Unexplored! Part 6

"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 pa.s.sed 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 appet.i.tes 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 ill.u.s.trate 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 ma.s.s. 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 Tria.s.sic 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 sc.u.m, 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 a.s.sured 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 pa.s.sing the sun, by the pull of its own greater gravity, separated some large fragments from that fiery, gaseous ma.s.s, 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 a.s.sured 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 ma.s.s 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 sh.e.l.l 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?"