CHAPTER III
LIVING OFF THE WILDERNESS
On every side stretched a sea of peaks. They might have been inmid-ocean, stranded on a desert island, had they not been on amountain-top instead.
For one glorious fortnight they had camped beside white cascading rivers,and along the singing streams that fed them, following their windingsthrough flower perfumed forests and on up into the granite country whereglacier lakes lay cupped between the peaks to unfathomable cobalt depths.They had seen deer by the dozen feeding in the brush of the lowercountry,--graceful, big-eyed creatures who allowed them to approach towithin a stone's throw before they went bounding to cover. They hadthrown crumbs to the grouse and quail that came hesitatingly to inspecttheir camp site, protected at this season by the game laws and sounaccustomed to human kind that they were all but tame. They had crossedand recrossed rivers not too deep to ford, and rivers not too swift toswim. They had scaled cliffs where nothing on hooves save a burro--or aRocky Mountain goat--could have followed after.
But always the shaggy gray donkeys had kept at their heels likedogs,--save when they got temperamental or went on strike,--wagglingtheir long ears in a steady rhythm, exactly as if these appendages hadbeen on ball bearings. The burros, five in number, had each hisindividuality. There was Pepper, the old prospector's own comrade of manya mountain trail, who, knowing his superior knowledge of the ways ofslide rock and precipices, insisted always on being in the lead. Thispreference on his part he enforced with a pair of the swiftest heels theboys had ever seen. There was old Lazybones, as Pedro had named the onewho, presenting the greatest girth, had to carry the largest pack. Therewas Trilby, of the dainty hooves, who never made a misstep. He--for thecognomen had been somewhat misplaced--was entrusted with the things theyvalued most, their personal kit and the trout rods. The Bird was the onewho did the most singing,--though they all joined in on the chorus whenthey thought it was time for the table scraps to be apportioned. Andfinally there was Mephistopheles, whose disposition may have been souredunder some previous ownership,--since the blame must be placed somewhere.Ace had added him to Long Lester's four when a lumberman had offered himfor fifteen dollars. The name came afterwards. But though he sometimesheld 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 dealof talking with their ears. When startled, these prominent members werelaid forward to catch the sound. When displeased, the long ears wereflattened along the backs of their necks. If browse was good, theyremained in the home meadow,--after first circling it to make sure therewas no foe in ambush. If not, they wandered till they found goodfeed,--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 tocamp.
They could walk a log with their packs to cross a stream, or, packsremoved and pullied across, they could swim it, if they were started upcurrent and left to guide themselves. They would not slip on smooth rockledges, they could hop up or down bowlders like so many bipeds. It was aconstant marvel to Ace and Pedro what they could do. No lead ropes werenecessary at all.
Long Lester was meticulous in their care. Every afternoon when the packswere removed he sponged their backs with cold water. And though the partywas on its way by seven every morning,--having risen with the first lightof dawn,--and though by ten they would have covered half of their averagetwelve miles a day, the old guide never watered them till the sun waswarm, which was generally not till after the middle of the forenoon. Fora wilderness trip comes to grief when any one member, man or beast, givesout, as he knew from a lifetime of experience in that rugged andunpeopled region.
They had figured on about three pounds of food per day per person, forthe four weeks' trip. That loaded each burro with a grub list of ninetypounds, and about ten pounds of personal equipment, besides the axes andaluminums and such incidentals as soap and matches. Ease of packing wassecured by slipping into each of the food kyacks a case such as those inwhich a pair of five gallon coal oil cans come.
Their kit included neats' foot oil, (scrupulously packed), for thewearing qualities of their footwear along those stony trails depended inlarge degree on keeping the leather soft. No mosquito netting wasnecessary in the mountains,--it was too dry and cool for theinsects,--but each member of the party had a pair of buckskin gloves, sixgood pairs of all wool socks,--worn two at a time to pad the feet againststone-bruise,--extra shoe laces, and a pair of sneakers to rest his feetaround camp. Norris carried a pocket telescope, and Long Lester a honemade 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 threecrosswise,--except the old guide, who was too tall,--and on the higher,colder elevations they found that to wear a fresh wool union suit, andsocks 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 mostinsistent member of the party in not leaving Long Lester to do the lion'sshare,--they were obliged, each in turn, even Norris, to learn certainfundamental 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, thenhang it up to dry. Jab greasy knives into the ground,--provided it is notstony.
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, twentyhours' steady cooking will not boil beans in the higher altitudes unlessyou use soft water. They may be best cooked overnight in a hole linedwith coals, if put in when boiling, with the lid of the Dutch ovencovered with soil.
Three aluminum pails, nested, provided dish pan and kettles for hot andcold water. Butter packed in pound tins kept fresh indefinitely in thosecool heights, and salt and sugar traveled well in waterproof tent silkbags. Long Lester had figured on a minimum of a quarter of a pound eachof sugar and bacon per day per person, three pounds of pepper andtwenty-five of salt.
Of course the one thing each member carried right on his person was apepper tin of matches, made waterproof with a strip of adhesive tape. Forthe snow fields, they also had tinted spectacles, as a precaution againstsnow-blindness.
Axmanship came to be the chief measure of their campcraft. Ace had wantedto bring one of the double-bitts he saw the lumbermen using, but the oldguide vetoed it as more dangerous to the amateur than a butcher knife inthe 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 sothat the blade would be thickest in the center and not stick fast in thelog. Both axe-heads wore riveted leather sheaths.
They took turn and turn about getting in the night wood. Fortunately theboys, (Norris, too), had watched the lumbermen like lynxes, even Tedthinking to get a few points from them. They noted, for one thing, thatthe professional choppers struck rhythmically, landing each blow withprecision on top of the other, working slowly and apparently atease,--certainly untiringly,--and making no effort to sink the axe deeply.
They had also noticed that a lumberman will clear away all brush andvines within axe reach before beginning, lest the instrument catch anddeliver him a cut.
They had learned, in logging up a down tree, not to notch it first on thetop, then discover too late that they could not turn the thing over toget at the under side; but to stand on the log with feet as far apart asconvenient, and nick it on first one side, then the other, with greatnicks as wide as the log itself.
Pedro had to be shown how to chop kindling, as his first attempt resultedin a black and blue streak across his cheek where a flying chip struckhim. Long Lester had to show him h
ow to lay his branches across a log.And the old man insisted on his so doing, every time, for, he said, heknew a man who had lost an eye by failing to observe this precaution. Healso barely saved the boys' axe from being driven into the ground by thewell-meaning tenderfoot and nicked on some buried stone. But when hefound the Spanish boy starting to kerf a prostrate log that lay on stonyground, he expressed himself so fluently that Pedro never again, as longas he lived, forgot to place another log under the butt, or else clearthe stones from the ground around it.
The boys also learned to look for the hard yellow pine, when there wasany to be found, for their back-log, but for a quick fire to select firbalsam, spruce or aspen. (Of course if they couldn't get these, they usedwhatever they could lay hands on.)
Pedro made the mistake, about this time, of tying a burro to a tree withtwo half hitches, which, when the burro tugged, were all but impossibleto undo. After that he used the regular hitching tie. As the burros werealways turned out at night, without even a hobble save for the leader, itbecame necessary to be able to lasso them in the morning if they failedto come at call. There was also the diamond hitch that had to be acquiredif each was to do his share with the pack-animals, all of which occupiedfascinated hours around the night-fire.
So much for the first two weeks. It was now time to circle around andstart back--some other way. Ace had done the packing the day they climbedabove timber line for an outlook. As Trilby had cut her foot, (or hisfoot, to be accurate), the boy had added her pack to that of broad-backedMephistopheles, in whose kyacks he had--much against Long Lester'steachings--entrusted the entire remainder of their food. Pepper carriedtheir personal equipment, and now that half their supplies were eaten,the Bird and Lazybones carried firewood for them from the wooded slopesbelow, that they might luxuriate beside a night fire. So far, sogood. But the peak of their night's bivouac was flanked by higher peaksthat cut off their anticipated view, and before the little party couldscale these, they must descend the gorge of another leaping, singingstream that lay between.
As the pack train followed nimbly down the glacier-smoothed slope, andalong a ledge where the cliff rose sheer on one side, dropping as sheeron the other, Mephistopheles gave a sudden shrill squeal, and before anyone knew what it was all about, went hurtling over the edge. The boysstared speechless as the luckless animal hit the cascades below and wenttumbling through the rapids and over a waterfall, till the body waswhirled to the bank and caught in a crevice of the rock.
Here they were, ten days' hike from the nearest base of supplies, and theentire remainder of their food,--they did not mourn the burro--threethousand feet below, or more likely washed a mile down stream by thistime, what had not sunk to the bottom.
They might have been in mid-ocean, as Ted had remarked,--stranded on adesert island,--but for their trout rods, and one rifle. The game lawscould be disregarded in their extremity. But they were days from the lastdeer 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 thegreen of juniper. Gray granite worn into fantastic shapes,--castles andgiant tables,--dwarfed and twisted trees rooted in rock crevices, whitewaters roaring against the canyon wall like a storm-wind in thetree-tops, fallen trunks, patches of flaming fire-weed. This was thewilderness 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 theside of a moist green meadow where the burros would find browse, and allhands turning to and unpacking the kyacks, they hobbled the animals witha neat loop about their fore-legs. Then they cut, each of them, a goodarmful of browse for his bed. Long Lester strode off with his rifle insearch of anything he might find for the pot, while Norris and the boysscrambled down to the river with their trout rods.
He broke trail along a narrow ledge, just such a one as the lucklessburro 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 lostflour and bacon, rice, onions, cheese, smoked ham, dried fruit, coffee,canned beets and spinach, tinned jams, and other compact andrib-stretching items of their so lovingly planned duffle. "Never shouldhave packed it all on one burro."
The Senator's son had a dry fly outfit that was his treasure. Ted usedthe crudest kind of hook and line for bait casting. The subject was oneof keen rivalry between them.
"Dad always prayed: 'May the East wind never blow,' when we went fishingdown in Maine," dogmatized Ace.
"Well, Pop was born in Illinois, and he used to say, 'When the wind is inthe 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 hereexcept the west wind. And if we wait for a cloudy day in this neck o' theworld, 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 theworms 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 theycouldn't _see_ the fly up on the surface, with the water all r'iled theway 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'rsymptom of even a wind cloud to-day."--And yet, even as he gazedargumentatively at the horizon, a pink-white bank of cumulus begandrifting 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 hisear. "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," Tedsurmised. "And short a coupla fire outlooks, at that, I heard there inthe Canyon."
At this point they reached the mouth of the creek that had wriggled downfrom some spring, and Ace elected to follow it upstream with his BrownHackles, which he dropped on the water with the most delicate care lesttheir advent appear an unnatural performance to the wary troutletswatching from the shady pools.
The slender stream raced dazzlingly in the reddening sunshine, as Acetickled the placid surface of each pool, and the upstream side of eachfallen log, careful lest his shadow fall betrayingly across his miniaturehunting grounds. He kept a good ten feet from the bank. And before thered glow had started climbing the Western slope, he had a full string oflittle fellows,--the prettiest rainbow trout he had ever seen.
Ted, sighting another creek, climbed back along the canyon wall to followit down-stream with his bait can and his short, stiff willow rod, cut forthe occasion with his good old jack-knife. His bait was the remnant ofthe ham sandwich he had saved that noon for the purpose,--though he hadlittle dreamed at the time how much would depend on their next fishingjaunt.
Keen to out-do his chum by back-country methods, he pushed through thebrush that made the gully a streak of green against the granite, until hecame to a bend. Here, he knew, there would likely be a pool. Heapproached warily from above, lengthening his line. He cast well abovethe bend, so that his bait would sink to the bottom. He was rewarded atonce with a bite. With a quick flip, he drew the fish away, and began hisstring.
For some time he followed down-stream before he saw anotherlikely-looking place. An upturned stump awoke his sporting blood. Saferefuge for a trout in more ways than one, it offered a 50-50 chance oflosing his hook. But Ted lifted skyward at the instant of the bite, andall was well.
An eddy of foam, the shade of an overhanging bowlder, then anotherupturned stump, (on these wind-swept mountain sides there were manysuch), and Ted's spirits rose by degrees.
&n
bsp; Meantime Pedro passed the rapids, climbed to a point well above, andselected a smooth green stretch of river for his operations. It had meantstiff going, and would mean more before he made his way back up thecanyon wall, but something about their present crisis had challenged hisreserves.
Pedro always used a spoon when he wasn't fishing for pure sport. On thissunny stretch, so clear in the red glow of approaching sunset that thebottom was plainly visible, he could see the fat old patriarchs lazingthe late afternoon away. But he was soon rousing them to find out whatthat little shining thing could be that darted so rapidly through theirhabitat,--that tiny bit of metallic white so unlike anything their jadedappetites had yet negotiated.
The bright silver blade, only a quarter inch in width, perhaps threetimes as long, spun against the current, cavorting along jerk by jerk,(with time between jerks for the scaly ones to think it over), soon beganto get results. As the trout were all on the bottom resting till twilightshould set in, Pedro craftily allowed the spinner to sink till it all butraked the bottom before beginning that tantalizing play.
Norris, too, tried a spinner, though he chose rapid water. There was onegreat beauty, green above and orange beneath, that baited his fancy. Forsome time he dangled the lure before he felt the heavy fish. Then a longrush, that sent his line whistling out like lightning, a moment's quiet,followed by another rush, and he had landed a great beauty of afive-pounder with the hook hard fast in his jaws.
After that Norris returned to camp, where Ace and Ted were alreadyjubilantly comparing notes. Long Lester came in with a bag of birds andrabbits.
Of course their catch had to be broiled. Pedro arrived in time to jointhem in "which will you have, or trout,"--for the game had been saved forbreakfast. The boys ate with relish, though without salt, and laterlistened to Long Lester telling tales with his boots to the bon-fire,bronze faced, nonchalant. At 8,000 feet, the air grew noticeably coolerwith the turning of the wind down-canyon, and the boys heaped down-woodliberally in a pyramid. The dry evergreens snapped in a shower of sparksas the full moon, silvering the snow-clad peaks, deepened the shadowsunder the trees.
On the fragrance of crushed fir boughs they finally slept, all thought ofthe morrow drowned in dreams.
Out of the painted sunsets and yellow sands of the Salton Sea, land ofcentipedes and cactus, blistering sun, and parching thirst, and allthings cruel and ugly, had come Sanchez, a Mexican, with his son and anold man who had been his servant, to lay ties for the narrow gaugerailway that was to zig-zag up the canyon walls for a lumbercompany. King's Lumber Company had fired them for reasons that willappear. Suffice it now that all their blistering bitterness and parchinghate had focused on these forests.
Rosa, alone on the Red Top fire outlook scaffold, had seen a pin-point oflight the night before that she took for a camp-fire, but whose, shecould not know.
Breakfast, such as it was, disposed of, the four deceptively meek lookingburros were lined up in the lupin perfumed meadow, in semblance of apack-train, (the hundred pounds of duffle divided between them that theymight make faster time, as well as a safe-guard against furtheraccidents). A committee of the whole now decided they must catch morefish and dry them, then lead a forced march to Guadaloupe Rancho, and ifthey found range cattle, they would bring down a calf and square it laterwith the owner.
For two days Norris, Ace and Ted caught fish, while Pedro dried them, andLong Lester scoured the woods for game birds, rabbits,--anything andeverything he might find. Then came two strenuous days during which theybore in the general direction of Red Top.
Without warning, they came to a sheer ledge fringed with minarets, andstared across a glacier-gouged canyon a mile wide. Progress in thatdirection was effectually checked. They found themselves with a view ofsuch miles of snow-capped peaks that they stood speechless, with littlethrills 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 theonly trees were squat, twisted, with branches reaching along the groundas 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 isstill 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 toshow you some rock formations that will illustrate what I was telling youthe other day."
"You mean," brightened Ace, "showing how these 14,000-foot peaks attainedtheir present height?--How there were two up-lifts?"
"Yes, and we are standing, this very minute, on a basalt step that someearthquake has faulted from the main basalt-capped mass. Just see how thewhole story is revealed right there in this gorge! You can see thestreaks of basalt, which we know lie in horizontal layers, and rest onvertical strata of the Carboniferous and Triassic age."
"Whoa--there!" groaned Long Lester. "Would you mind telling us thatagain, in words of one syllable? I calc'late it must be a mightyinteresting yarn, from the hints you've let out now and ag'in, but how'ntarnation----"
"Yes," grinned Ted, "do tell it, Mr. Norris, so's Les and I can get ittoo."
"'Bout all I've got any strangle hold on," complained the old man, "sofur, is thet these yere valleys was gouged out by the glaciers, a goodlong 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 backbefore man appeared on earth,--before there were any of the plants andanimals as we know them to-day.
"Picture a time when the water was covered with green scum, and the airwas steamy, when the swampy forests were composed of giant ferns and clubmosses and inhabited by giant newts and salamanders, dragon-flies andsnakes."
"How--how do you know all thet?" gasped Long Lester.
"Partly by the fossils. It's a big study,--geology, we call it,--and thescientists who reason these things out use what has been discovered byastronomy 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 thelee of a bowlder. "Can't we rest here a few minutes, Mr. Norris? Thoseburros were about winded. Can't get 'em to budge yet. Come on, fellows,snuggle up," as Norris seated himself compliantly, back against thebowlder. 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, inpassing the sun, by the pull of its own greater gravity, separated somelarge fragments from that fiery, gaseous mass, and started our planetarysystem. We don't want to go too far into astronomy."
"But astronomy shows you how they know all this," Ace assured the oldman, 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 matteron the two-armed luminous spiral which began circling the sun. There weresmaller particles which were attracted to the earth by earth gravity andwhich increased the size of the earth till it was far larger than it isnow. Ever since, the earth has been shrinking periodically, and when itshrinks, its surface becomes wrinkled, and these wrinkles we callmountain ranges."
"Of course," interpolated Ace, shining eyed, "the crust of the earth gotcooled, while the inside was still a mass of molten metal and gas, whichkept 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 heaviersubstances sank, while the lighter ones rose as granite r
ocks, till therewas an outer shell miles thick.
"The Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes, in Alaska, is a volcanic region wherethe ground is hot and breaks through with one even now,--I was thereseveral years ago,--but generally speaking, this earth has a crust 150miles 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 andvolcanoes. The water vapor was always here, you know,--mixed with themolten rock and gases."
"I swan!" ejaculated the old guide. "I thought I knew something aboutrocks, 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 realizewhat a predicament we are in?" and shading his eyes with a lowered hatbrim, he peered off across the hummocky granite slopes, which shonemirror-like in places under the noon-day sun.
A moving speck in the sky to the North drew an exclamation from him. Inanother moment a sound that increased to a hum like that of a giantmotor-boat descended from the skies, and the speck disclosed itself as amammoth aeroplane.
"Signal them!" cried Norris. "What can we signal them with? Get out yourpocket mirrors, quick!"