THE CAVE OF HYPOCRITICAL FROGS
THEY lived in an enchanted land, bright and tranquil under an
Indian-summer sun while mid-day hours endured, crisp with frost of
mornings, calmly cold throughout the nights.
Charmian had not transferred her dwelling-place to the redwood
hut after all her labours at removing the ghastly reminders of a
vanished clan. Andy, when he saw it, opined that it would be far from
water-tight despite his efforts with a wooden shovel that he had made
with hunter’s axe and jackknife. What they wanted to do, he said, was
to find a cave in the cliffs somewhere up the river. Who ever heard
of castaways living in anything but a cave! And there must be caves
in those craggy cliffs. Where was the romance of the Valley of Arcana
if it could boast no caves? Anyway, he was not content to remain in
the grove that harboured the ruined village. There were over a hundred
square miles in the enchanted valley, and few of them had been explored.
They set off early the following morning, Charmian loaded with the
packs, Andy carrying her store of nuts, acorns and half-dried fruit
and mushrooms in a blanket. They struck out for the river, deciding to
explore its mysteries first. If it was in reality the lost river of the
upper benches, Andy wanted to see how it found its erratic way into the
valley.
They crossed smiling meadows, lush with bronze-green grass. Once, from
a little rise, they caught a glimpse of the distant blue lake. They
came upon herds of deer which were too curious to continue their flight
after the first startled dash, but turned and surveyed them in blank
amaze. A skunk was hunting bugs in the grass, rooting in the turf, his
plume asway above his striped back. The banks of the river were endowed
with graceful willows, alders, yews, incense cedars, cottonwoods, oaks,
California buckeyes, red madrones, spicy bays, and occasional pines and
spruces, with grape vines crawling and climbing everywhere. The river
bottoms were rank with huckleberry bushes, and Andy said:
“Find a bee tree and we’ll get some honey and preserve those berries
and grapes in Indian jars--if we find any more. Stretch a piece of hide
over the mouth and seal it with spruce gum. Stay here all our lives, by
golly! No? Yes?”
It was like a park, this Valley of Arcana. Meadows merged into woodland
stretches or necks of timber, to continue on the other side as grassy
and level as before. The river plunged over outcroppings of bedrock,
often in foaming cataracts from ten to fifty feet in height. In a neck
of woods, in a drift that had collected about the roots of trees, they
found a large canoe. Flat bottomed it was, blunt at either end, and
burned and gouged from solid sycamore. Near it on the river bank they
found an ancient _temescal_, or Indian sweat house.
These were the men’s clubs of the Rogue River Indians or the Klamaths,
Andy said. The canoe, also, pointed either to these tribes or Pitt
River tribes, all belonging to the north. The _temescals_ were never
entered by the women, he explained. The males lolled in them after
bathing in the icy water, which usually followed a terrific sweat over
heated stones, or beside a blazing fire. The canoe, he thought, might
prove serviceable if they could discover some means of calking the
checks and cracks that time had wrought in its sides and bottom.
They camped at noon by the river, and Andy cast a line for trout. They
rose to the bait readily, some big ones so eager as to leap entirely
from the water at the cast. They roasted them wrapped in leaves, and
buried in the heated ground, Indian fashion. The trees were alive
with grey squirrels, impish little Douglas squirrels, and impertinent
chipmunks. Birds sang ceaselessly. Their tramp of the afternoon showed
them herd after herd of deer, and once a herd of antelope. Quail,
grouse, jackrabbits and the little “blue peter” rabbit in the plateau
chaparral, ducks, mudhens and dabchicks on the river, a condor, rarest
of California vultures, riding overhead in the beryl heavens. Closely
flying flocks of wild pigeons threw hovering shadows across the valley,
into which they swooped to feed on the bitter black berries of the
cascara bush. As they neared a pyramidal mountain in the centre of the
valley they saw bighorn sheep browsing off the brush.
Abreast the mountain they came upon rugged country, where the river
plunged down incessantly in a hundred falls and cataracts. And here,
as they crossed the ridge, Andy found his cave and made lengthy apology
to the Valley of Arcana for doubting its claims to romance.
It was in the ridge of rocks that extended at right angles to the
river on both sides. If they made a habitation of the cave there would
be constantly in their ears the roar of the waterfall that found its
way through the ridge and plunged down about thirty feet to the lower
level. Centuries of the rushing water had worn down the ridge, and the
stream leaped through a narrows, with the piled-up boulders towering
above it on either side. On the side where the cave was located grew a
clump of sucker redwoods, which had sprung up from a mother stump about
six feet in diameter. Examination of the perdurable stump showed that
the original tree had been felled with axes. Many years had elapsed
since its fall, for the redwood is of tremendously slow growth, and the
tall, slim suckers that surrounded the stump were a foot in diameter.
Andy decided that he could cut down two of them and cause them to fall
side by side directly across the chasm. This would give them a bridge
from one rocky eminence to the other, and it would hang twenty feet or
more above the waterfall.
Though all evidences of a beaten trail to the cave had disappeared,
it was an easy matter to trace the upward progress of the one that
had existed in the days of the lost tribe. Boulders of large size
evidently had been rolled away from the most logical route. They wound
their way in and out among the towering rocks to the mouth of the
cave, probably seventy feet above the narrows. From below they had
seen its gaping mouth, but were fearful that it would prove a shallow
disappointment--a mere niche in the rocky hillside. But it turned out
to be a substantial, denlike tunnel, forty feet or more in length.
Men had not fashioned it, but within they had moved huge boulders to
one side or the other to make more room in the middle. Irregular stones
had covered the floor, too, and smaller ones had been thrown into the
crevices, with dirt piled on top, to level it off. The width and height
were probably fifteen feet.
They found more skeletons, more pottery, more implements of war and
the chase, and crude tools of stone and bone. The boulders inside were
decorated, designs and hieroglyphics having been hacked below the
surface. Some sort of red paint of a decidedly perdurable quality had
been worked into the gouged lines. Once again Charmian saw an unhappy
lady ridding herself of the frog that she had swallowed. But in this
instance she did not suffer alone. If misery loves company, she must
have been in an amiable mood, despite her throes. For no less than a
dozen of her unfortunate sisters were engaged in a like performance on
boulders and stony walls.
“I’ve got it, Charmian,” Andy cried with the enthusiasm of an amateur
ethnographer. “I know now what it means. The northern tribes had woman
doctors, and they treated their patients by sucking the flesh. They
were supposed to suck out the evil spirit that was tormenting them, and
this evil spirit often took the form of a snake or a lizard or a frog.
In order to make good, a doctress is said to have sometimes swallowed
a live frog before beginning treatment; and when she threw it up the
patient and his relatives were convinced that the faker had done her
best. This was probably the cave of the doctresses. Say--doesn’t it
stand to reason?”
“How pleasant!” laughed Charmian. “I see now how the nursery term
‘quack frog’ had its birth. Let’s remove the wizards’ remains and take
possession of the cave. Can we ever make it cheerful after what you’ve
told me? I christen it the Cave of Hypocritical Frogs. That’s rather
long and confusing, but so the Indians might have called it had there
been unbelievers. We could live in this cave indefinitely, Andy. It
will be dry and warm, don’t you think? I hope no bear has decided to
hibernate here throughout the winter.”
Somehow or other both of them were always unconsciously planning for
a long stay in the Valley of Arcana. Andy had proposed hunting up a
bee tree, the honey from which might be used in preserving grapes
and huckleberries. He had planned a bridge over the waterfall, when
a mile below they had passed a riffle which offered an easy fording.
Now Charmian was looking at the cave in the light of a more or less
permanent habitation. She thought of this directly after she had spoken
and bit her lip in vexation. Wasn’t Dr. Shonto to hurry right back to
them? Two weeks, at the most, and he should be worming his way into the
valley, searching the distances for the smoke of their signal fire. She
threw off her sudden depression. It was best to be prepared. The fact
that they were planning for months to come meant nothing. That was only
the part of wisdom. And they had nothing else to do. What if they did
leave behind them two weeks hence the results of their trifling labours
in the valley? It was only play. Weren’t they like children playing at
the game of keeping house?
Andy removed the skeletons, cleaned house, carried their belongings up
to the cave, and arranged things for their temporary comfort. Then he
went to catch some trout in the swirling pool below the waterfall for
the evening meal.
Charmian slept in the cave that night, Andy in the open. They were
about and had breakfast early in the morning, and they spent the
greater part of the day in carrying flat stones into the cave to be
used in building a partition. The inner room was to be the girl’s,
while Andy would occupy the space within the mouth of the cave and
guard her. They doubted whether there was anything to guard her from,
but it seemed the proper thing to do.
When the stone partition was up Andy hacked at two of the redwood
suckers with his hunter’s axe until they fell almost side by side
across the water. The top of the last to fall, however, was pitched off
when it struck the top of the first down. This left a rather wide gap
between the trunks, so they busied themselves at cutting and carrying
poles, which they laid close together and parallel with the stream,
from trunk to trunk.
“That’ll make a better bridge than ever,” Andy approved. “You won’t be
afraid to cross now. What next? Let’s see--there’s no particular hurry
about sweating the bitterness out of the acorns, or furnishing our
home, or anything like that. We can do all such things after the winter
sets in.” (There it was again!) “What d’ye say we go back and drag that
canoe out of the drift pile and see what we can do toward filling the
cracks?”
They spent a day at this task. Spruce gum, they found, filled the gaps
admirably and stuck there, hardening when the clumsy craft was in the
water. Andy got in it and guided it about with a makeshift paddle. But
the current was swift and threatened to carry him down to one of the
many cataracts, so he quickly beached the canoe and dragged it up on
the pebbles until he had time to make a paddle that would serve.
They busied themselves during following days at turning the acorns from
cold water into hot water, and reversing the process time and again to
“sweat” out the bitterness. There were large stone mortars in the cave,
and in these, with the pestles they found, they powdered nuts for their
daily use and made rather tasteless bread and pasty _bellota_ of the
powder. Their grapes and huckleberries and mushrooms were thoroughly
cured by now, and they stowed them away. They gathered acorns, loose
piñon nuts, and buckeyes by the thousand, catching them like squirrels.
The cones of the piñon pines they heaped in piles and built fires over
them, which loosened the nuts and roasted them at one operation. Andy
taught Charmian to make and set figure-four traps for rabbits. Of
willow boughs they made traps for quail, and gathered the larger grass
seeds for bait. They were constantly employed, and ten days slipped by
before they were aware. Now and then clouds glided across the blue dome
above, but the weather remained dry and tranquil, though noticeably
colder. Daily Andy trapped game for food, for it was an easy matter
to lure the quail and rabbits and grouse. They jerked rabbits over
cedar-wood fires and hung them in the cave. Charmian had set her foot
down on shooting deer, though Andy had a heavy-calibre rifle. They
were so tame and inquisitive and confident, with their big glistening
eyes fixed upon the usurpers in friendly wonder, that to kill one of
them seemed to her wantonly cruel. She turned her back when Andy took
live quail and grouse from the traps and dispatched them. The rabbits,
caught in deadfalls, died instantly under falling stones or logs.
And so the short days passed until the sky was overcast with mackerel
clouds and the wind rustled the dead leaves of the deciduous trees
and sent them scurrying through the air. Andy’s hair was growing
long. They had missed a day or two, they thought, but they knew that
Dr. Shonto should be nearing the valley on his return. All day long
they kept their signal fire smouldering near the mouth of the Cave of
Hypocritical Frogs, and from it a thin stream of smoke rose constantly.
Then one morning Andy confessed to Charmian that his stock of tablets
was growing alarmingly low, and that for the past four days he had been
splitting them and taking only half doses.
That night the air over the valley was filled with a peculiar moan.
All seemed quiet about them on the valley’s floor, but up above the
moan continued, a weird, dismal battle anthem of the mountain winds.
Next morning soft snowflakes were falling into the sink, while up
above a great storm raged, and snow-dust blew from the tops of distant
peaks in awe-inspiring banners half a mile in length. The war banners
of the mountain winds, mobilizing for the grand charge and chanting
triumphantly!