Unexplored! Part 2

To the ranch boy's amazement, he now found his long legs dangling from a seat on the shoulders of his two college friends, while they marched about to the tune of "A Jolly Good Fellow,"--Norris himself laughingly joining in the chorus, and Long Lester thumping him breath-takingly between the shoulder blades.

That was the day the camping trip had been planned. It was also the day Ace's little Spanish 'plane, wirelessed from its hanger in Burlingame,[1] had given them all a surprise, and a trial sail. The pilot arrived shivering in leather jacket and heavy cap, woolen m.u.f.fler and goggles, with similar wraps for Ace, whose leather chaps now served a purpose. For the intense cold of the upper levels it was necessary for the pilot to lend his outer apparel, as each of the prospective camp mates in turn took the observer's seat, with Ace piloting.

Ted was used to flying with him,--had, indeed, given him the nick-name which all had now adopted, as a compliment to his exploits as a birdman.

But to the other three it was a new experience. He invited Norris first.

Their route lay like a map below them, as they winged their way across the sky, steering first due South till the rim of King's River Canyon threatened to suck them down into its depths, then circling to the East till they could see Mt. Whitney rising snow-capped above the surrounding peaks, and back to the waiting boys.

Long Lester ventured next, and as he afterwards expressed it, he thought he was riding on the back of his neck as they soared into the blue deeps above them, while the ocean of the atmosphere tossed them about capriciously. This time Ace, running her into the cold strait above the river, headed her down canyon to within a hundred feet of the forest top, his grit based on sound mechanical training; his daring counterbalanced by his cool headed precision. He tried no stunts, however, as he had promised his father to indulge in no aerial acrobatics under 1,000 feet.

When they finally returned to terra firma, right side up with care, the old prospector expressed himself as nowise envious of Elijah.

Pedro belted himself in with a lack of enthusiasm that Long Lester did not fail to note with sympathy, and away they soared, fearlessly on Ace's part, whose eyes, ears and lungs were in the pink of condition. But to the Spanish boy came first a dizzy, seasick feeling, coupled with a conviction that he could not draw breath against the head wind, then a chill that penetrated even the pilot's uniform, as he watched the earth recede beneath them. The motor purred as they gained momentum and the propellers whirred noisily, and the changing air pressures so affected the stability of the light craft that he felt half the time as if they were lying over on their side. He also reflected that, should the engine stall, their descent would be a matter of seconds only. In the dry heat they had been traveling with what seemed terrific speed. He protested once, but Ace did not hear him.

Then in the cold of the higher alt.i.tude, their speed was reduced and traveling was smoother. When at last the great white bird dropped back almost on the spot from which they had started,--the distinguishing feat of the Spanish 'plane,--he was almost a convert, though as Lester said, "a little green about the gills." When later the opportunity came to try it again, he abdicated in favor of Ted.

Norris a.s.sured them that there is air for 50 miles above the earth, and sometimes a tidal wave of atmosphere reaching as high as 200 miles, though after it gets about 190 degrees below zero, less is known about it. Its density is reduced fully half at 18,000 feet,--half a mile above the highest peaks, like Mt. Whitney, but though the air of high alt.i.tudes is more buoyant, the cold none the less reduces the speed of the air cruiser.

While they were eating they discussed their itinerary.

Norris had the large trail maps of both Sierra and Sequoia National Forests. These he laid out and pieced together into one big sheet ten feet long. On these maps were marked out the good camp grounds, and where bears, or deer, quail or grouse, might be found, where supplies were obtainable, or pack and saddle stock, guides and packers, or Forest ranger stations (little cabins flying a flag from their peaks, to make them show up on the map).

There were the "roads pa.s.sable for wagons," "trails pa.s.sable for pack stock," and "routes pa.s.sable for foot travel only." There were areas marked with varying tiny green tufts of gra.s.s labeled "meadows where stock grazing is permitted," and "meadows where it is not permitted,"

"meadows fenced for the free use of the traveling public" and "meadows fenced for the use of Forest Rangers only."

Diminutive green pine trees indicated forest areas particularly interesting, striped red areas signalized National Forest timber sales, cut over or in operation, black triangles denoted Forest Service fire outlook stations, and a drawing that looked like a woodshed showed where Forest Service fire fighting tools had been cached in various out-of-the-way places. "TLP" indicated the free Government telephone boxes, red doughnutty-looking circles meant good mountains to climb, with some indication of the safest routes to the top, areas marked out in red diamonds were labeled as geographically interesting, and those in green as botanically of more than ordinary interest.

A green feathery-looking line meant a canyon, a green triangle a waterfall, a plain green line a stream offering good fishing, and a broken green line a stream stocked with young fish, while an X meant a barrier impa.s.sable by fish, though what that meant, not one of them could say.

There were various other marks, such as a hub surrounded by the spokes of a wheel (whatever it was intended for), the key to which explained that from that point a good view was to be obtained.

But what most attracted their attention, all up and down the crest of the Sierra Nevada as it stretched from North, North-West to South, South-East, were the wide green areas "of special scenic interest," most of which was marked "UNEXPLORED!" in great warning red letters.

It was this part of the map that most fascinated the little camping party. Why should they choose a route that was all cut and dried for them, as it were,--where each day they would know when they started out just about where night would find them and what they would meet with on the way? Who wanted their views labeled anyway? That was all very well, very thoughtful of the Forest Service, for inexperienced campers, who would probably never venture into the unknown. But to Ace, the airman, to Ted, with his experienced wild-craft, and to Pedro the romanticist, no less than to the young Yale man whose thirst for far places had led him into the U. S. Geological Survey, the Mystery of the Unexplored called, with a lure that was not to be denied. Long Lester, they knew, was game for anything,--for had he not prospected through these mountains all his life? There was practically no place the sure-footed burros could not go, and there was no danger they were not secretly and wickedly tingling to encounter.

It was a wild region, as rough and as little known as anything from Hawaii to Alaska,--only different. The John Muir Trail, named for the explorer,--a "way through" rather than a trail,--stretched along the crest of the range, the roughest kind of going, (absolutely a horseback trip, it was generally p.r.o.nounced), and from its glacier-capped peaks, from 14,500 foot Mt. Whitney, to the even more difficult though less lofty Lyell, ran the Kings' River, North, Middle, and canyoned South Forks, the Kern and the Kaweah, the Merced and the San Joaquin,--to name only the largest.

Unlike the older Eastern ranges, the Sierra is laid out with remarkable regularity, the one great 12,000- to 14,000-foot divide, with its scarcely lower pa.s.ses, giving off ridges on the Western slope like the teeth of a coa.r.s.e granite comb. Between ridges, deep, glacier-cut canyons, "yo-semities," (to employ the Indian name), with their swift, cascading rivers make North to South travel difficult, though one can follow one side of the openly forested canyons to the very crest of the main ridge.

Here and there was a grove of Big Trees, varying in size from the Giant Forest of Sequoia National Park to the few mediocre specimens at d.i.n.key Creek. But as a rule the hot, irrigated valleys of the Sacramento and San Joaquin gave way to patches of the small oaks and pines of the foothills, and these in turn, several thousand feet higher up the Western slopes, to yellow pine and incense cedar, Sequoias and giant sugar pines. Higher still came the silver fir belt, and after that, the twisted Tamaracks and dwarfed and storm-tossed mountain pines, reaching often in at least a decorative fringe along the rock cracks to the very peaks, all the way up to 12,000 feet. (Tree line in the White Mountains of New Hampshire comes soon after 5,000.) Above that, of course, only snow and ice could clothe the slopes.

h.e.l.l-for-Sure Pa.s.s was one name that attracted Ace's eye on the map. He judged that it must mean stiff going,--but even had they actually planned to climb that way, he would have preferred to wait and discover for himself the reason for its nomenclature. There was also Deadman Pa.s.s, (another name to tickle the imagination), Electra Peak, Thousand Island Lake, The Devil's Post Pile, Volcanic Ridge, Crater Creek, Stairway Creek, Fawn Meadow,--and dangerously near, Bear Meadow,--Vermilion Cliffs, Piute Pa.s.s, Disappearing Creek, Lost Canyon, Table Mountain, (reminiscent of the Bret Harte days), Deadman Canyon, (flavoring more strongly of the gold days of '49), and Rattlesnake Creek, (doubtless deserving the t.i.tle.)--To say nothing of such ordinary features as 13,500 foot University Peak, (a mere wave of the sea of peaks surrounding champions Lyell and Whitney), Diamond Peak, 13,000 feet, Mt. Baxter, likewise around 13,000, Mt. Pinchot, and a score of others (occurring at short intervals in a solid phalanx). Whoever wants to climb a mountain everybody climbs, seemed to be the final verdict of the party. There are other peaks almost as high as Whitney, (certainly quite high enough to suit the most fastidious sportsman), and probably even more difficult of ascent. Why not discover something new under the sun? In other words, why not strike off at random into the Unexplored? They would head right into the thick of the thickest green patch on the map, and wander as fancy dictated. If they felt like climbing, they would climb. If they felt like lazing, (as Pedro put it), they would laze. If they came to a river they could cross, all right. If they could not cross, why, all right, who cared?

There was rumor of vast caves that riddled the back country. There were hot springs, soda springs,--who knew what? Good pasturage was never hard to find. The verdant meadows left by the glacier lakes could be counted on up to the very backs of the 9,000-foot ridges. Most of them were half to a mile wide, and at the head waters of the big rivers, they had heard, were meadows nearer ten miles in length.

With one exception, every lake in the Sierras is a glacier lake (that exception being Huntington, a "made" lake four miles long that falls three thousand feet through a flume to add power to an electric plant).

These lakes lie all the way up to as high as 8,000 feet above sea-level, Norris's theory being that in time they will be found higher still. The glaciers left by the last ice age naturally melted first in the lower reaches, and as those that now cap the peaks and flow down between ridges like the arms of a starfish, melt in their turn, they will leave their icy, green-blue crystal pools higher and higher up the mountainsides.

Just North of Mt. Ritter, Norris told them, lies a glacier lake at an alt.i.tude of 12,000 feet, while the glaciers still to be found are slowly, slowly grinding out the basins of the lakes that will one day, (possibly centuries hence), lie where now linger these evidences of the last glacier epoch.

Where these lakes have in their turn disappeared they have left these rich-soiled meadows. Where these level-lying meadows failed them pasturage for their burros, Norris guaranteed that there would be plenty of hanging meadows,--long, narrow, bowldery strips of weed enameled verdure slanting up and down the moraine-covered canyon sides, beginning away up at timber line, where springs the source of their life-giving moisture.

Before the group broke up that day, word came that Rosa's brother had broken his leg, there at the fire outlook on Red Top. (A pack-mule had crowded his horse off the trail on the steep slope of an arroyo, and the horse had fallen, though breaking his otherwise sure descent into the creek below by coming sharply up against a tree trunk.)

"The worst of it is," worried Radcliffe, "with men so scarce, I don't know who to send in his place. Besides, it's a week's horseback trip from here,--and fires breaking every day,--and he needs a doctor."

It was not till the deed was done that Ace returned to announce, with the smile of the cat who has licked the cream, that Rosa had insisted on taking her brother's place. He, Ace, had found the spot from her sure knowledge of the topography of the place. (She had kept house there for her brother the summer before, in the wee, wind-swept cabin.) And leaving Rosa there, as she pluckily insisted, Ace brought her brother back, covering in minutes, as the bird flies, what it would have taken a week to traverse on horseback. Those mountain trails corkscrew up and down the canyon sides till instead of calling a certain distance a hundred miles according to the map, one states it, "a week into the back-country,"--or in the case of the trailless peaks, (among which Long Lester felt most at home), the same distance might be a matter of a four-weeks' camping trip, with no human habitation, and the likelihood of not even a ranch at which to purchase supplies, in between.

Then the Senator sent the 'plane back to San Francisco, and its hangar in Burlingame, before--as he said--his young hopeful could start anything more. He himself was to spend the next month fishing around Kings' River Canyon, putting up at the canvas hotel. But he took as much interest in the camping trip as if he had been a member of it,--as, indeed, did Ranger Radcliffe, though word of a fresh forest fire breaking cut short his part in the powwow.

The question now arose, should they go horseback, or afoot with pack-burros,--a string of which Long Lester yearned to pilot.

True, a mountain-bred pony will hop and slide up and down mountain ledges that would make an Eastern horse's hair literally stand on end. They have been born and bred to it, physically and mentally. They have been known to sit back almost on their haunches and slide when they could get down no other way. Some of them will walk a log twenty feet above the surface of a stream. (The Eastern rider will find that hard to believe, until he recalls the feats of circus horses.) But not all horses are alike, any more than people. Why should the plains horse and the park horse and good old Dobbin, the farm horse, be equine mountaineers and prospectors?

"Shank's horses" and the pack-burros won the final ballot,--to Pedro's open dismay. But they would first ride the well-defined two-days'

horseback trail from Giant Forest to the Kings' River Canyon, and Giant Forest is an automobile stage ride from Fresno, which is another short day's ride from Huntington Lake.

(Strange are the threads of destiny! Not one of that group so much as dreamed that they were embarking on anything but a five weeks' camping trip.)

[Footnote 1: p.r.o.nounced Blingam.]

CHAPTER II

THE CAMPING TRIP

A week later Norris and the boys arrived at the lumber camp on the Canyon rim, where they were to await Long Lester,--Ace in a piratical and plutocratic black Stetson sombrero, hiking boots and flannel shirt, a red bandanna at his throat, and to supplement his khaki riding breeches he had bestowed lovingly in his duffle bag the Mexican leather chaps. He also displayed the eight-inch leather belt of the cow country, and elbow length leather cuffs studded with silver nails.

Ted let it go at his second best blue overalls and heavy shoes, a green plaid gingham shirt, with a brown one to change off and straw hat. Pedro lounged gracefully about in corduroy trousers and elkskin boots, (which Norris warned him would last about a week on such rough going), and a wool jersey in the same soft tan. He took their guying good naturedly, however, and in mockery of Ace's more picturesque accoutrement, gave a first cla.s.s imitation of a motion picture director with the Senator's son for his prize Bad Man. Norris wore his second best uniform, and all had sweaters and a change of socks and things, to say nothing of an extra pair of shoes.

When word came that the old guide had had "some investment business" come up to delay him, they decided to establish a make-shift camp. There was not one chance in a hundred of any rain, but they decided a lean-to would be convenient anyway. They got some shakes of an old lumberman whose function it was to split the giant shingles from three foot lengths of log.

Four poles for corner-posts made a substantial beginning. Smaller ones morticed to lie crosswise gave something to which to nail the shakes, which were overlapped shingle-fashion on both sides and roof. The tarpaulins would make a curtain across the front. The floor was bedded down a foot deep with springy silver fir boughs, laid b.u.t.ts down and toward the foot. To this could be added fresh browse as it grew dry and harsh.

Tables were made by borrowing a saw of the lumbermen and slicing a four foot log into eight inch slices, then gouging these out on the under side so that stout legs could be fitted in. Stools were made from short lengths of a smaller log, and behold! the open air dining-room and kitchen were furnished, at cost of a few hours' fun.

Norris even made a sort of steamer chair of poles, using a double thickness of his tarp for the seat and back.

Next came a stone fireplace, with an old piece of sheet iron across the top, and a great flat hearth-stone on which to warm the plates.

Each tin can as it was opened had its top neatly removed and was washed and set aside as a chipmunk-proof container, and Pedro fashioned a refrigerator by replacing the two sides of a cracker box with screen wire, (bartered from the cook of the lumber camp), hinging the door with discarded shoe tongues.

Cord was strung for clothes-line, and a supply of several kinds of fuel brought in. The down logs were simply run into the fireplace, b.u.t.t ends first, and shoved closer as they burned. Ted devised a rake for gathering together the dry twigs and cones and bark with which the ground was strewn, by using nails for teeth, set in a small board fastened at an angle to the stick that served as handle.

Following Norris's lead, each fellow heated water and took a sponge bath daily, (except Ace, who took a cold plunge in the glacier-cold stream), and afterwards washed out his change of socks and underwear and his towel. The dish-washers also laundered the dish towels after each meal.

That way, everything was always ship-shape. And, be it noted, any cook who burned the nested aluminum pans and kettles had to clean them himself, and though Norris had made that easier by bringing along a box of fine steel-wool, it was amazing how few scorched dishes occurred! Of course where pots were used over the fire, the outsides got sooty, but after all, it was only the insides that affected one's health.

The boys found that they slept warmer by doubling their blankets into sleeping bags, pinning them shut with horse-blanket safety-pins, with their tarps for a windproof outer layer. And many's the sleeping bag race they ran,--or rather, hopped, to the amazement, no doubt, of the wild folk who very likely watched from the shadows. Agile Ted won the grand prize at one of these stunts by hopping the full length of a fallen log in his bag, without once falling off.