THE INTERIM OF DOUBTS
CHARMIAN did not begin sobbing until, standing at the edge of the grove
that surrounded the ruins of the ancient village, she saw a tiny speck
moving slowly up the narrow trail which zigzagged along the sides of
the cliffs from the Valley of Arcana. The moving speck was Dr. Shonto,
and he was leaving her alone in a vast wilderness, filled with doubts
and dread and loneliness and grave forebodings. She sank to the ground,
laid her arms on a fallen tree, and drenched them with her tears.
He had held her hand a long time in parting, smiling at her in his
patient, benign way. His smile had been encouraging, though he had
not told her to be brave. It was a compliment to her courage, she
thought, that he had taken it for granted that she would be intrepid
and had considered mere words of emboldenment as idle. He realized, she
reasoned, that a girl who would set out to accomplish such an enormous
task as hunting for an unexplored valley in an unmapped wilderness
would have the bravery to meet with cheerfulness any unforeseen
emergency that might arise.
When her cry was over she returned to camp and began to work as the
surest way of overcoming her loneliness. Not many provisions were
left, as Shonto had been obliged to take something along with him to
sustain life between the valley and the waiting pair in the cañon.
Charmian searched for and found a huckleberry patch, black with fruit
which so far had resisted frost. She spent the remainder of the morning
gathering berries, but realized as she worked that, since she had
no way of preserving them, they represented food only for temporary
use. She was not fond of fruit, either, but she forced herself to eat
quantities of the juicy huckleberries at noon in order to save the
staples in her pack.
That afternoon, wandering through the grove, she came upon a hut which
was fairly well preserved. The construction was typically Indian.
Ordinarily such huts are made by first sinking in the ground a hole
about five feet in depth. Around this pit stout poles are planted deep.
These are bent in at the tops until they nearly touch, and are bound
about with bark or strips of hide. The hole at the top allows the smoke
to go through, and it also serves as an entrance. A short ladder or
notched pole on the inside leads to the hole, and leaning against the
structure on the outside is a corresponding pole or ladder. The entire
framework of poles is covered with earth to a depth of several inches.
In this instance, however, the pit was a natural one, formed in solid
rock. It probably had been a pothole in an ancient creek-bed. With
this substantial beginning, the builder of the hut had constructed the
above-ground portion along sturdier lines. Instead of poles he had used
the trunks of small redwood trees ten inches in diameter, and no other
soft wood resists the ravages of time so well. Unable to sink the
butts in the solid stone, he had dragged great slabs of rock and piled
them about the base of his dwelling as anchors and had covered the
whole with earth in far greater quantities than are commonly employed.
The result was that he had left a monument to his diligence and sound
constructive principles, and it gave promise of a sheltered home for
Charmian.
She noted most of the details when she had found an ancient notched
pole and used it as a ladder to climb to the entrance in the roof.
Shonto had explained the construction of these huts to her, so she
knew how to go about getting into the seemingly doorless hovel. There
was not much earth left on the sloping sides, but the straight, peeled
redwood logs were close together, and the cracks between were narrow
ones.
The light filtering in between these cracks revealed the interior as
she clung to the top of the crude ladder and looked down through the
hole.
As she had shudderingly expected, the first things that she saw were
human skeletons, yellow rather than bleached, on the stone floor below
her. The notched pole of the interior had broken off at the middle,
and the two parts, old and decayed, lay prone. She dreaded to enter,
but she thought that she must find a better refuge than the broad,
unprotected outdoors. There probably were mountain lions in the valley,
and maybe grizzlies were not altogether extinct in this remote region.
She sat astride the upper ends of the logs and contrived to drag her
notched pole up the side and lower it through the hole. To live in
there she must remove the skeletons, and she dreaded to touch them as
she had never before dreaded anything in her life.
She clambered down to the rock bench surrounding the hole. She crawled
over the edge and lowered herself backward into the five-foot pit.
There were three skeletons, the bones of which were unscattered. Dry,
brown skin clung to them, wrinkled and harder than a drum-head. Mats of
black hair had slipped from the skulls and made cushions under them.
With a feeling of deep repugnance she set about her inevitable task and
began lifting the dry bones to the bench above. Many of them she later
was able to pitch through the hole in the roof, to hear them clattering
down the redwood logs to the ground outside. Larger portions that
persisted in hanging together she laboriously carried to the top and
dropped.
When this disagreeable task had been finished she gave more attention
to the interior.
Dirt had sifted in, of course, and the stone floor was partially
covered with it. Rain also would enter at every crack and settle in
a pool in the rocky pit. She wondered if, when the hut was in shape,
the earth thrown over it had kept it dry. If it were to snow before
it rained, she thought, the snow covering might be effective in that
respect. She knew that Eskimos lived in huts of snow, but she did not
know what held them up.
She found red pottery, crude and interesting--water _ollas_ and great
bowls and smaller dishes. She found a skin garment, well tanned and
well preserved. It had been inlaid with brilliant duck scalps, the
greater part of which had succumbed to the erosive hand of time. She
found nose rings and goose-quill ornaments and arrowheads of flint and
obsidian and a bowl-shaped basketwork cap which once had been adorned
with the bright feathers of woodpeckers and jays, for the remnants of
them lay all about it. There were elk-horn knives and hatchets and awls
of the sharpened bones of mule deer. And on a slab of bone, taken from
the skeleton of some large animal and cut square, she found a crude
carving unmistakably depicting the rather revolting episode of a woman
vomiting up a frog.
She forgot her troubles, digging in the dirt for more relics with the
primitive tools of the dead. She found a fish spear with a yew-wood
shaft and a head of volcanic glass--a veritable treasure. She did
not notice the darkening of the hut as the ephemeral winter sun sank
swiftly nearer to the saw-tooth cliffs that towered about the Valley
of Arcana. Then of a sudden almost no light at all streamed in through
the cracks, and the hut was dark and cold. She shuddered, scrambled
to the bench, climbed the notched pole as hurriedly as possible, and,
not stopping to drag it out after her, slid down the sloping side and
landed in a heap on the ground.
Twilight had come. Night would follow soon, with the tall cliffs to
shut off the last remnants of the sunlight from the valley. She hurried
to her camp, spread her blankets, and pondered over what she would eat
for supper.
There was not much choice. She had a little bacon, a little flour,
a little coffee, a quantity of salt, and a can of baking powder. Her
huckleberries were heaped upon the ground, and she looked at them
askance. She had dined on huckleberries at noon--had forced herself to
do so. She decided to fry some bacon for the resulting grease, to be
used in making biscuits. The bacon she would not eat then, but would
have it cold for supper to-morrow evening. One meal a day of staples
was all that she could afford, she told herself, until Andy came with
more supplies. If he came!
She strove to keep Andy from her thoughts. To think of him was to
worry--and she must not worry. Time for that when he came to her--when
they could worry together and he could comfort her. She was going
to fight her way bravely through the ordeal until he came--and then
she would relax and let him take the initiative and relieve her of
the strain. But how long could he hold out? And what dread thing was
threatening him? But there! She must not think of that. Dr. Shonto
had consoled her with the repeated remark that perhaps nothing would
happen at all, provided he--Shonto--was able to get back soon enough.
Provided! But she shook her head resolutely and went to work at getting
supper while the shadows of night enshrouded the valley and coyotes
began their evening concert in the hills.
The days and nights that passed until the coming of the expected one
were fraught with torture. Charmian was not afraid in the general
meaning of the word, but the mysterious sink, so serene and quiet and
remote, awed her and filled her with strange forebodings that she
could not shuffle off. She spent the days at gathering acorns, scolded
at frequently by Douglas squirrels who claimed the entire crop between
the valley walls. The piñon nuts, too, they considered theirs, and told
her so with angry chatterings, made more emphatic by the gestures of
their jerking tails. A slight midnight rain brought to life near the
river a bed of mushrooms of a variety which she had often gathered on
the Marin hills across the bay from San Francisco. These she garnered
eagerly, and they grew in quantities. She feasted on fresh ones for
several meals, dipping them in thin batter and frying them in bacon
grease, or stewing them. Many she dried. And then she bethought herself
to dry wild grapes and huckleberries, whereupon a new and engrossing
task took form. All day long she managed to keep busy. This helped to
keep away the blues, and at night she found herself so weary that sleep
came easily.
She had lighted her signal fire, heaping on green boughs to make dense
smoke. There was little wind in the valley, and the smoke streamed
aloft in a graceful spiral above the treetops. Every morning she
rebuilt the fire and heaped on boughs when it was burning brightly.
And now came a day when she stood often at the edge of the grove
and scanned the zigzag trail into the sink with her binoculars. Or,
gathering nuts and acorns and mushrooms in the open, stopped her work
and trained her glasses about every fifteen minutes.
And at noon one day she was rewarded by the sight of a tiny speck
descending along the trail. She shouted in her eagerness and
loneliness, unmindful that her lover was miles away. She glanced once
to make sure that the smoke was still streaming aloft from her signal
fire, then began running toward the river. If she could bring herself
to cross the log bridge she could run into the open on the other side
and travel a long way in the direction of the northern cliffs before
Andy had reached the bottom of the sink. She hesitated only a little
when she reached the fallen tree, then climbed astride it and worked
her way over the boiling water, gripping with hands and calves.
They sighted each other in one of the level meadows of the river
bottom. Andy shouted to her; she shrilled a glad reply. Then both
started running, came together panting for breath, and hung in each
other’s arms.
Then once more Charmian Reemy sobbed, this time with her tousled head
on the broad shoulder of the man who loved her. She had promised
herself this weeping spell as a reward for holding back her tears
throughout the days and nights just past; and now she rewarded herself
abundantly and without reserve. But hers were tears of gladness and
relief. Nothing was to happen to Andy! The doctor had needlessly
distressed her. Here he was in her arms, big and strong and virile and
handsome as a god--what ever could happen to such a man! There was
food in the valley--nuts and game and fish. And if the huckleberries
would only last she would be content to live on them alone, while Andy
was with her in the valley. The doctor might never return if he chose
to leave them there together. What mattered it, when she had Andy?
The Valley of Arcana had lost its grimness. It was a valley of happy
smiles, blessed by nature, sun kissed, gloriously resplendent from wall
to wall. It was warm noontide and the sun was overhead--and she was
crying happily on Andy’s shoulder.
“And had Mary Temple and the doctor started out when you left?” she
asked finally, wiping her tears on a sleeve of her flannel shirt.
“Yes, dear--we all started at the same time. Doctor Shonto told me
about Mary’s faking a sprained ankle. She’ll have a time of it with
that broken rib, I’m thinking. But I guess there was no other way. What
did the doctor tell you about me, Charmian?”
“He wouldn’t explain anything,” she answered. “Wouldn’t warn me at all
beyond telling me that I couldn’t be of any help to you if--if anything
happened.”
“Don’t worry,” he told her lightly. “Nothing at all is going to happen.
I have almost twice as much dope as Doctor Shonto thought I had; but
still the quantity is small compared with the store he carried. Anyway,
he wouldn’t trust me to try and make the trip out on it, for some one
would have had to return here for you, and days would have been wasted.
But he cheered me up--and told me to pass it on to you--by saying that
there probably was no danger at all, and that everything depended on
his getting back to us in a couple of weeks or more. That ought to be
easy for him.”
“But if it snows heavily, Andy?”
“Not a sign of a cloud now. A little rain a couple of nights ago, but
just a shower. Doesn’t mean anything at all as regards the setting
in of winter. In the altitudes it may snow, even, in June, July, and
August--any time. He’ll make it all right, and we’ll all get out before
snow flies.
“It all seems ridiculous to me, Charmian. Here I am as strong as an ox,
healthy and whole, and enjoying life immensely. But I have been told
ever since I can remember that if I don’t take those infernal tablets
regularly I’ll die. Yet Doctor Shonto never has warned me against
putting great strains on my heart. Always has struck me as a funny sort
of heart trouble that I’m afflicted with. But I don’t know anything
about diseases of the heart. This can’t be a common one, though, can
it?”
“It’s not your heart at all, Andy,” she said. “The doctor told me so.
It’s something else--a secret between him and your parents. And I don’t
know what to expect if the doctor fails to get in before your tablets
give out.”
This continually worried her. The doctor had said that Andy’s life
depended on regular doses of the medicine, but he had not exactly
warned her of death. There was something dreadful back of his solemn
words which convinced her that Andy’s state would be worse than
death--a living death of some sort, her reason kept on torturing her.
“Well, no use to worry, sweetheart,” he said lightly. “Chances are
all of your fears are useless. Have you had plenty to eat? I brought
every pound I could lug. There was plenty left for the doctor and Mary
to get back to the cache on. They can load up fresh there. That is,
Doctor Shonto can--Mary can’t pack a pound. What have you been doing?
Discovered anything? Doctor Shonto told me about his advising you to
gather all the nuts and acorns you could before I came. Got any?”
“Yes--piles. I gathered them in order to forget myself.”
“Good idea. Let’s get to your camp now. I’m a wizard in the woods, and
the doctor told me that the valley is well supplied with things to eat.
I’ll show you how to roast the pine nuts and make _bellota_--Indian
acorn bread--and make traps and things. This will be a regular picnic
for us, Charmian. Prettiest spot I ever saw. I’m keen to get to nosing
around. We’ll have the time of our young lives.”
“Yes, everything will be interesting--now,” said Charmian, with a happy
sigh of relief. “If--if only--”
“There! There!” laughed Andy. “No ‘if onlys’ about it. Forget it and
let’s begin our castaway life with nothing but anticipation.”