, I seem to be in pretty good spirits this morning, don’t I?”
“You’re talking a lot,” said Mary, and rose to gather up the “dead and
wounded” and place them in the dishwater.
The doctor had fed and watered the stock while Mary was completing
her breakfast-getting. This ascertained, Charmian proposed a ride in
search of the opal mines of their vanished dreams. They were only two
miles farther in the buttes, the prospectors had revealed, and the
girl wanted to visit them while they awaited the coming of the devoted
weather man. Also, she wished to limber up again in preparation for
the ride to the mountains. Mary Temple refused to be lured from the
domestic duties of the camp, so the girl and the two men rode off
without her.
As they started Mary shrilled after them:
“Andy Jerome--if I _must_ call you Andy--did you forget to take your
medicine this morning?”
Andy grinned sheepishly, stopped his horse, and dismounted.
“Humph!” sniffed Mary. “I thought as much.”
Andy went to his tent and took a tablet from a pasteboard box. As he
carried it to the spring for water to wash it down, he asked:
“How did you know I am taking medicine, Mary?--if I _must_ call you
Mary.”
“Humph! Haven’t I seen you swallow one of those little tablets
regularly every morning since I first met you? And I know medicine must
be taken regularly in order to get the full benefit of it. I don’t
know what you’re taking those tablets for, and I don’t care, but I do
know that, so long as I am one of the idiots in this Bonehead Country,
you’ll not miss a morning while the medicine lasts.”
“Thanks for your thoughtfulness, Mary,” Andy laughed. “I don’t wonder
that Charmian finds you indispensable. But did you call the Shinbone
Country the Bonehead Country by accident, or--”
“Or,” Mary interjected decisively.
There was but one direction for the trio to travel, they found, because
they were in a pass between the two lines of buttes. It was not long
before they saw evidences of bygone mining activities--several dumps
of rather large proportions, and above them tunnels in the side of a
hill. They left their horses on the level land and clambered up among
the rocks, to find that, in some past day, a great deal of work had
been done.
They investigated for an hour or more, and then a voice hailed them
from a distance, and they saw the gigantic figure of Shirttail Henry
approaching along the floor of the pass. He came straight toward them,
negotiated the hillside with ease, and made his profound bows all
around when he reached them.
“No rain a-tall,” he announced morosely. “That cloud was gone before I
got there. I’m glad ye left Leach an’ Morley behind. I wanted to talk
to ye alone about these here claims here.”
A few words sufficed to apprise him of the unexpected decampment of the
designing opal miners, and the recital brought forth Shirttail Henry’s
cackling “Heh-heh-heh.”
“I ain’t a-tall s’prised, ma’am,” he told Charmian. “They’re ornery,
them two boys. This ain’t th’ first time they tried to sell these ole
abandoned opal mines to some one.”
“Abandoned mines?” puzzled Charmian.
“Course,” said Henry. “That’s what they are. Twenty year ago they was
a lot o’ fine stones took outa here. There’s lots o’ opal here yet,
but it ain’t got any fire. Ye see, ma’am, it takes time for an opal to
gather its fire. The fellas that staked out these claims got rich. I
know they sold one stone they found for ten thousand dollars--one of
the biggest prices ever paid for an opal. But the good stones run out,
so they abandoned the claims. Then Leach an’ Morley filed on ’em just
to have somethin’ to sell to some sucker. In time the opals here will
gather their fire, but you folks wouldn’t be here to mine ’em.”
“How long does it take an opal to get its fire?” asked Charmian.
“Oh, matter of a hundred thousan’ years,” said Henry.
“Good night!” exclaimed the widow. “If we’d bought the claims, Doctor,
you’d have had a good chance to prove the efficacy of rejuvenation
by the gland treatment. Well, that for the opals!”--and she snapped
her fingers. “They’re unlucky, anyway. Mary Temple says so. Now, Mr.
Henry, what do you know about an undiscovered or an unexplored valley
somewhere up in the mountains?”
“I know she’s there, ma’am--that’s about as much,” answered the
mountaineer.
“Have you ever seen it?”
“Onct--from the top of a high peak. But nobody’s ever been there. They
tried it--lots of ’em--an’ failed to make it. It can’t be done. Who
told ye about that valley--Leach an’ Morley?”
“Yes,” said Charmian. “But I don’t agree with you when you say it can’t
be done. We’ll pay you well to show us the valley from the peak that
you mention, and for any hints or suggestions about reaching the valley
that you can give us. Also, we want to find a certain mountain meadow
that Morley told us of, where we can pasture our horses and such
burros as we won’t need in the undertaking. What do you say?”
“I’ll help ye out,” Shirttail Henry promised. “An’ I’ll tell ye all I
know. That’s more’n most of ’em in the Shinbone Country know, at that.
But ye’ll never make it, ma’am. When I take ye to th’ top o’ the peak,
where ye c’n see all over this country, ye’ll know I’m right.”
“Well, we’ll do our best, anyway,” Charmian told him. “And we’re ready
to begin when you are.”
“Poor time o’ year to tackle a job like that. Better wait till May or
June next year.”
“We’ll go as far as we can at any rate,” Charmian decided. “Then if we
fail we will know better how to go about it to succeed next summer.”
“All right,” said Henry. “I’m ready now.”
“Then if you’ll wait here for us we’ll ride back and break camp at
once. We haven’t an extra horse for you, so--”
“I never fork a hoss, ma’am,” Henry interrupted. “I c’n go where a hoss
can’t with these here ole legs here. You ride; I’ll hoof it. Don’t
worry about Shirttail Henry gettin’ there time yer hosses do, ma’am.”