SHIRTTAIL BEND
SHIRTTAIL HENRY walked ahead up the mountain trail, Ichabod Crane come
to life. His loose-jointed figure shuttled about as if the huge trunk
were threatening to topple from the legs that shook it with their
gigantic strides. His loose clothes fluttered in the wind, adding to
the shimmylike effect. But Henry covered ground.
The four who had undertaken the exotic adventure followed on their
horses, urging the complaining burros ahead of them. When practicable
Charmian rode with Andy, Shonto with that attitudinized wet blanket
known as Mary Temple.
Hours ago the party had left the level reaches of the desert. They now
were ascending sharply into a rarer atmosphere, and the yuccas, cacti,
sage and greasewood had surrendered to junipers, piñon pines, and an
occasional taller conifer. The trail twisted about the heads of deep
cañons in S curves, U curves, and abrupter V’s. Now and then a break in
the ever-thickening forest revealed the yellow desert below them like
a gigantic slice of buttered bread. Birds and squirrels inhabited the
trees. Once a big buck bounded across the trail ahead of them, tiny
front hoofs touching his breast as he shot himself forward and upward
like an airplane leaving the earth. The trees and the wild life made a
pleasing relief from the barren wastes below.
For the remainder of the day they climbed, camping at noon on the
trail. As the day drew toward its close they found themselves
surrounded by a vast forest, primeval as Evangeline’s, with no view
of the desert offered. As dusk descended upon the mountains the trail
began to grow painfully steeper, and then it swung about the brow of a
rise in a long curve. Henry paused and looked back at his followers.
“This here long curve here is Shirttail Bend,” he announced. “My
cabin’s just around th’ corner.”
The land rose sharply at the middle of the hairpin curve, and horses
and burros panted as they struggled upward. They then reached a level
shelf in the mountainside, a small plateau of perhaps five acres.
In the centre of it, with the trail leading directly by, stood the
tumble-down cabin of the erratic weather man.
The cabin was built half of logs, half of boards from the lumber mill.
A huge stone chimney promised the warmth of an open fireplace within.
Climbing vines fingered the walls of the structure. A spring above
it was the source of a tiny stream that trickled across the dooryard
and fed a mat of watercress. Henry had gooseberry bushes and currant
bushes, and there was a pear and apple orchard of a dozen trees. The
water from the spring eventually found its way into a man-made ditch,
from which it seeped onto a small patch of frost-nipped alfalfa.
Henry’s dooryard was cluttered with every imaginable thing that had
seen its day, from a grindstone whose three remaining legs sagged
rheumatically beneath it to a hay rake with one wheel and a depleted
set of teeth. There were pieces of rusty iron of all descriptions,
old sets of hames, wagon wheels, joints of gaspipe of all sizes and
lengths, lopped-over wagon seats, one of which had been hung as a
swing, innumerable chains, sleds, broken pack-saddles, chicken coops
upside-down, spewing mattresses, axles, an ancient dresser minus its
mirror and resting placidly on its back, the iron-and-wood pedestal of
an office swivel chair--and from every tree hung chains, frayed ropes,
wagon-seat springs, iron hounds, countless horseshoes, more hames and
other fragments of harness, and steel traps of every size. All these
treasures, Henry confided to his guests, he had brought in, piece at a
time, on the back of Lot’s Wife or his own sturdy shoulders, imagining
that “sometime they might come in handy.” Often he had been obliged to
dismember the larger pieces of junk--the hay rake, for example--and
pack them in by sections. “Un Rincon Confusión,” Charmian promptly
christened the place, which in Spanish is equivalent to “A Corner of
Chaos.” Mary called it a whompus--which, she interpreted, was either
a dish that she made of left-over boiled potatoes, bread crumbs, and
sage, or a dog’s breakfast.
But the home was picturesque and quaint, and the smells of the virgin
forest all about were sweet and bracing. The light mountain air hinted
at frost. Innumerable birds twittered their good-night melodies in the
treetops. Frogs croaked in satisfaction in the ditch that watered the
alfalfa. A few hens troubled with insomnia loitered about the yard,
crooning to themselves as they pecked hopefully at pebbles that looked
like grain. The brook sang softly its unchangeable song of the days
when the mountains heaved as the earth grew cold, the travail that gave
it birth.
“Just make yerselves to home, folks,” invited the mountaineer. “Ye c’n
turn yer stock on th’ ’falfy if ye ain’t afraid o’ founderin’ ’em.
Lot’s Wife she don’t care for ’falfy. She likes to browse offen th’
sage an’ bresh. I’ll look at my rain gauge, an’ then I’ll chop some
wood and we’ll get a fire goin’.”
He fluttered to the alfalfa patch and gave studious attention to
something on the ground. Then he returned to the tired party, and
sighing, “Not a drop!” he began helping to off-saddle the steaming
animals.
The quartette left Henry to his own domestic serenity in the little
cabin, themselves camping at a decent distance from the house on a spot
where Henry had neglected to distribute his heterogeneous treasure
trove. They built a cheery campfire, over which Mary Temple cooked
supper. Then when Shirttail Henry had rejoined them they settled down
for a discussion of the morrow’s undertaking.
“She’s a rarin’ trip,” Henry said discouragingly. “First ye gotta
finish climbin’ this here mountain here, and then ye’ll come on a level
valley where they’s a lake. They’s salt grass and bluejoint around
the lake, but the frost’s ketched it by now, an’ it’ll be dryin’. Yer
stock’ll eat it, though, and fatten on it. An’ that’s th’ place to
pasture ’em till ye get back ag’in.
“So now we’ve disposed o’ th’ critters. An’ then we hike across th’
valley an’ cut up a cañon on th’ other side. In th’ cañon they’s a
crick that empties into th’ lake. Well, then we folly that crick for
ten miles, maybe--an’ it’s a job. All boulders bigger ner my cabin,
an’ down trees an’ th’ like. Well, then we’re pretty high up, an’ now
we cut across through th’ timber towards Dewlap Mountain. That’s where
we’re headin’ for.
“Now and then we’ll be seein’ th’ mountain, but not often. We gotta go
by compass--at least you folks would. I go by guess and by gosh. Well,
then, that’s a matter o’ twenty mile to th’ foot o’ th’ peak, and up
it’s a heap more.
“Now not a few folks have made this side o’ Dewlap Mountain, but mighty
few ever got on th’ other side. I done it, and so has Reed. That’s th’
forest ranger that first saw th’ undiscovered valley. Gettin’ ’round
on th’ other side o’ the mountain is where th’ rub comes in--that is,
th’ rubbin’est rub. The top o’ th’ peak’s above th’ line of perpetual
snow, an’ up there, besides, it’s all rocks an’ steep places till ye
can’t rest. It’s skeery gettin’ ’round to th’ other side; an’ many a
time ye wisht ye hadn’t come, when ye look down on what’s below ye--or
what ain’t below ye. But I made her an’ Reed he made her, an’ ye gotta
do it to see the undiscovered valley. But gettin’ to the toes o’ Dewlap
Mountain ain’t no fun neither.”
Shirttail Henry came to a thoughtful pause. The firelight played on
his kindly, rugged features as he sat tailor-fashion and gazed with
his dreamy blue eyes into the blaze. His was almost a poetic face,
Charmian thought, as she studied what was revealed of it above the
flaring torch of whiskers.
“Seems to me,” the mountaineer went on softly, “that, when all’s said
an’ done, this time o’ year’d be about th’ best to tackle th’ trip.
Ye see, th’ snow’s been meltin’ all summer, more or less, an’ so fur
this season they ain’t any fell yet. So right now th’ snow’s at her
shallowest depth up on that there mountain there. An’ ye might get in
an’ out before snow begins to fly, if luck was with ye.
“And I thought of another thing: They was a big fire up in thataway
this summer, an’ maybe it took out a part o’ th’ big bresh stretches
that lies between th’ head o’ the cañon an’ th’ toes o’ Dewlap. If it
done that th’ trip’ll be lots easier. But we’ll know more time we tried
her.”
“Is it necessary to go over Dewlap Mountain to reach the Valley of
Arcana?” asked Charmian.
“Well, no, ’tain’t,” replied the weather man. “Contrary to that, ma’am,
she’d be a fool way to go about it. Ye go up there to see th’ valley;
but to get to her ye’d oughta go round th’ mountain. That’s th’ way
Reed went. He tried both sides. But he never made th’ riffle. It can’t
be done.”
“Why?”
“Chaparral that ye can’t get through an’ walls o’ rock that can’t be
climbed.”
“And how about Lost River?”
“That’s another proposition, ma’am. Lost River’s forty mile to th’
north o’ Dewlap Mountain, an’ about th’ same distance from yer Valley
of Arcana. Over toward th’ Alondra Country, where they’s an Indian
reservation that’s got gold on it. Leach an’ Morley they got run out
for pannin’ gold on that reservation, an’ gov’ment agents was after ’em
for a spell. That’s how come it they know about Lost River, ma’am. But
if Lost River runs through yer valley, that ain’t no help to ye.”
“I thought that perhaps we might build a canoe and drift down the river
underground to the Valley of Arcana,” Charmian stated simply.
“Holy sufferin’ cats!” bellowed Shirttail Henry.
Even Andy and Dr. Shonto laughed at the girl’s naïve assurance.
“You’ve been reading fantastic fiction, Charmian,” said Andy. “That’s a
pipe dream.”
“Perhaps,” half conceded the young widow, unperturbed. She turned
her brown eyes on Henry again. “But why climb to the peak of Dewlap
Mountain merely to gain a view of the valley?” she asked. “Why not
circle the mountain when we reach it and try for the valley itself?”
“Too late in th’ season,” Henry maintained. “Th’ snow she’d ketch us,
ma’am.”
“I’m not afraid of snow. I’ve roughed it in Alaska. Any snow you’d have
here would be a joke, compared with what I’ve experienced.”
“Pretty cold joke sometimes,” Henry remarked. “But I been thinkin’
ag’in, ma’am: Reed he always tried to make th’ riffle in summer, an’
then th’ snow over thataway’s deepest. An’ in winter blizzards are
blowin’, an’ ye can’t do nothin’. Same as in th’ case o’ gettin’ to th’
top o’ Dewlap, right now would be th’ easiest time to tackle th’ valley
trip, after th’ snow’s melted all summer long. I guess Reed thought o’
that, but was afraid to tackle her with winter comin’ on. If a body got
ketched in that country after th’ blizzards started-- Say, none o’ that
in mine! He’d never come out, that’s all.”
“Nonsense!” scoffed the girl. “The chances are that Reed didn’t have
enough money to properly equip himself for a trip of that nature.”
“No, Reed he ain’t got anything but his pay from th’ gov’ment--same as
me. An’ th’ boys that tackled th’ trip with him two three times, they
never had nothin’. If a body could get enough supplies in th’ country
to stand a siege, come blizzard time, he might get through to th’
valley between storms. He’d want skis or snowshoes, though--and a heap
o’ grub an’ things. Once he made th’ valley everything’d be jake. It’s
like summer down in there, I’m thinkin’.”
“I can ski,” Charmian announced. “So can Mary Temple. How about the
rest of you?”
Dr. Shonto and Andy shook their heads. Henry professed familiarity with
snowshoes, but never in his life had he been on skis.
“I reckon, after all,” Henry decided, “that skis wouldn’t do. Ye might
enter th’ Valley of Arcana too pronto fer yer health. Snowshoes would
be safest. You two men could learn to use them in no time, after ye’d
practised a bit.”
“I’m for striking out direct for the valley to-morrow morning,”
Charmian said suddenly. “What’s the use hemming and hawing about it?
Nothing was ever accomplished by indecision. It’s a chance, and we take
it--that’s all. If the storms were to hold off for any considerable
time, Henry, how long ought it to take us for the trip in and out?”
“I can’t tell ye, ma’am--never havin’ finished her. But I’d say a
month.”
“_A month!_ So long as that?”
“Outside time, ma’am,” Henry explained.
“And is there any possibility of winter holding back that long?”
“Yes’m, they is. Ye never can tell what she’s gonta do. I’m a United
States weather man, an’ I’m speakin’ from experience. One year winter
she’ll set in as early as this. Next, they maybe won’t be any snow to
speak of before Christmas. We’ve had three early winters hand-runnin’
now an’ I’d say it’s time for a late one.”
“Will you go along, Henry, and show us the way?” the girl asked eagerly.
“I been thinkin’,” Henry replied. “How’m I gonta tend to my weather
reports?”
“Take your gauge along with you, can’t you?”
“I dunno ’bout that,” said Henry. “But if ye was to pay me well
enough--”
“How much will your services be worth?”
Henry pursed his lips. “I get seven and a half a month for bein’
weather man,” he mused, “and, come next month, I’ll have a line o’
traps strung between Rustler Crick an’ Palance Ridge. If I’m lucky, I
oughta clean up a hundred dollars at th’ traps th’ month we’d be gone.
An’ then--”
“I’ll give you two hundred and fifty dollars to take us to where we can
continue on ourselves to the Valley of Arcana,” Charmian interrupted.
“Well-l-l--” Shirttail Henry Richkirk puckered his lips doubtfully.
“Or until we give up in despair,” Charmian supplemented.
Henry rose briskly from the fireside. “Be up an’ fed by six o’clock,”
he said. “I’ll be ready.”
He started to flutter toward his cabin when the sharp voice of Mary
Temple stayed his steps.
“Where are your snowshoes? Where is any grub sufficient to take these
idiots on a trip like that?” she demanded.
“Well, now, ma’am,” replied the weather man, “I think we c’n git more
snowshoes at Mosquito Ranch, which is halfway up this here mountain
here from my place to th’ lake. I got two good pair myself. An’ we c’n
git a beef critter killed for us at the ranch an’ freeze th’ meat an’
take a lot of it along with us. Besides, I got a lot o’ jerky, which
comes in mighty handy when everything else has give out.”
“Have you any soap?” asked Mary crisply.
“Why, yes’m--I got a whole case of her that’s never been opened.”
“Take it along,” said Mary.
“Why, Mary Temple!” cried Charmian. “What need have we for a hundred
cakes of soap? Think of the weight it will add to the pack, which
weight ought to be composed of something to eat.”
“Henry himself will need half a case,” said Mary. “Don’t for a minute
imagine, Charmian Reemy, that I mean to live like an Indian on this
fool trip. Supplies are supplies, and no supplies are complete without
an ample amount of soap. Henry, did you think about the snowshoes
and the beef when you proposed setting off at six o’clock to-morrow
morning?”
“Well, now, no’m,” Henry confessed, shifting his great weight from one
huge foot to the other. “Maybe I just didn’t,” he added weakly.
“And you didn’t want to go until Charmian promised to pay you even if
the expedition failed, did you?”
“I didn’t say that, ma’am,” poor Henry tried to defend himself.
“No, you didn’t. But your legs did when you jumped up so suddenly.
Henry, do you know that, probably because of your great service to the
government as weather man, the United States Navy has a war ship named
after you?”
Henry’s blue eyes bugged. “No’m, I didn’t,” he gasped. “D’ye honestly
mean to tell me they got a ship they call th’ Richkirk?”
“No,” said Mary Temple. “It’s called the Marblehead. Good night.”