IN THE PALM OF THE MOUNTAINS
SHONTO and his artificially elated companion continued their journey
down the side of the steep cliffs without further mishap. The girl had
taken the lead, stepping with a firm, springy stride, all horror of the
abyss gone by reason of the potent drug. She was fearless but never
reckless. The doctor had known that this would be the result of the
hypodermic injection, so he did not worry about her safety and made no
objection to her going first.
Nevertheless he was worried--worried as never before. A great calamity
had come upon all that were concerned in the expedition, but only Dr.
Shonto knew that this was true. The lost medicine case was responsible
for it. It was so prodigiously serious that his homely face had turned
a shade paler, and his mind was struggling desperately with the problem
that it presented for him alone to solve.
Eventually the pair rounded the last switchback, and followed a gently
sloping trail, quite wide, to the level floor of the valley. They came
out upon the floor through a rocky pass, an eighth of a mile above the
point where the green river swung in so abruptly to the foot of the
cliffs. The land was wooded here. Sycamores, cottonwoods, water oaks,
live oaks, willows and alders bespoke a more temperate clime than
they had passed through since hours before they reached the cabin of
Shirttail Henry Richkirk. The valley was lower than Ranger Reed had
estimated, and the explorers had entered the Upper Sonoran Life Zone,
where existence would be less problematical during rigorous seasons in
the wilderness.
There was little underbrush. The grass, though frost-nipped, was still
green. Digger pines were sprawling, their immense cones beneath the
branches on the ground, many of them munched down to stems and scaly
fragments by foraging squirrels. Linnets were singing in the willows.
Wild canaries, mere dabs of pale yellow, flitted about importantly,
bright-eyed, businesslike.
Charmian’s brief sojourn in the land of Don’t-give-a-whoop was over.
The effects of the cocaine were waning. Her mouth was dry, and she was
nervous and depressed. The reaction had set in, but the melancholy
period would last little longer than the space of blissful unconcern
for which it was the price.
The doctor took her hand. “You won’t feel tough long,” he consoled her,
as, together, they invaded the solitary valley. “I would have given you
a little touch of morphine to counteract the effects of the cocaine,
but-- Well, you know why I couldn’t.”
He heaved a sigh, and she looked up into his face questioningly.
“Does the loss of your medicine case mean so very much to you?” she
asked.
“More than you know now,” he said soberly. “Not only to me, but to
you and Mary and Andy. But don’t question me just now, please. My
mind was never so busy before. I must decide what is best to do--and
decide right. And every expedient that presents itself strikes me as
impossible.”
“Why, how serious you are! You worry me, Doctor. Won’t you--”
“Not now,” he interrupted hastily. “I shall be obliged to explain soon
enough--after I have made my decision. To-morrow I’ll tell you--well,
tell you all that I dare tell.”
He came to a halt as he finished speaking. They were following a
well-defined trail that led them among natural obelisks of stone, tall
and freakish. There was no other route to the floor proper of the
valley. And at their very feet yawned a hole of large dimensions.
Shonto sank to his knees and looked in. “I thought as much,” he
muttered. “Look, Charmian! See those skeletons down in there?”
She knelt beside him, and when her eyes became accustomed to the gloom
of the hole she saw the skeletons and skulls of many animals.
The walls of the hole were of solid rock, though masonry was not in
evidence. The floor was level and many times wider than the mouth. This
made the whole assume the shape of a funnel upside-down or an Indian
wigwam.
“Why, they couldn’t get out!” cried Charmian. “It is impossible to
climb those walls.”
“And you’ll notice that the hole is directly in the middle of the
narrow pass from the cliffs above,” said he. “This, Charmian, is an
Indian man-trap. In years gone by it was made here by residents of the
valley to trap any enemies that might come down the trail to attack
them. The hole was covered with light boughs, perhaps, with earth
spread on top to hide them. I know this to be a trick of the Klamath
Indians and the Pitt River tribes. But we are hundreds of miles from
their stamping ground. We are in the rocks, you’ll notice. There is not
a grain of dirt near us. This accounts for the hole’s not filling up
with debris and disappearing through all these years. It’s been gouged
with infinite pains in comparatively solid stone. It’s conclusive now
that at one time the Valley of Arcana was inhabited and was the scene
of tribal warfare. That was doubtless years before the fire swept down
the forest and the chaparral locked the valley against intrusion.”
“Oh, isn’t it all interesting?” she cried, dark eyes aglow.
But the enthusiasm died out of them as she took note of the continued
gravity of her companion’s mien.
“Oh, you worry me so!” she complained again. “Please don’t look so
solemn. Tell me, and let me help.”
“You can’t,” he told her, forcing one of those rare smiles that almost
beautified his face. “I alone can work out an answer to the problem.
And I will know the answer by to-morrow morning. Meantime I’ll try my
best to forget it.”
A little farther on they found another man-trap, similar to the first.
Then they left the cemeterial region of obelisks and passed out upon
the broad floor of the cañon.
Here yellow California poppies were blooming late among the grasses,
their orange-gold beauty staying the destructive hand of old Jack Frost
as a soft answer turneth away wrath. The air was warm, delectable. The
willows and cottonwoods were losing their leaves, but as yet their
branches were far from nude. Over a carpet of grass the explorers
wandered toward the river and the untarnished land about it--toward
grotesque cliffs that in the distance upreared themselves from the
level land, toward enchanted forests that intrigued them from afar.
Charmian’s depression had gone. She was bright-eyed, vivacious, eager
as a child. Shonto subdued his gloomy thoughts and made himself enter
into the spirit of the quest; for he knew that, for him, there might
not be another day in the valley that they had come so far to see.
They reached the river. It was wide and deep, and the jade-green hue
of its waters that had lured them from above no longer was revealed.
Height and distance had given the river colour, for now it was like any
other clear, cold mountain stream. Its course was boulder-strewn, its
bottom often pebbly. Large trout flashed in the sunlit riffles, where
the water was like shaved ice, or lay like amber pencils in shaded
pools.
They came upon ancient bridge abutments, fashioned of large stones,
the crumbling red adobe mortar still to be seen in the crevices. Once
a bridge had spanned the river at this point, probably merely a long
pine log, axed to flatness on the upper side, and suspended between
the pillars, Shonto said. They followed the river’s course, almost
despairing of finding a crossing. The doctor shot a jackrabbit sleeping
under a bush, long ears laid back along his spine. They continued up
the river for an hour, through a forest of oaks and alders and an
occasional spruce; then they came to a narrow place through which a
torrent roared. Here grew handily a clump of straight, tall alders, and
with his hunting axe Shonto set about felling one so that it would fall
across the cataract and bridge the gap for them.
Alders are not tough-fibred, and soon the tree was swaying. It leaned
nearly in the right direction, and Charmian pushed at it as he
completed the last few strokes. It groaned and started down. Shonto
sprang up and aided the girl at pushing, then jerked her back to safety
as the tree crashed down. It fell directly athwart the stream, with
each end resting on solid stone.
Shonto crossed with both packs, walking sidewise, cautiously springing
the trunk to test its strength. Then he returned to Charmian, face to
the front, stepping easily and confidently.
“A romance is never complete,” he smiled, “until the he character has
carried the she character from one side of a stream of water to the
other in his arms. Or maybe you’d prefer to go hippety-hop to the
barber shop on my manly back.”
She studied a moment. Then, with a trace of colour sweeping her face,
she faltered:
“Which--whichever way you think better, Doctor.”
He stooped and placed his long left arm behind her knees. His right arm
he passed behind her back. He straightened, lifting her to his breast.
“Don’t move,” he cautioned, “and don’t listen to the rush of the water.
Relax. We’re off!”
She closed both eyes as he stepped upon the trunk. Then she opened
them again and looked up into his face. His strong jaw was set, she
noted, but not a tremor did his body convey to hers. The roaring of the
cataract was in her ears. Again she felt faint and dizzy. But without
hesitation he placed one foot firmly and elastically before the other
on the swaying bridge, until he stepped from it to the solid rocks on
the other side.
“Nothing to it, was there?” he laughed, without a sign of nervousness,
as he gently stood her on her feet.
“You have wonderful control over yourself, haven’t you?” she said. “You
never even trembled.”
“Didn’t I?” He was looking straight into her eyes. “I thought I was
shaking like a leaf--especially when I reached this side and just
before I set you down.”
“Why, how funny! You certainly weren’t frightened.”
“No, tempted,” said Shonto, while Charmian’s face flushed crimson.
They wandered through an open forest of immense live and black oaks,
with gnarled trunks and bulbous boles, and roots moss-upholstered
where they were exposed. Gray moss hung from the upper limbs, draped
and festooned with the delicacy of nature’s artistry. Wild grape vines
clambered in all directions, drooped in loops down the trunks of lofty
trees, or extended in masses from the ground to the topmost branches
like the standing rigging of a sailing ship. The clusters of grapes
were ripe and ready to fall with their seed to the earth from whence
they sprang.
They came upon large flat-topped stones, in which holes the size of a
man’s head had been gouged. In these the Indian squaws had powdered the
acorns to make flour for their native bread, using heavy stone pestles
as pulverizers.
A half-mile from the river they suddenly entered a clearing, studded
with tall, monumental stones of granite, and with wide-branched oaks
scattered about here and there. In the middle were the ruins of a
house--the remnants of what had been a large house built of stones and
sod and poles.
“That,” said Shonto, “speaks plainly of some Northern tribe. The
Northern Indians were further advanced than the tribes of Southern and
Central California. The stone abutments back there made me believe that
a tribe of comparatively high intelligence once occupied this valley.
This ruin confirms it. Few of the California tribes built large public
houses, as this undoubtedly was, for their ceremonial dances and big
dinners and other social activities. I have never told you--for I
hadn’t the slightest idea that we’d find evidences of Indian life in
the valley--but I’ve made quite a hobby of studying the aborigines of
the Pacific Slope. So has Andy. We took it up together while nosing
around in the mountains and on the desert, and we became intensely
interested. I wish I could--” He came to a stop and gave her a look
that was as near an admission of discomfiture as she had ever seen him
reveal. “It’s getting late. No doubt there’s a spring close by, for
this evidently is the site of the old village. Let’s camp for the night
and cook our rabbit.”
Close by the ruins of the community house they located the spring. It
was in a ferny dell with mossy banks. Charmian stooped for water and
saw a white object a little distance off, half hidden by the drooping
fronds. Instinctively she knew what it was. She rose and walked around
to it. It was the tibia bone of a human being, and, scattered here
and there throughout the ferns, she discovered the remainder of the
skeleton, including the skull.
It gave her somewhat of a shock, but in the days to follow she was
to grow accustomed to finding the bones and skulls of men in every
conceivable place. This scatteration, the doctor held, bespoke the
extinction of the tribe from the ravages of some epidemic--possibly
smallpox--rather than a war of annihilation. Particularly so because no
weapons were discovered near skeletons they found on open land.
The broiled jackrabbit was appetizing, for their stomachs were turned
against salt meat and jerky. Though the air was frosty, the evening in
the protected valley was pleasant, the smoke of the incense cedar of
their campfire sweet. Dr. Inman Shonto had been taciturn during the
preparations for supper and the coming night. His face was grave, his
eyes thoughtful. Finally Charmian asked:
“Your case would sink, of course, wouldn’t it?”
“I saw it sink out of sight,” he replied. “There were some surgical
instruments in it that made it heavy. And the river must be deep where
it fell, with that sheer wall above it. Besides, all of my medical
supplies that were not in corked bottles would be ruined, provided we
could drag it up. It’s a goner.”
They made no further mention of the subject until the meal was over and
Shonto, having heaped more wood on the coals, leaned back against the
hole of a tree with pipe aglow.
He puffed thoughtfully for several minutes, while the girl gazed into
the leaping flames, silent, sensing that her companion was nerving
himself to lay his troubles before her. Finally he knocked the dottle
from his pipe, pocketed it, and looked at her with a brotherly smile.
“I have decided sooner than I thought I should,” he began. “So you may
as well know the worst to-night. I don’t think I’ll have reached a
better solution by morning.”
He smiled again, patiently, as does a strong man in the face of
threatening disaster.
“Charmian,” he said, “to-morrow I must start back to Mary and Andy
and leave you here alone. I’ll get Andy and send him on to you, while
I make an effort to take Mary back to Shirttail Henry’s--or at least
as far as Mosquito. Then I go on to civilization, while you and Andy
wait for me to return to the Valley of Arcana. I’ll probably come back
to you in an aeroplane. Only by following that plan can Andy Jerome be
saved.”