LIVING OFF THE WILDERNESS
On every side stretched a sea of peaks. They might have been in
mid-ocean, stranded on a desert island, had they not been on a
mountain-top instead.
For one glorious fortnight they had camped beside white cascading rivers,
and along the singing streams that fed them, following their windings
through flower perfumed forests and on up into the granite country where
glacier lakes lay cupped between the peaks to unfathomable cobalt depths.
They had seen deer by the dozen feeding in the brush of the lower
country,--graceful, big-eyed creatures who allowed them to approach to
within a stone's throw before they went bounding to cover. They had
thrown crumbs to the grouse and quail that came hesitatingly to inspect
their camp site, protected at this season by the game laws and so
unaccustomed to human kind that they were all but tame. They had crossed
and recrossed rivers not too deep to ford, and rivers not too swift to
swim. They had scaled cliffs where nothing on hooves save a burro--or a
Rocky Mountain goat--could have followed after.
But always the shaggy gray donkeys had kept at their heels like
dogs,--save when they got temperamental or went on strike,--waggling
their long ears in a steady rhythm, exactly as if these appendages had
been on ball bearings. The burros, five in number, had each his
individuality. There was Pepper, the old prospector's own comrade of many
a mountain trail, who, knowing his superior knowledge of the ways of
slide rock and precipices, insisted always on being in the lead. This
preference on his part he enforced with a pair of the swiftest heels the
boys had ever seen. There was old Lazybones, as Pedro had named the one
who, presenting the greatest girth, had to carry the largest pack. There
was Trilby, of the dainty hooves, who never made a misstep. He--for the
cognomen had been somewhat misplaced--was entrusted with the things they
valued most, their personal kit and the trout rods. The Bird was the one
who did the most singing,--though they all joined in on the chorus when
they thought it was time for the table scraps to be apportioned. And
finally there was Mephistopheles, whose disposition may have been soured
under some previous ownership,--since the blame must be placed somewhere.
Ace had added him to Long Lester's four when a lumberman had offered him
for fifteen dollars. The name came afterwards. But though he sometimes
held up operations on the trail, he was big enough to carry 150 pounds of
"grub," and that meant a lot of good eating.
Despite their hee-hawing, however, the diminutive pack animals did a deal
of talking with their ears. When startled, these prominent members were
laid forward to catch the sound. When displeased, the long ears were
flattened along the backs of their necks. If browse was good, they
remained in the home meadow,--after first circling it to make sure there
was no foe in ambush. If not, they wandered till they found good
feed,--and one night they wandered so many miles, hobbled as they were,
that it took all of the next forenoon to find them and bring them back to
camp.
They could walk a log with their packs to cross a stream, or, packs
removed and pullied across, they could swim it, if they were started up
current and left to guide themselves. They would not slip on smooth rock
ledges, they could hop up or down bowlders like so many bipeds. It was a
constant marvel to Ace and Pedro what they could do. No lead ropes were
necessary at all.
Long Lester was meticulous in their care. Every afternoon when the packs
were removed he sponged their backs with cold water. And though the party
was on its way by seven every morning,--having risen with the first light
of dawn,--and though by ten they would have covered half of their average
twelve miles a day, the old guide never watered them till the sun was
warm, which was generally not till after the middle of the forenoon. For
a wilderness trip comes to grief when any one member, man or beast, gives
out, as he knew from a lifetime of experience in that rugged and
unpeopled region.
They had figured on about three pounds of food per day per person, for
the four weeks' trip. That loaded each burro with a grub list of ninety
pounds, and about ten pounds of personal equipment, besides the axes and
aluminums and such incidentals as soap and matches. Ease of packing was
secured by slipping into each of the food kyacks a case such as those in
which a pair of five gallon coal oil cans come.
Their kit included neats' foot oil, (scrupulously packed), for the
wearing qualities of their footwear along those stony trails depended in
large degree on keeping the leather soft. No mosquito netting was
necessary in the mountains,--it was too dry and cool for the
insects,--but each member of the party had a pair of buckskin gloves, six
good pairs of all wool socks,--worn two at a time to pad the feet against
stone-bruise,--extra shoe laces, and a pair of sneakers to rest his feet
around camp. Norris carried a pocket telescope, and Long Lester a hone
made of the side of a cigar box with fine emery cloth pasted on one side,
coarse on the other. They saved on blankets by doubling each into three
crosswise,--except the old guide, who was too tall,--and on the higher,
colder elevations they found that to wear a fresh wool union suit, and
socks warm from the fire, to sleep in, was as good as an extra blanket,
if not better.
Everything was to be turn and turn about,--Ace had been the most
insistent member of the party in not leaving Long Lester to do the lion's
share,--they were obliged, each in turn, even Norris, to learn certain
fundamental rules of cookery. Long Lester got it down to this formula:
Put fresh vegetables into boiling salted water.
Put dried vegetables (peas and beans) into cold, unsalted water.
Soak dried fruit overnight.
To fry, have the pan just barely smoking.
To clean the frying pan, fill it with water and let it boil over, then
hang it up to dry. Jab greasy knives into the ground,--provided it is not
stony.
You can fry more trout in a pan if you cut off their heads.
As the boiling point drops one degree for every 800 foot rise, twenty
hours' steady cooking will not boil beans in the higher altitudes unless
you use soft water. They may be best cooked overnight in a hole lined
with coals, if put in when boiling, with the lid of the Dutch oven
covered with soil.
Three aluminum pails, nested, provided dish pan and kettles for hot and
cold water. Butter packed in pound tins kept fresh indefinitely in those
cool heights, and salt and sugar traveled well in waterproof tent silk
bags. Long Lester had figured on a minimum of a quarter of a pound each
of sugar and bacon per day per person, three pounds of pepper and
twenty-five of salt.
Of course the one thing each member carried right on his person was a
pepper tin of matches, made waterproof with a strip of adhesive tape. For
the snow fields, they also had tinted spectacles, as a precaution against
snow-blindness.
Axmanship came to be the chief measure of their campcraft. Ace had wanted
to bring one of the double-bitts he saw the lumbermen using, but the old
guide vetoed it as more dangerous to the amateur than a butcher knife in
the hands of a baby.
The light weight single-bitt was the axe he had brought for the boys,
reserving a heavier one for himself. These he had had ground thin, but so
that the blade would be thickest in the center and not stick fast in the
log. Both axe-heads wore riveted leather sheaths.
They took turn and turn about getting in the night wood. Fortunately the
boys, (Norris, too), had watched the lumbermen like lynxes, even Ted
thinking to get a few points from them. They noted, for one thing, that
the professional choppers struck rhythmically, landing each blow with
precision on top of the other, working slowly and apparently at
ease,--certainly untiringly,--and making no effort to sink the axe deeply.
They had also noticed that a lumberman will clear away all brush and
vines within axe reach before beginning, lest the instrument catch and
deliver him a cut.
They had learned, in logging up a down tree, not to notch it first on the
top, then discover too late that they could not turn the thing over to
get at the under side; but to stand on the log with feet as far apart as
convenient, and nick it on first one side, then the other, with great
nicks as wide as the log itself.
Pedro had to be shown how to chop kindling, as his first attempt resulted
in a black and blue streak across his cheek where a flying chip struck
him. Long Lester had to show him how to lay his branches across a log.
And the old man insisted on his so doing, every time, for, he said, he
knew a man who had lost an eye by failing to observe this precaution. He
also barely saved the boys' axe from being driven into the ground by the
well-meaning tenderfoot and nicked on some buried stone. But when he
found the Spanish boy starting to kerf a prostrate log that lay on stony
ground, he expressed himself so fluently that Pedro never again, as long
as he lived, forgot to place another log under the butt, or else clear
the stones from the ground around it.
The boys also learned to look for the hard yellow pine, when there was
any to be found, for their back-log, but for a quick fire to select fir
balsam, spruce or aspen. (Of course if they couldn't get these, they used
whatever they could lay hands on.)
Pedro made the mistake, about this time, of tying a burro to a tree with
two half hitches, which, when the burro tugged, were all but impossible
to undo. After that he used the regular hitching tie. As the burros were
always turned out at night, without even a hobble save for the leader, it
became necessary to be able to lasso them in the morning if they failed
to come at call. There was also the diamond hitch that had to be acquired
if each was to do his share with the pack-animals, all of which occupied
fascinated hours around the night-fire.
So much for the first two weeks. It was now time to circle around and
start back--some other way. Ace had done the packing the day they climbed
above timber line for an outlook. As Trilby had cut her foot, (or his
foot, to be accurate), the boy had added her pack to that of broad-backed
Mephistopheles, in whose kyacks he had--much against Long Lester's
teachings--entrusted the entire remainder of their food. Pepper carried
their personal equipment, and now that half their supplies were eaten,
the Bird and Lazybones carried firewood for them from the wooded slopes
below, that they might luxuriate beside a night fire. So far, so
good. But the peak of their night's bivouac was flanked by higher peaks
that cut off their anticipated view, and before the little party could
scale these, they must descend the gorge of another leaping, singing
stream that lay between.
As the pack train followed nimbly down the glacier-smoothed slope, and
along a ledge where the cliff rose sheer on one side, dropping as sheer
on the other, Mephistopheles gave a sudden shrill squeal, and before any
one knew what it was all about, went hurtling over the edge. The boys
stared speechless as the luckless animal hit the cascades below and went
tumbling through the rapids and over a waterfall, till the body was
whirled to the bank and caught in a crevice of the rock.
Here they were, ten days' hike from the nearest base of supplies, and the
entire remainder of their food,--they did not mourn the burro--three
thousand feet below, or more likely washed a mile down stream by this
time, what had not sunk to the bottom.
They might have been in mid-ocean, as Ted had remarked,--stranded on a
desert island,--but for their trout rods, and one rifle. The game laws
could be disregarded in their extremity. But they were days from the last
deer they had sighted, and their main dependence must be on the fishing.
Ahead, the trail wound down into a grove of rich tan trunks against the
green of juniper. Gray granite worn into fantastic shapes,--castles and
giant tables,--dwarfed and twisted trees rooted in rock crevices, white
waters roaring against the canyon wall like a storm-wind in the
tree-tops, fallen trunks, patches of flaming fire-weed. This was the
wilderness against which they must pit their wild-craft if they would eat.
By the time the sun slanted at five o'clock, Norris called a halt by the
side of a moist green meadow where the burros would find browse, and all
hands turning to and unpacking the kyacks, they hobbled the animals with
a neat loop about their fore-legs. Then they cut, each of them, a good
armful of browse for his bed. Long Lester strode off with his rifle in
search of anything he might find for the pot, while Norris and the boys
scrambled down to the river with their trout rods.
He broke trail along a narrow ledge, just such a one as the luckless
burro had gone hurtling over when his pack scraped the rising wall.
Almost a sheer drop, and the rapids roared in torrents of white foam.
Pedro clung to every root and every rock crack for fear of growing dizzy.
"My fault entirely," Ace reproached himself, as he thought of the lost
flour and bacon, rice, onions, cheese, smoked ham, dried fruit, coffee,
canned beets and spinach, tinned jams, and other compact and
rib-stretching items of their so lovingly planned duffle. "Never should
have packed it all on one burro."
The Senator's son had a dry fly outfit that was his treasure. Ted used
the crudest kind of hook and line for bait casting. The subject was one
of keen rivalry between them.
"Dad always prayed: 'May the East wind never blow,' when we went fishing
down in Maine," dogmatized Ace.
"Well, Pop was born in Illinois, and he used to say, 'When the wind is in
the South, it blows your bait into a fish's mouth.'"
"Huh! That may be poetry, but we don't have much of any wind out here
except the west wind. And if we wait for a cloudy day in this neck o' the
world, we'll wait till September."
"All the same," insisted Ted, "trout do bite best when it rains, because,
don't you see, the big fellows lie on the bottom, just gobbling up the
worms the rain washes down to them."
"They won't rise to a fly in the rain."
"Well, I dunno anything about dry flies, though I sh'd think they
couldn't _see_ the fly up on the surface, with the water all r'iled the
way it gets in a storm."
"No more can they when the sun glares."
"Well, then, you better choose the shady spots. I don't see sign n'r
symptom of even a wind cloud to-day."--And yet, even as he gazed
argumentatively at the horizon, a pink-white bank of cumulus began
drifting into view in the niche between two distant peaks.
"Gosh! It's sunset already," exclaimed Ted.
"At half-past five!"--Ace peered at his wrist watch, then held it to his
ear. "Besides, it's in the East----"
"Looks more like a fire starting off there," contributed Norris. "Whew!
See old Red Top, there?"
"Red Top!--Where Rosa is?"
"I think it must be."
"Radcliffe's plumb worried, with the woods so dry, I'll bet," Ted
surmised. "And short a coupla fire outlooks, at that, I heard there in
the Canyon."
At this point they reached the mouth of the creek that had wriggled down
from some spring, and Ace elected to follow it upstream with his Brown
Hackles, which he dropped on the water with the most delicate care lest
their advent appear an unnatural performance to the wary troutlets
watching from the shady pools.
The slender stream raced dazzlingly in the reddening sunshine, as Ace
tickled the placid surface of each pool, and the upstream side of each
fallen log, careful lest his shadow fall betrayingly across his miniature
hunting grounds. He kept a good ten feet from the bank. And before the
red glow had started climbing the Western slope, he had a full string of
little fellows,--the prettiest rainbow trout he had ever seen.
Ted, sighting another creek, climbed back along the canyon wall to follow
it down-stream with his bait can and his short, stiff willow rod, cut for
the occasion with his good old jack-knife. His bait was the remnant of
the ham sandwich he had saved that noon for the purpose,--though he had
little dreamed at the time how much would depend on their next fishing
jaunt.
Keen to out-do his chum by back-country methods, he pushed through the
brush that made the gully a streak of green against the granite, until he
came to a bend. Here, he knew, there would likely be a pool. He
approached warily from above, lengthening his line. He cast well above
the bend, so that his bait would sink to the bottom. He was rewarded at
once with a bite. With a quick flip, he drew the fish away, and began his
string.
For some time he followed down-stream before he saw another
likely-looking place. An upturned stump awoke his sporting blood. Safe
refuge for a trout in more ways than one, it offered a 50-50 chance of
losing his hook. But Ted lifted skyward at the instant of the bite, and
all was well.
An eddy of foam, the shade of an overhanging bowlder, then another
upturned stump, (on these wind-swept mountain sides there were many
such), and Ted's spirits rose by degrees.
Meantime Pedro passed the rapids, climbed to a point well above, and
selected a smooth green stretch of river for his operations. It had meant
stiff going, and would mean more before he made his way back up the
canyon wall, but something about their present crisis had challenged his
reserves.
Pedro always used a spoon when he wasn't fishing for pure sport. On this
sunny stretch, so clear in the red glow of approaching sunset that the
bottom was plainly visible, he could see the fat old patriarchs lazing
the late afternoon away. But he was soon rousing them to find out what
that little shining thing could be that darted so rapidly through their
habitat,--that tiny bit of metallic white so unlike anything their jaded
appetites had yet negotiated.
The bright silver blade, only a quarter inch in width, perhaps three
times as long, spun against the current, cavorting along jerk by jerk,
(with time between jerks for the scaly ones to think it over), soon began
to get results. As the trout were all on the bottom resting till twilight
should set in, Pedro craftily allowed the spinner to sink till it all but
raked the bottom before beginning that tantalizing play.
Norris, too, tried a spinner, though he chose rapid water. There was one
great beauty, green above and orange beneath, that baited his fancy. For
some time he dangled the lure before he felt the heavy fish. Then a long
rush, that sent his line whistling out like lightning, a moment's quiet,
followed by another rush, and he had landed a great beauty of a
five-pounder with the hook hard fast in his jaws.
After that Norris returned to camp, where Ace and Ted were already
jubilantly comparing notes. Long Lester came in with a bag of birds and
rabbits.
Of course their catch had to be broiled. Pedro arrived in time to join
them in "which will you have, or trout,"--for the game had been saved for
breakfast. The boys ate with relish, though without salt, and later
listened to Long Lester telling tales with his boots to the bon-fire,
bronze faced, nonchalant. At 8,000 feet, the air grew noticeably cooler
with the turning of the wind down-canyon, and the boys heaped down-wood
liberally in a pyramid. The dry evergreens snapped in a shower of sparks
as the full moon, silvering the snow-clad peaks, deepened the shadows
under the trees.
On the fragrance of crushed fir boughs they finally slept, all thought of
the morrow drowned in dreams.
Out of the painted sunsets and yellow sands of the Salton Sea, land of
centipedes and cactus, blistering sun, and parching thirst, and all
things cruel and ugly, had come Sanchez, a Mexican, with his son and an
old man who had been his servant, to lay ties for the narrow gauge
railway that was to zig-zag up the canyon walls for a lumber
company. King's Lumber Company had fired them for reasons that will
appear. Suffice it now that all their blistering bitterness and parching
hate had focused on these forests.
Rosa, alone on the Red Top fire outlook scaffold, had seen a pin-point of
light the night before that she took for a camp-fire, but whose, she
could not know.
Breakfast, such as it was, disposed of, the four deceptively meek looking
burros were lined up in the lupin perfumed meadow, in semblance of a
pack-train, (the hundred pounds of duffle divided between them that they
might make faster time, as well as a safe-guard against further
accidents). A committee of the whole now decided they must catch more
fish and dry them, then lead a forced march to Guadaloupe Rancho, and if
they found range cattle, they would bring down a calf and square it later
with the owner.
For two days Norris, Ace and Ted caught fish, while Pedro dried them, and
Long Lester scoured the woods for game birds, rabbits,--anything and
everything he might find. Then came two strenuous days during which they
bore in the general direction of Red Top.
Without warning, they came to a sheer ledge fringed with minarets, and
stared across a glacier-gouged canyon a mile wide. Progress in that
direction was effectually checked. They found themselves with a view of
such miles of snow-capped peaks that they stood speechless, with little
thrills running up and down their spines at the sheer beauty of the scene.
To the right, the way was clear across a rock-strewn elevation where the
only trees were squat, twisted, with branches reaching along the ground
as if for additional foothold against the never-ceasing trade winds.
Again they were brought to a halt by a peak of granite blocks.
"Do you know, fellows," said Norris, suddenly, "mountain-building is
still going on, under our very feet."
"Is there going to be an earthquake?" gasped Pedro.
"There are likely to be slight earthquake shocks any time in this region.
The last big 'quake, that caused any marked dislocation, was in 1872,
though, so we have nothing to worry about. But I'm going to be able to
show you some rock formations that will illustrate what I was telling you
the other day."
"You mean," brightened Ace, "showing how these 14,000-foot peaks attained
their present height?--How there were two up-lifts?"
"Yes, and we are standing, this very minute, on a basalt step that some
earthquake has faulted from the main basalt-capped mass. Just see how the
whole story is revealed right there in this gorge! You can see the
streaks of basalt, which we know lie in horizontal layers, and rest on
vertical strata of the Carboniferous and Triassic age."
"Whoa--there!" groaned Long Lester. "Would you mind telling us that
again, in words of one syllable? I calc'late it must be a mighty
interesting yarn, from the hints you've let out now and ag'in, but how'n
tarnation----"
"Yes," grinned Ted, "do tell it, Mr. Norris, so's Les and I can get it
too."
"'Bout all I've got any strangle hold on," complained the old man, "so
fur, is thet these yere valleys was gouged out by the glaciers, a good
long spell ago. Now there's one thing I'm a-goin' to ask you, Mister,
before we go any further. What did you mean by that there--coal age?"
"That," vouched Norris, "was when most of the coal was formed, away back
before man appeared on earth,--before there were any of the plants and
animals as we know them to-day.
"Picture a time when the water was covered with green scum, and the air
was steamy, when the swampy forests were composed of giant ferns and club
mosses and inhabited by giant newts and salamanders, dragon-flies and
snakes."
"How--how do you know all thet?" gasped Long Lester.
"Partly by the fossils. It's a big study,--geology, we call it,--and the
scientists who reason these things out use what has been discovered by
astronomy and chemistry and a lot of other sciences. It's a long story."
"But a _thriller_," Ace assured them, as Norris lighted his pipe on the
lee of a bowlder. "Can't we rest here a few minutes, Mr. Norris? Those
burros were about winded. Can't get 'em to budge yet. Come on, fellows,
snuggle up," as Norris seated himself compliantly, back against the
bowlder. They all crept close, for the wind was blowing hard.
"Where did this earth come from in the first place?" asked Ted.
"Well, of course you know that our sun is only one of millions of stars,
and very far from being the largest, at that. Some larger star, in
passing the sun, by the pull of its own greater gravity, separated some
large fragments from that fiery, gaseous mass, and started our planetary
system. We don't want to go too far into astronomy."
"But astronomy shows you how they know all this," Ace assured the old
man, who appeared divided between wide-eyed amazement and incredulity,
(as, indeed, were Ted and Pedro).
"Our earth, like the other planets, was one of the knots of denser matter
on the two-armed luminous spiral which began circling the sun. There were
smaller particles which were attracted to the earth by earth gravity and
which increased the size of the earth till it was far larger than it is
now. Ever since, the earth has been shrinking periodically, and when it
shrinks, its surface becomes wrinkled, and these wrinkles we call
mountain ranges."
"Of course," interpolated Ace, shining eyed, "the crust of the earth got
cooled, while the inside was still a mass of molten metal and gas, which
kept boiling over on to the crust,--couldn't you say, Mr. Norris?"
"You've got the idea."
"I s'pose that's _the hot place!_" chuckled the old man.
"Probably where they got the idea. In time the metals and heavier
substances sank, while the lighter ones rose as granite rocks, till there
was an outer shell miles thick.
"The Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes, in Alaska, is a volcanic region where
the ground is hot and breaks through with one even now,--I was there
several years ago,--but generally speaking, this earth has a crust 150
miles thick.
"As I was saying, the continents are built of the lighter granite,
chiefly, while the oceans lie on the heavier basalt."
"But I thought you said we were on a chunk of basalt now," said Ted.
"We are. You know the Pacific has flowed where now you see these peaks,
as the high lands have been worn down between successive upbuildings."
"But--where did the water in the ocean come from in the first place?"
marveled the old prospector.
"Out of the earth," smiled Norris. "Up through hot springs, geysers and
volcanoes. The water vapor was always here, you know,--mixed with the
molten rock and gases."
"I swan!" ejaculated the old guide. "I thought I knew something about
rocks, but--this beats anything in my kid's fairy books."
"You bet!" Ace agreed. "You just wait till you hear----"
"I expect we'd better start on now," Norris rose. "Do you chaps realize
what a predicament we are in?" and shading his eyes with a lowered hat
brim, he peered off across the hummocky granite slopes, which shone
mirror-like in places under the noon-day sun.
A moving speck in the sky to the North drew an exclamation from him. In
another moment a sound that increased to a hum like that of a giant
motor-boat descended from the skies, and the speck disclosed itself as a
mammoth aeroplane.
"Signal them!" cried Norris. "What can we signal them with? Get out your
pocket mirrors, quick!"