Unexplored! Part 17

"Why, for one thing,--we don't have to read it all from the rocks,--there is a plain story in the rings of growth in the Big Trees. Don't you remember those cut stumps, and the thousands of rings we counted, one for a year? And some were wider than others, because in those years there had been more rainfall."

"Well, I never!" was all the old prospector could articulate, as all hands once more called it a day.

Next day Ace searched in concentric circles, but without finding a trace of Mexicans, or, indeed, of any one.

The next night found the little party encamped an eight hours' hike up the side of another glacial-polished slope. The trail,--that is to say the way they picked to go,--led first to the upper end of the canyon and over the rocks that bordered a green-white waterfall. The wind blowing the spray in first one direction and then another, they got well wetted, though the clear California sunshine soon dried them again. But the most curious part of their climb past the falls was the rainbow that persisted in following them till they seemed to be at the hub of a huge semi-circle of opalescent tints.

Above, (perhaps eight hundred feet higher than their camp at the hot spring), they came to where the river slid green and transparent over granite slopes just bordered by a fringe of pine. The water ran deep and swift, though, and as Ted stooped to drink, he found that, rhythmically, a larger swell, (call it a wave), would slap him in the face, till once, blinded by the unexpected onslaught, he all but lost his balance. It would have been inevitable, had he done so, that he should almost instantly go hurtling over that eight hundred foot drop, whose waters roared till the boys had to shout at each other to be heard even a few paces away. But the water was deliciously icy, from its fountain-head in the glacier above.

Wide slopes just steep enough to make climbing demand considerable sure-footedness widened this hanging valley on either side, with no greenery save the picturesque bits that grew along the weathered cracks.

Beyond this, the canyon walls continued to rise abruptly.

Trailing along beside the river till it had widened out and quieted its song, they found one of the typically open, parklike, forests of silver firs, jeweled with occasional emerald meadows fragrant with purple lupin and gay with crimson columbine and golden b.u.t.tercups. Under foot were white violets and wee, monkey-faced mimulus, with occasionally a rare scarlet monkey-flower.

They pa.s.sed one of the tributaries of the river, crossed it on a log, and paused to drink deep of its sweet fluid. They found a huge fallen log with a mushroom growth that Pedro p.r.o.nounced edible and which they found not unlike cooked crab meat. They crossed other brooklets, paused at noon to eat a dry lunch, and to their amazement spied a doe and her half-grown fawn in the edge of the clearing watching them wistfully as they threw their sc.r.a.ps away. Pedro, approaching softly, and casting peace offerings before him, was able to approach to within several paces of the mother, though her young hopeful was less trustful. Having probably never seen a biped before, both animals were consumed with curiosity and comparatively unafraid. The old prospector suggested with a wink that a little "wild mutton" would not go amiss, the game laws being adaptable to the needs of those in extremity, but Norris reminded him that they were no longer in extremity, and the boys voted unanimously not to betray the trust of this wild mother.

Now came a stiff climb around a rocky shoulder of the mountain, and along the cracks of the smooth rock slopes, as once more they traversed the path of an ancient glacier. The opening here between the two folds of mountains again disclosed their river, now smaller, but if anything even noisier, by reason of its race over a series of cascades. They had left the silver fir belt and were in the region of dwarfed mountain pines. They estimated that they must be about 8,000 feet high.

Ace joined them with still no news of the fugitive fire setters. It was mysterious.

It being Ted's and Pedro's turn to make camp that night, they dropped the packs under a gnarled old juniper whose trunk had been split by lightning into seven splinters that curved out over a little hollow, making an ideal shelter, with its fubsy foliage, its storm-twisted limbs making natural seats, and a flat-topped rock a table. They had to carry pine boughs some distance for their beds, as they did wood and water.

Then they sallied forth for a string of fish.

All this gave Ace, Norris and Long Lester time to climb the short remaining distance to the top of the ridge, where they could gaze across at snow-capped peaks on which the alpine glow of approaching sunset had spread a luscious rose.

While they were reclining in quiet enjoyment around the supper fire,--the last flutter of the breeze fanning their faces,--a tawny, catlike form suddenly came tip-toeing out from behind an edge of rock. It was an animal possibly a hundred pounds in weight,--the California mountain lion is not a heavy animal,--and for all its wide, heavy looking feet it trod with lithe grace. (Those paws, so well adapted to travel over deep snow, would enable it to seek its prey when white winter shut down over all its hunting grounds.)

[Ill.u.s.tration: It was a rare treat to see a lion so close.]

Now it was to all of them a rare treat to see a lion so close to. Of all the denizens of the wild, none are so shy of human kind, in regions where they are hunted,--none so thoroughly nocturnal. The three men fairly held their breaths to watch.

First the animal leapt to a branch of a wind-beaten tree and crouched along its limb, lying so still that, had they not seen it move, they might have glanced squarely in that direction and never noticed. And there it lay, sharpening its claws, cat fashion.

Suddenly it began narrowing its yellow eyes at what must have been a movement behind the rock whence it had emerged. Gathering its feet for a spring, it laid its ears back, and the great muscles rippling beneath its skin, leapt at a second lion whose head could now be seen peering around the rock. But did they fight? Not a bit of it! With hiss and arching back, and all claws out like the picture of a witch cat, the young cougar challenged his playfellow, then retreated as the other would have given him a swipe of his paw. Back to his tree he raced, the other after him.

But no sooner had he reached the vantage point of his horizontal branch than he turned and chased the other back. This play was repeated several times, while the three men watched to the windward, silent and motionless, and hence unseen by the near-sighted animals.

A small rock had been loosened by their scramble, and as it went rolling over the granite slope, the first cat pounced after it playfully, finally catching the rolling stone and leaping about it as a cat does a mouse.

Then he retired to his tree.

Norris, reflecting that the near presence of two such animals would stampede the burros, picked up a stone and threw it at the lion, intending, not to hit it, but to chase it away. To the surprise of the onlookers, the huge cat pounced on the stone as playfully as before. Ace now hurled a small rock so that it just escaped the tawny flank, but again she pounced, as playful as a kitten, at each missile, and it was not till the three men rose and shouted that the lion took alarm and raced away.

"I declare!" exclaimed Pedro, when he heard about it, "I'd never have believed it!"

"I was out in Devil's Gulch one day," remarked Long Lester, "with a coupla dogs. It's all granite,--hard for the dogs to get a scent, but there's lots of lions there, in among the rocks. Finally, though, they got one into a little Digger Pine. I took a shot at her, and out she tumbled."

"Dead?" asked Norris.

"Yes. The dogs found her den, and dragged out three cubs."

"How large?"

"About the size of house cats, that's all."

"Then what?"

"Oh, I put 'em into my shirt and tuk 'em home. I sold 'em afterwards to a circus man."

"Well, do lions always act the way this one did to-night?"

"I heard tell of a boy that was out with an old three dollar Winchester 22, and a dog that had lost a leg in a bear trap. Pretty soon he barked 'treed.' He had a lion up in a scrub oak. It came down fighting, so the boy had to circle around trying to find a chance to shoot. Then it jumped up into a pine tree and lay with its head over the limb looking down at him. He shot at it, but I guess it didn't hit, for it ran again, and by jings, it finally got clean away!"

"Don't they ever fight?" marveled Pedro.

"They'll fight a dog if they come down wounded, but the big cats are mostly cowards."

"But bears are not?"

"Bears? No, nothing cowardly about them. They're more lazy'n anything else."

CHAPTER XI

THE VALLEY OF TEN THOUSAND SMOKES

The next morning they had a good look around before deciding which way to go. On one side pointed firs in patches on the canyon walls contrasted with the snow in the ravines. There was a brook that divided, then reunited in white strands, only to spread out into a smooth, glistening sheet, golden in the sunlight, to join the green river.

The notches between two rounding, glacier-smoothed granite ma.s.ses disclosed distant peaks, snow-capped, their jagged ledges thrusting through the mantling white, dazzling in the sunshine like a mirror,--now gray under a hazing sky, now dappled under a pa.s.sing shower cloud.

They finally decided to wind through the gap, and Pedro, Norris and Long Lester started on with the burros, while Ace and Ted started fine-combing the map beneath them for the elusive Mexicans. Very probably, they thought, they had been hiding in some of the caves that honeycombed the region, and sooner or later they would have to reappear. Their supplies could not hold out forever.

All along the Western flank of the Sierra, (as both Norris and Long Lester were able to a.s.sure them), from the McCloud River in the North to the Kaweah,--a distance of at least 400 miles,--stretched a belt of metamorphic limestone, reaching up to as high as 7,000 feet, and it was fairly riddled with caves.

But again the day went by without success. Ace only squared his chin. Ted offered to abdicate his observer's seat in favor of any one of the party, but Pedro and Long Lester preferred terra firma, and even Norris found more to interest him in the rocks beneath their feet.

Once a little spiral of smoke drew them to a canyon head where they found three fishermen with a pack train of seven horses,--but no Mexicans. They searched Southward along the John Muir trail, returning along the Eastern flank,--but to no purpose, so far as the fugitives were concerned.

As no one had had time to fish, they dined on tinned corned beef, which Ace, the cook for the day, made the mistake of salting. (After that he had to make tea twice.)

"One thing I'd like fer to ask you, Mr. Norris," said Long Lester that night around the bon-fire, "is where does the salt in the ocean come from? I don't see for the life of me, from what you've told us----"

"The salt was originally in the rock of the earth's crust," Norris explained with a pleased smile at the old man's interest. "As this igneous rock weathered with time, the rain and the streams washed it into the ocean. Then when the sea water evaporates----"

"To make clouds, to make more rain?" Long Lester recited.

"Yes,--the salt of course remained behind, so that the oceans have been growing constantly saltier since the earth began. Yet even now sea water must be nine-tenths evaporated before the sodium begins to precipitate, as we say."