CHAPTER XI
THE VALLEY OF TEN THOUSAND SMOKES
The next morning they had a good look around before deciding which way togo. On one side pointed firs in patches on the canyon walls contrastedwith the snow in the ravines. There was a brook that divided, thenreunited in white strands, only to spread out into a smooth, glisteningsheet, golden in the sunlight, to join the green river.
The notches between two rounding, glacier-smoothed granite massesdisclosed distant peaks, snow-capped, their jagged ledges thrustingthrough the mantling white, dazzling in the sunshine like a mirror,--nowgray under a hazing sky, now dappled under a passing shower cloud.
They finally decided to wind through the gap, and Pedro, Norris and LongLester started on with the burros, while Ace and Ted started fine-combingthe map beneath them for the elusive Mexicans. Very probably, theythought, they had been hiding in some of the caves that honeycombed theregion, and sooner or later they would have to reappear. Their suppliescould not hold out forever.
All along the Western flank of the Sierra, (as both Norris and LongLester were able to assure them), from the McCloud River in the North tothe Kaweah,--a distance of at least 400 miles,--stretched a belt ofmetamorphic limestone, reaching up to as high as 7,000 feet, and it wasfairly riddled with caves.
But again the day went by without success. Ace only squared his chin. Tedoffered 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 foundmore to interest him in the rocks beneath their feet.
Once a little spiral of smoke drew them to a canyon head where they foundthree fishermen with a pack train of seven horses,--but no Mexicans. Theysearched Southward along the John Muir trail, returning along the Easternflank,--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, whichAce, the cook for the day, made the mistake of salting. (After that hehad to make tea twice.)
"One thing I'd like fer to ask you, Mr. Norris," said Long Lester thatnight around the bon-fire, "is where does the salt in the ocean comefrom? 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," Norrisexplained with a pleased smile at the old man's interest. "As thisigneous rock weathered with time, the rain and the streams washed it intothe 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 beengrowing constantly saltier since the earth began. Yet even now sea watermust be nine-tenths evaporated before the sodium begins to precipitate,as we say."
"So there is room for a lot more."
"Especially as the oceans are growing larger all the time."
"But doesn't the ocean give it back to the land when it leaves thesesediments along the shore?"
"Not to any extent, speaking comparatively. But one of the interestingthings about the salt in the sea is this: Chemists and geologistsestimate that, for the amount of salt in the sea, enough of the originalearth crust must have been weathered away to have covered the continentsover 6,000 feet high. And that calculation just about fits what webelieve to have happened.
"The United States Geological Survey gave out an official statement in1912 that this country is annually being washed back into the ocean atthe rate of two hundred and seventy million tons of matter dissolved inthe streams and five hundred and thirteen millions of tons of matter heldin suspension in the same streams. That is to say, the oceans every yearreceive from the surface of the United States seven hundred andeighty-three millions of tons of rock materials.
"That means that, here in this part of the country at least, one hundredand seventy-seven tons per square mile are being washed back each year."
"Gee!" said Ted. "I should think, at that rate, that the continents wouldhave been all washed away long ago."
"Yes, there have been, since geological history began, at least twentywhole mountain ranges as high as the Rockies worn to sea level. Of coursethe oceans have periodically flooded the margins of the continents atsuch times, in long troughs where now stand our Appalachian and RockyMountain ranges, leaving their deposits.
"In the Rockies there are coarse sediments miles deep, together withlimestone formed of the ground-up shells of marine animals of the earliertimes. Now think of this!
"If all that stands above sea level in the United States to-day were tobe washed into the sea, as it undoubtedly will be, in time,--(but not inour time), the level of the oceans will rise, (just as the level of ahalf glass of water rises if you drop in a handful of sand), until--ithas been estimated--everything under six hundred and fifty feet above sealevel will be inundated. That means that probably half of the continentwould be under water. It has been so in times past, and it will be again.In fact, in the age of reptile dominance, (the Cretaceous Period), whenthe earth was just beginning to be peopled with birds and flyingreptiles, and the first, primitive mammals,--the Atlantic flowed straightfrom what is now the Gulf of Mexico, through what is now the RockyMountain Region, and through the Eastern part of Alaska, to the Arctic.That left one strip of land that reached along what is now the PacificCoast, clear from the Isthmus of Panama to the Aleutian Islands andstraight across to Siberia. The Northern part of the Atlantic Coastformed another land area, broken by the fresh water bodies of America andCanada and in one with a strip of land that extended across Greenland toEurope.
"It is pretty well established, in fact, that the United States has beenmore or less flooded by warm, shallow marine waters at least sixteentimes since the age of fish dominance began. But not since the age ofman!" he hastened to assure the old prospector, who was beginning to lookuneasy.
"Of course these flood times brought a moist, warm climate to the landareas, and life was easy for the then existing animal forms. Then whenreadjustments in the earth's crust again raised up mountain ranges andthe climate became colder and drier, the struggle for existence becamemore intense, the process of evolution was stimulated, and new formsoriginated.
"We are living in one of those periods now. The organic world is beingstimulated to develop even better bodies, endowed with even more alertbrains.
"Life is easiest of all for the inhabitants of the ocean. That is whythey have developed so little intelligence."
"Is that why it's such an insult to call any one a poor fish?" grinnedTed.
"An ichthyosaurus?" supplemented Ace.
"As has been said before," Norris took up the thread of his talk, "with adrier climate and soil, comes the need of developing a faster mode oflocomotion, for food no longer lies or swims everywhere about, as it didin the ocean, and in the swamps, and tropic humidity. Food and water arescarce, and it is the speediest animal that fulfills his needs. Thisspeediness on his part means that he uses up more energy, and hence needsmore food, and he needs to assimilate it faster. In other words, it meansincreased metabolism. This in turn means that he keeps his body at ahigher temperature. He needs it too, now, with the increased cold. Thisresults in the development of warm blood, by which the animal canmaintain his body warmth regardless of winter cold. If it had not beenfor conditions that forced certain reptiles to develop warm-bloodedness,we would have no birds or mammals to-day, for as you doubtless know,birds and mammals both were evolved from reptiles."
"I swan!" was all the old prospector could say.
"Yes, the first mammals developed from a reptile known as the cynodont.Many of these reptiles had long legs and could travel with the body welloff the ground. Birds originated from the same reptilian stock as did thedinosaurs. First their hind-legs grew long so that they could run onthem,--and you will notice at the Museum how the legs of a dinosaur arejoined to the body exactly like a bird's,--then their scales graduallyevolved into feathers.
"There is a lot more to it than I can tell you now, but after various upsand downs, dinosaurs became extin
ct and Nature tried out several kinds ofwarm-blooded, furry mammals, some of them herbivorous and built for speedto run away from their enemies, some of them swamp-dwelling monsters withheavy legs and small brains, who, slow of movement, relied on horns andother armor and sharp teeth for their defense.
"But there is no end to this subject. I only mean to make the point thatit was geological changes that drove the fish to land, and the landanimal to higher forms, till finally other geological changes drove man'sancestors down out of the trees." The boys, no less than the oldprospector, testifying their interest in the last named operation, hecontinued.
"When the Alps, the Andes and the Himalayas arose, man's ancestors stilllived in trees. But high mountains hold a large part of the moisture ofthe atmosphere in the form of snow and ice, and at the same time thedecreased oceanic areas offer less surface for evaporation. Not only doesthat mean a drier climate, but the sun's rays pass more freely throughdry air, and the days are hotter, and the heat passing freely backthrough the same dry air at night, the nights are colder. Seasons aremore extreme, and ice accumulates on the mountain tops and around thepolar region, precursor of a glacier period. The aridity decreases theamount of forest, and the manlike tree dweller had to descend to theground to get his living. That necessitated the development of his hindlegs for speed, and that speed necessitated his assuming a wholly erectposture. That in turn freed his hands, and he, or the man descended fromhim, could defend himself by throwing stones at the huge beasts who thenpeopled the earth. The cold winters necessitated the use of the skins ofbeasts for clothing, and so on through the list. It was geologicalnecessity that drove man into his higher development.
"Changes of climate and environment, however, are stimulating, evento-day. Statistics show that stormy weather actually increases people'senergy."
The next day they passed a long crack in a rock slope, which Norris feltsure had been made by an earthquake, perhaps as recent as that of 1906,to judge from the cleanness and newness of it. The crack was no more thana foot or two in width, but in places eight feet deep, they estimated,and along the Western side of it stood a fault scarp, in this case a wallof granite bowlders of various sizes up to four or five feet in height.
"This," pronounced the geology man, "is evidently a region overlyingsubterranean volcanoes, which might even yet build the range higher. I'llbet that kind of mountain building may still be going on around here."
Again and again Norris, or even Ace, had been able to point out, in therecord of the rocks, the evidences of the two glacier periods that hadhelped shape the Sierra Nevada, the earlier one much larger, and enduringlonger, as shown by the moraines (or deposits) left behind. The lower endof a canyon would be no wider than the stream that incised it, but theupper portion would have been smoothed into grassy parks or lakelets oneach tread of a giant stairway to the summit of the range.
Rounded water-worn pebbles and cobblestones among a mass of angularbowlders, left behind by glacier streams, together with an occasionalstriated pebble, were "sermons in stones" to the geologist.
"Hey, Ted," his chum had challenged him that day, "did you ever see apirate?"
"Don't know as I did," admitted the ranch boy.
"Then I'll show you one. Climb in," and he prepared to search once morefor the Mexicans.
"Show me one! You speak as if they kept them in museums."
"This pirate will be a river. A river pirate,--I mean a pirate river! IfI could find the divide just North of Muah Mountain I'd show you wherestreams are being captured this minute. Cottonwood Creek has alreadycaptured one of the tributaries of Mulkey Creek, I hear, and diverted itinto an eastward flow, and further captures are likely to be pulled offany time. Isn't it a scandal?"
"I say, Ace," protested his chum, "I've swallowed a lot since we startedon this trip, but I'm not so gullible as you seem to think."
"Look here, old kid," said Ace seriously. "It's a fact. Along a divide, astream flowing one way will divert one flowing the other way into its ownchannel."
They found a pirate river,--but still no trace of the incendiaries.However, that merely determined the Senator's son the more.
That night Norris told them the long promised tale of his Alaskan trip.
"Nothing like the Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes has ever been seen by theeye of man," he declared. "If we could take all the other volcanicregions of the world to-day and set them down side by side, they wouldpresent less of a spectacle, except, of course, at the time of adangerous eruption. There has been nothing like it in the memory ofman,--though geologists can read from the rocks that such conditions musthave existed in past ages. The Mt. Katmai eruption of 1912, one of themost dangerous in history, first attracted attention to this region, andthe National Geographic Society has since sent various expeditions toAlaska. It was that way that the Valley came to be discovered, in 1916.
"I happened to be a member of the last expedition."
"Honestly!" the boys exclaimed.
"Yes, and I tell you, boys, when I first looked through Katmai Pass, itjust looked as if the whole valley were full of smoke. Of course it wassteam."
"Weren't you afraid of another volcano?" asked the boys, snuggling downready for a real story.
"No, because with all those vents letting off steam, it must relieve thepressure from below, like so many safety-valves. Two black, glassylooking lava mountains guard the pass. The wind on the side ofObservation Mountain was blowing so hard it honestly lifted us off ourfeet at times, and it blew a hail of pumice stone in our faces thatliterally cut the flesh. Of course we wore goggles.
"Once in the valley, there were certainly all of ten thousand smokesrising from the ground. We were simply speechless, it was such an awesomespectacle."
"I'll bet you were!" breathed Ted.
"Personally, I consider it more wonderful than either the Grand Canyon orthe geysers of the Yellowstone. As far as we could see in anydirection,--and there seemed to be three arms to the valley,--the whitevapor was steaming out of the ground until it mingled with a great cloudthat hung between the mountain walls. And we later camped in places wherewe could keep our food in a hollow of a glacier while we boiled ourbreakfast in a steam hole, and the ground was almost too warm forcomfort."
"Must have been an ideal camping place," said Ace.
"Far from that. Too much danger of breaking through. And then of coursethere wasn't a tree or a grass blade anywhere, much less a stick offirewood. But we sure had steam heat at night, and we cooked, in themilder of the fumaroles."
"Wasn't there a lot of gas coming up with the steam?" asked Ace.
"Yes, but it didn't taint our food any. It was an ideal steam cooker.Farther down the valley were some vents hot enough to fry bacon."
"I should think it would have steamed it," said Ted.
"No, we found one vent where the steam came so hot that it didn'tcondense for several feet above ground; the only trouble was that thefrying pan had a tendency to go flying up in the air and the cook had tohave a strong arm to hold it down."
At the picture his memory evoked, Norris burst into hearty chuckles. "Asthe bacon got crisp, of course it didn't weigh so heavy, and there alwayscame a point where it began to fly out of the pan. Then we'd all standaround, and it was the liveliest man that caught the most breakfast.
"There was another camp convenience, too, there in Hades, as the valleyhas been named."
"Thar, didn't I tell you so?" triumphed Long Lester.
"And they named the river Lethe. A river that ran down from the meltingglaciers,--though it almost all goes up in smoke, as it were,--in steam,before it gets out of the hot part. This river whirls along, and inplaces the steam actually boils up through the ice water, or along thebanks. I used to think it was an awful pity there were no fish in thatstream, because we could have cooked them without taking them off thehook."
"Huh!" The old prospector shook his head. "I've thought all along thishere was a fish story."
"But it's gospel truth," Norr
is assured him. "I mean about the valley. I_said_ there were no fish. Everything we ate, by the way, had to bepacked in on our backs. It was no place for horses, where in places theground fairly shook beneath our feet, and if it were to give way, we'dfind ourselves sure enough in hot water."
"It must have been almighty dangerous," gasped Ted.
"Well, not after we learned the ropes. Sometimes we accidentally put afoot through a thin place and steam came through. I assure you we steppedlively then. At other times our feet sank into the soft, hot mud.
"By the way, there is a mountain across the head of the valley that lookslike a crouching dog, and it has been named Cerberus."
"Were those geysers, those ten thousand smokes?" asked the old prospector.
"No, a geyser comes after volcanic activity, while here something isstill likely to happen. A geyser begins as a column of steam and hotwater, which erupts as often as the water gets to the boiling point. Itfollows that the water must accumulate in rock not so hot that it wouldinstantly vaporize it. But the rock underlying this valley is so hot thatno water can accumulate."
"How large are the vents through which the steam comes?" asked Ted.
"All sizes down to nothing at all. There are even a few craters 100 feetacross, that have been produced by volcanic explosions. You will findthese craters, generally, along a large fissure, just the way you findthe Aleutian chain of volcanoes along a fissure in the earth's crustseveral hundred miles in length.
"There are fissures all along the margins of the valley, besides those inthe center, and many of these have one side standing higher than theother, showing them to be earthquake faults,--the same sort of thing wesee here in the rocks of the Sierras. And you should hear the hissing androaring of the steam as it forces its way up through these fissures fromthe hot depths beneath. Sometimes it looks like blue smoke, it is so fullof gases, especially sulphur dioxide, the gas that is given off byburning sulphur. So the popular notion of Hades isn't so far off afterall, eh?"
"Could you smell the sulphur fumes?"
"Sometimes, yes,--when the other gases did not overwhelm the odor. Butthe weirdest part of all is the incrustations along the borders of thevents. All colors of the rainbows--shapes as fantastic as anything infairyland. Lots of yellow, of course, from the sulphur,--crystals of it,some of them neighbor to an orange tinted crystal, lying in the blue mud.It was a beautiful color combination. Then there were green and grayalum crystals which looked like growing lichens. There were also deepgreen algae actually growing. Strange how certain designs are used overand over again in nature! In other places the mud is actually burnedbrick red, especially where the fumaroles are burnt out. This shades topurple, and in other places to pink. But the most surprising, perhaps,were the white vents just tinted with a delicate pink or cream.
"The largest fissure of all, one lying at the foot of Mt. Mageik, isfilled with the clear green water of a melted glacier. And above, themountain smokes away into the clouds!"
"It must be a marvelous place!" said Ace. "I suppose it was regular icewater."
Norris laughed. "That is the funny part of it. It's not. The water isactually warm, or rather, tepid, in places, on account of the heat frombelow."
"So you had good swimming even in Alaska."
"We might have had. And then I must tell you about Novarupta. That's thelargest vent in the valley, and it is something you won't see very manyplaces in the world, a new volcano. It was only formed at the time of theeruption of 1912, and it is one of the largest volcanoes in the worldto-day,--with a crater much larger than that of Vesuvius."
"But Mr. Norris, do y' mind my asking," Pedro hesitated, "but how do youknow it is a new volcano? Don't volcanoes sometimes burst forth againafter many years of quiet?"
"They do, but there is where the rocks tell the story again. Instead ofbursting forth from a mountain top, through igneous rock, (left from thetime when the earth-crust was molten), this one erupted in the valley, insandstone. On a still day, the smoke will rise as high as ten thousandfeet."
Norris, then a student, had been one of the first to view Lassen Volcanowhen, in 1914, it broke its slumber of 200 years. Indeed, he had had areal adventure, as the second outburst had caught him within half a mileof the crater and he had barely escaped with his life. Of course the boyshad to hear all about it.
While the Sierra south of Lassen has been built more through uplift thanvolcanic activity, at least since the Tertiary period, he explained, theCascades and indeed, the whole range to the northward through Oregon andWashington, is a product of lava flow.
Happening to be about to start on a camping trip in the Feather Riverregion at the time of the first eruption, he and his companion hadhastened immediately to the scene of so much geological history making.The smoke and ashes that billowed forth had been visible for fifty miles,and the accompanying earthquake shocks had been accompanied by a downpourof rain.
Climbing the path of a recent snow-slide, which had cleared a narrow pathin the fifteen-foot drifts, they could smell sulphur strongly from nearthe South base onward. Veering around to the East, past half a dozencinder cones, they finally reached a narrow ridge leading directly to, asyet unoccupied, the fire outlook station. Clambering over crags so steep,finally, that they could not see ahead, they came to the little squarebuilding, now tattered by the stones that had fallen through its roof,tethered to the few feet of space available by wire cables that seemed tohold it down in the teeth of the winds. Suddenly below them lay the bowlof the ancient crater, bordered by snow fields now gray with ash. Thatthe ash had not been hot they judged from the fact that it had nowisemelted the snow, but lay on its surface. From the ragged edge of thesteaming basin, yellow with sulphur, rose the oppressive fumes they hadbeen getting more and more strongly. How deep was this funnel to theinterior of the earth? To their amazement it appeared to be only about 80feet deep. That, they decided,--coupled with the fact that the ash androcks exploded had not been hot, but cold, must be because the sides ofthe crater, as they gradually caved in, must have choked the neck of thecrater with debris, which had been expelled when the smoke and gases hadbeen exploded. There had been no lava flow, then!
They had retraced their steps to perhaps half a mile's distance when of asudden the earth beneath their feet began to heave and rumblethunderously. Ashes and rocks, some the size of flour sacks, some hugebowlders, began shooting into the air,--observers at a distance assuringthem afterwards that the smoke must have risen 3,000 feet above the peak.It grew black as midnight, the smoke stung their eyes and lungs andwhiffs of sulphur nearly overwhelmed them.
It was a position of deadly peril. Quick as thought, they ran, Norrisdragging his companion after him, beneath the shelter of an overhangingledge, where at least the rocks could not fall on them, and there theyburied their faces in the snow and waited.
What seemed hours was later pronounced to have been but fifteen minutes,though with the roaring as of mighty winds, and the subterraneangrumblings and sudden inky night, the crashing of stones and thunderingof rolling bowlders, it seemed like the end of the world.
Norris's companion had suffered a blow that dislocated his shoulder, butotherwise they emerged unhurt. They afterwards found several areas on thesides of Lassen where sulphurous gases were escaping from pools of hotmud or boiling water. They also visited a lake that had been formed atthe time of the lava flow of 200 years ago, (now a matter of legend amongthe Pitt River Indians), this lava having formed a dam across a littlevalley which later filled from the melting snows. The stumps of theinundated trees could still be seen.
A geyser, said the Geological Survey man, is just like a volcano, only itexpels steam and boiling water from the interior. There is a line ofvolcanic activity up and down the Pacific Coast, from Alaska to CentralAmerica, though Lassen is the only active peak in California, Shastahaving become quiescent save for the hot spring that steams through thesnow near its summit.
The North half of the range, he added, is covered with floods of
glassyblack lava and dotted with extinct craters, whereas the Southern half isalmost solid granite, though there are plenty of volcanic rocks to befound among its wild gorges. The rocks around Lassen tell a vivid storyof the chain of fire mountains that must have again and again blazed intogeysers of molten rock, till the whole smoking range was quenched beneaththe ice of that last glacier period, which through the ages has beensculpturing new lake and river beds, and grinding soil for the rebirth ofthe mighty forests.
The boys drowsed off that night to dream of fire mountains andexplorations in the nether regions.
The next day they planned to bi-plane up and down the John Muir trailagain and see if the Mexicans could have crossed to the Eastern side ofthe range. They might have made their way through some pass, travelingafter nightfall and hiding by day, and once on the desert around MonoLake they would be easy to locate. For it seemed ridiculous that theycould actually make a get-away.
CHAPTER XII
GOLD!
In the pass between two appalling peaks the two boys sighted the smoke ofa cook-fire, and without once reflecting that they were unarmed,pan-caked down for a closer inspection. But there was no need to land. Itwas a band of Indians. And though they searched till they were ready todrop with fatigue,--and all but frozen stiff in those highaltitudes,--not the sign of a Mexican did they sight after that.
They returned utterly discouraged.
"What kind of Indians were they?" asked Long Lester.
"Oh, just Indians," said the ranch boy.
"That is like saying, oh, just whites," said Norris. "Indians differ morethan you would ever imagine."
"Why is that, Mr. Norris?" Ted wanted to know. "They're mostly mightygood for nothing specimens, to judge from our Diggers."
"I'll tell you after supper," Norris promised them.
Pedro had been out with his trout rod. Descending to the river, whichhere circled around a huge bowlder from which he thought he could cast,he had a string in no time.
Now Pedro was thoroughly well liked, with his Castilian courtesy and hisever ready song. The lack of physical courage had been his greatestdrawback. Always had the fear been secret within him that at some crucialmoment he might show the white feather. His experience with the Mexicanshad removed that, but he was still mortally afraid of threethings,--bears, rattlesnakes, and thunder storms,--that is, real wildbears, not the half tame kind that haunt the Parks.
Still, he had not noticed the furry form that stood neck-deep in theriffles, fishing with his great, barbed paw,--so perfectly did he blendinto the background.
The shadow of the canyon wall had made twilight while yet the sun sentorange shafts through the trees on the canyon rim. Suddenly around theturn of the trail rose a huge brown form that gave a startled grunt,rising inquiringly on its shaggy hind legs and swinging its long headfrom side to side. Pedro's heart began beating like a trip-hammer. (Hewondered if the bear could hear it).
He wanted to run, to scream,--a course that would have been mostill-advised, for the bear might then have given chase. As it was, the boyremembered that the animal was probably more afraid than he,--or morelikely merely curious at this biped invasion of his wilderness,--andwould not harm him if no hostile move were made. The cinnamon bear ofthe Sierras, like his blood brother, the New England black bear, is agood-natured fellow.
With an iron grip on his nerves, he forced himself to stand stock-still,then back--ever so amenably--off the trail. The bear, finding nohostility intended, turned and lumbered up the mountainside.
"'Minds me of one time,' said Long Lester, when he heard the story, 'Iwas down to the crick once when I was a shaver, and along came a bigbrown bear. The bear, he stood up on his haunches, surprised like, andjust gave one 'woof.' About that time I decided to take to the talltimber." (At this, Pedro looked singularly gratified.) "Well, that bear,he took to the same tree I did, and I kept right on a-climbin' so highthat I get clear to the top,--it were a slim kind of a tree,--and the topbends and draps me off in the water!"
Around the turn of the trail rose a huge brown form.]
"What became of the bear?" Pedro demanded.
"I dunno. I didn't wait to see. But Mr. Norris here were a-sayin' there'snothin' in the back country a-goin' to hurt you unless'n it'srattlesnakes. Now when I was a-prospectin' I allus used to carry a hairrope along, and make a good big circle around my bed with it. The rattlerwon't crawl over the hair rope."
The boys thought he was joshing them, but Long Lester was telling theliteral truth. "Once I was just a-crawlin' into bed," he went on, "when Iheard a rattle," and with the aid of a dry leaf he gave a faint imitationof the buzzing "chick-chick-chick-chick-chick" that sounds so ominouswhen you know it and so harmless when you don't. "I flung back the coverswith one jerk, and jumped back myself out of the way. There was a snakedown at the foot of my blankets. They are always trying to crawl into awarm place."
"Then what?" breathed three round eyed boys.
"First I put on my shoes and made up a fire so's I could see, 'n' thenI take a forked stick and get him by the neck, and smash his head with astone."
"And yet I've heard of making pets of them," said Norris.
"They do. Some do. But I wouldn't," stated Long Lester emphatically. "NerI wouldn't advise any one to trust 'em too fur, neither."
"They say a rattler has one rattle on his tail for every year of hisage," ventured Pedro.
"A young snake," spoke up Ted, "has a soft button on its tail. And thenthe rattle grows at the rate of three joints a year, and you can't tell athing about its age, because by the time there are about ten of them, itsnaps off when it rattles."
"Down in San Antonio," said Ace, "we had an hour between trains once, andwe went into a billiard parlor where they had a collection ofrattlesnakes, stuffed. And they showed some rattles with 30 or 40 jointsto them."
"Huh!" laughed Ted. "That's easy! You can snap the rattles of severalsnakes together any time you want to give some tourist a thrill."
"You seem to know all about it," gibed Ace. "They had 13 species ofrattlesnakes down in this--it used to be a saloon. And ten of themWestern. They had a huge seven foot diamond back, and they had yellowones and gray ones and black ones and some that were almost pink. Imean, they had their skins. All colors----"
"To match their habitat," supplemented Norris. "Our California rattler isa gray or pale brown where it's dry summers, and in the Oregon woodswhere it's moist, and the foliage deeper colored, it's green-black allbut the spots. _I've_ seen them tamed. There was one guide up there whokept one in a cage, and it would take a mouse from his fingers."
"I wouldn't chance it," shivered Ted.
"Oh, this one would glide up flat on the floor of the cage. They can'tstrike unless they're coiled."
"I suppose he caught it before it was old enough to be poison," saidPedro.
"A rattlesnake can strike from the moment it's born. It's perfectlyindependent a few hours after birth."
"Ugh! Bet I dream of them now." But such was their healthy out-of-doorfatigue that they all slept like logs.
It was only the next day, however, that the two boys, Ace and Ted, pokingexploratively into a deep cleft in a rock ledge, were startled by anabrupt, ominous rattle, and beheld in their path the symmetrical coils ofthe sinister one. The inflated neck was arched from the center of thecoil and the heart-shaped head, with red tongue out-thrust, waved slowlyas the upthrust tail vibrated angrily. A flash of that swift head wouldinject the deadly virus into the leg of one of the intruders. Yet Tedknew the reptile would never advance to the attack.
Dragging Ace back with him, he instantly placed at least six feet betweenthem, so that, should the snake charge, it could not reach them. But withthe enemy obviously on the retreat, the snake glided to cover in atumbled mass of rocks at one side.
"Gee! We nearly stepped on him!" the ranch boy exclaimed, with a voicethat was not quite steady. "Next time we go poking into a place likethat, let's poke in a stick first, or throw a stone, to make su
re there's'nobody home.'"
"Wish I'd a brought a hair rope," mused Ace. "We might have had one thatwould go clear around all our sleeping bags. First chance we get, I'mgoing to buy one."
"Naw! We won't need one. Did you ever see a rattler catch a rabbit?"asked his chum.
"No, d'you?"
"Once I was going along when I noticed the trail of some sort of snakegoing across the road. Next thing I heard a rabbit squeal, and by thetime I spotted the snake it had a hump half way down its throat, and itwas swallowing and swallowing trying to get that rabbit down whole."
"I consider the possibility of rattlesnake bite the one biggest danger inthe whole Sierra," declared Norris, one night, lighting each stepcarefully over the rocks. "And he does his hunting by night."
"Considerate of him!" laughed Ace, "seeing that campers do most of theirsby day. But why is it such a danger? I've heard opinions pro and con."
"Rattlesnake venom disintegrates the blood vessels, makes the blood thinand unable to clot. I knew a man who was struck in the ankle, and theyhad to amputate the leg, and the very bones of that leg were saturatedwith the blood that had seeped through the weakened walls of the bloodvessels."
"How does it feel to be struck, I wonder?" the boy shuddered.
"This man's ankle became discolored practically immediately and began toswell. Of course the bite was through his sock, which must have kept alittle of the poison out of it, and it fortunately did not happen topenetrate an artery. We could have cut and kneaded the wound instantly toclear out as much as possible of the venom before it had time to enterthe blood system, but the fellow refused such heroic measures. We shouldhave taken him by force; it would have saved his leg, likely, forordinarily this, and a ligature, will do the work.
"Or we could have burned it clean, or injected the serum if we'd hadit. But as I was about to explain, he soon became dull and languid,breathing noisily, for the poison affected heart and lungs. It was thenthat he let us get to work,--almost too late,--or rather, that he ceasedhis protest. His whole leg swelled and turned black, clear up, he gotfeverish and nauseated, and for hours he kept swooning off, while weworked over him, almost giving up hope, and one of our men had gonepost-haste for an old guide who made the serum,--anti-venom serum."
"Did he finally pull through?"
"With the loss of a leg. If he hadn't had that off pronto, gangrene wouldlikely have set in and he'd have gone."
"But this serum--where do you get it?"
"I don't know. We got it of a man who made it. First he injected into amule a tiny drop of the venom."
"How did he get the venom?"
"Killed a snake. You know the poison is in a tiny sac at the root of eachfang. Well, after he had given the mule the first dose and he hadrecovered, he tried a larger one, then a still larger one, and so on,every few weeks for a year or more, until the mule's blood serum haddeveloped enough anti-toxin to make him immune to rattlesnake bite."
"But then what?"
"He let some of the mule's blood, separated the serum, sterilized it, andput it up in sealed tubes, which he kept in the cellar. This serum isinjected into the victim's blood with a hypodermic syringe, and if it isused before he has collapsed, it will cure him every time. We reallyought to have brought some along, just in case of extreme emergency. Ihave, however, a bottle of permanganate of potash crystals," and heshowed a little hard rubber tube two and a half inches long, one end ofwhich contained the crystals and the other a well sharpened lancet, asthe stuff has to be put right into the wound. This outfit, he explained,had only cost a dollar, and was so tiny it could be carried right on theperson when in danger of being snake bitten. However, it has to be usedinstantly, (within three or four minutes at the outside), "if it is toneutralize the corroding acid of the poison and do any good."
That night a bon-fire built up into a log cabin with a tepee of pinefringed poles atop sent the sparks flying, but was not uncomfortably hotexcept on their faces. These they shaded with their hat brims.
"I wonder why there is so much difference in Indians," mused Ace. "WhenDad and I visited the Hopis, there, on our way to the Grand Canyon, wewere impressed by their high degree of civilization. Like all thePueblos, they raised good crops, had a regular government, and even anart. And look at these Digger Indians, filthy, thieving creatures,grubbing for roots like wild animals, eating slugs and lizards, becausethey are too lazy to cultivate a piece of ground!"
"I remember," said Norris, "one of my favorite professors at Yale alwayssaid that civilization was largely dependent upon civilization," and hepointed out the Indians as an illustration. Of course he gave due creditto what he termed inherent mental capacity. But to climate he laid theenergy with which that capacity is developed,--always provided there weresufficient material resources. That is to say, even white men with finebrains could not evolve as high a degree of civilization in the ArcticCircle as they can where they have the material resources necessary tosupply the physical needs.
"But I should think the material resources of the Arctic Circle were aresult of the climate."
"In large part, they are. That just strengthens the point that climatehas had a lot to do with civilization, and incidentally with thedifferences between different tribes of Indians. I wonder if I can givehis theory straight! Well, anyway, here's the general idea. It appliesquite as much to all nationalities as it does to Indians in particular.
"What is our conception of The Noble Red Man? He is observant, he hasunlimited physical endurance, but he does not adapt himself to ourcivilization, nor does he work out new methods for himself, as we havedone since America was settled. He is conservative, in otherwords,--lacking in originality and inventiveness.
"Of course they came at some stage of their evolution from the primitivehome of man in Asia. So also did the Scandinavians,--so also did theJapanese. But while both of these finally located in cold but not toocold climates, nor steadily cold, they were merely stimulated. TheIndian, though,--the American Indian,--likely migrated by way of BeringStrait, and passing generations in the Esquimo lands, where it is aboutall they can manage to keep alive at all during the long, dark winters.The result? Those who were high strung nervously went insane,--just asmany an Esquimo and many a white man does to-day, under the necessity ofidling in a stuffy hut in the cold and darkness. It was only the mentallylazy who could survive that phase of their evolution. That accounts forcertain differences between all Indians and all white men.
"Remember, it wasn't the sheer cold so much as the monotony of theunbroken cold and darkness. The negroes of Africa also failed toprogress, but in their case it was the energy-inhibiting equatorialclimate, and especially the monotony of unbroken equatorial conditions.The European Nordics,--remember, of ancestral stock originating in thatsame Asiatic cradle,--had severe cold, and in summer, often, extremeheat,--but there was no monotony.
"The too active Hottentot soon killed himself off, and only the indolentsurvived. The races that have had long sojourns, in the course of theirracial wanderings, under desert conditions, where patient endurance is anasset, also suffered a decimation of their more alert members. The stolidwere the more fit to survive desert conditions. You will find races nowdwelling in favorable climates who may exhibit these unprogressivequalities, but back of them is a history of some experience that hasweeded out the more active individuals.
"But am I getting too long-winded?"
"You haven't told us yet why one tribe of Indians will be so differentfrom another, if they both came here via the Arctic Circle," urged Ace.
"Well, there is where another factor comes in,--that of materialresources. What could an Arab have accomplished with nothing but desertsands to work with? What can the Esquimos accomplish with little but iceto grow crops? They must secure their food by hunting, and hunters mustbe nomadic. Nomads cannot carry many creature comforts with them, nor canscattered groups be much mental stimulus to one another. Nor can the artsdevelop when the mere struggle for animal existence demands one's wh
oleenergy.
"These Digger Indians came from the as yet unirrigated deserts around LosAngeles, with its long dry season, whereas Hopis and other Pueblos aroundSanta Fe, though up against as dry a climate, taking it in actual numberof inches rainfall per year, have enough of their rain during the summermonths to enable them to raise crops, and hence to establish permanenthabitats, and hence to work out a form of government, a social system, anart and an organized religion."
"But the Utes around Salt Lake City, who were living on grasshoppers whenthe Pueblos were eating squash and beans,--utter savages,--didn't theyhave much the same climate as the Pueblos?"
"What I said of the Diggers of Los Angeles applies to them. Theirrainfall did not come at the right time of year to raise crops, and ofcourse in such desert conditions there were practically no wild fruits.
"The Indians of the more fertile parts of North America, like the earlypeople of Europe, had wild vegetation to supply the means of subsistence.And the wild vegetation also gave wild game a means of subsistence, tosay nothing of the means for clothing and shelter. Of course that is notthe whole of the story. There is, for instance, coal and iron, but ironhas to be smelted where there is forestation, and we come right back toclimate, as one of the principal factors in civilization.
"There is also energy,--zeal, determination. But what about the effect ofproper food and shelter on those qualities? And more important, whatabout the effect of climate?
"Elaborate tests have been made. Without going into all that, perhaps youwill take my word for it. But the best climate for either physical ormental efficiency is one that is variable,--for change isstimulating,--and that goes to no unlivable extreme, but offers the cold,dry winter and the warm, slightly rainy summer of, say, for instance, theEastern United States, or Central Europe, Italy, or Japan."
"But why does a winter in Southern California do an invalid so much good?"
"The change. The beneficial effects wear off with time.
"And just one word more, while we are on the subject. I'd hardly do myold professor justice unless I mentioned that he lays that third factorin civilization, inherent mental capacity, to the climatic conditions,not of the present, but of the ancestral history of the past. Butremember, the climate of, say, Greece, has not always been what it isto-day. Our Big Trees show, by an examination of their annual rings, thesame story that the rocks tell,--and that history tells,--that there havebeen constant fluctuations of climate, within certain limitations. Therecords of geology lead us to believe that California and theMediterranean countries have undergone the same climatic variations."
The next day the boys were so tired of sleuthing for the fire-bugs thatthey decided to join the others in a holiday and explore one of theneighboring peaks, leaving the burros and outfit at their camp of thenight before. About noon, the trail ended abruptly at a peak of graniteblocks each no larger than a footstool. Off to the left they could see apeak higher than the one immediately before them. It seemed to be a ridgeof three peaks, theirs the middle one, and once on the ridge, they couldpick a course along the crest.
A little further on, the trail narrowed till they could see a tiny lakeon either side, and a stone's throw below, pools as clear as mirrorsreflecting the twisted growth about their brims. Then Ace gave a shout,for down a hollow between two ridges to the north lay a patch of snow.
Sliding,--on their feet if they could manage it,--and snow-balling, theboys were surprised to find how short of breath they were at thiselevation, a trifle over ten thousand feet, Norris estimated,--for ontheir steady upward plod they had not particularly noticed it, or had notattributed their slightly unusual heaviness to altitude.
They were therefore willing enough to rest on top, though even at noonthe wind blew cold upon them. Stretching almost north and south beforethem rose the main crest of the Sierras,--peak after peak that they couldname from the map. They could see for at least a hundred miles. First thewild green gorges that made the peaks seem higher, then snow-capped andglacier-streaked altitudes rising one above another till they faded intopurple nothingness.
They did their climbing single file, with arms free, having disposed oftheir lunch at timberline. But where Norris had led the way up, Pedro wasthe first to start back. "Come on, why not take a short cut?" he shoutedin competition with the wind.
"All right." Norris stepped on a rock at that moment that turned withhim, barely escaping a wrenched ankle. He kept his eyes on his footingfor some moments after that. It was therefore not surprising that he didnot notice where Pedro was leading, till the latter called:
"Why, there's our lake, isn't it?"
The way began to be all bowlders, larger and larger ones. "Here, thatisn't the way we came," cautioned Norris.
"I know it," Pedro assured him, "but see, Mr. Norris, we're just goingaround this middle peak instead of over it."
"Better not try any stunts," warned the Geological Survey man. Had hebeen by himself, he would have gone straight back till he came to the waythey had gone up. But the boys were tired, and he hated to ask them toretrace their steps. Besides, he did not want to discourage initiative inthe Spanish boy.
But soon they found themselves scrambling over slabs so high that theyhad to take them on all fours, clambering over one as high as theirheads, then letting themselves down into the cranny between that and thenext.
"We sure never came over anything like this!" the rest of the party begancomplaining. But on they scuttled, leapt and sprawled, no one finding anybetter way.
"Hurry, there's our lake!" shouted Pedro finally. "I'll bet if I couldthrow a stone hard enough, it would scare the fish."
But Norris spoke in alarm: "We couldn't see any lake on the trail goingup. On the contrary, we saw the peak to our left. Don't you remember?Now see! That peak is on our _right_!"
"Fellows, we are on the wrong side of this ridge," he decided. "And whatis more, instead of going back down the middle crest, we have gone clearon to the third peak." (For the ridge was a three peaked affair, themiddle being the lowest.) "The best thing now is to circle around as nearthe top as we can go, till we strike the trail. If we keep circling, weare bound to strike it sooner or later. But let's not all go together, orwe might start a rock-slide. Let's 'watch our step!' What would we do ifone of you put his ankle out of commission?"
The boys had little breath to waste on comment. Probably none but Norrishad any vivid realization of the danger they were in, but each fellow hada keen eye to keeping his footing. Rock-slides the three boys had neverseen, but a sprained knee or a crushed foot was something they couldunderstand. Pedro also had a weather eye out for rattlesnakes, to whomthese rocks would have been paradise if it had not been such a chillelevation.
As the sun sank lower and lower, they began secretly to wonder what itwould be to have to spend the night on this windy peak, without even anemergency ration,--unpardonable over-thought! They circled steadily,Norris now in the lead, the boys spreading out fan-wise as they followed,Pedro even getting clear to the foot of the granite where he thought hewould have easier going through the woods, though he would also have alarger arc to traverse. He felt safer on solid ground, though had hemeasured, he might have seen that he had climbed as far in going down asdid the others in circling around.
Once a huge bowlder that overhung a precipice rocked under Ted, and itwas only by a swift spring that he saved himself. Many of the smallerrocks tipped warningly, and he frequently stumbled. How slow theirprogress seemed! How fast the sun was sinking in the west! And howastoundingly their shoes were wearing through! It was three hours laterthat Pedro, down in the edge of the woods, gave a shout and began wavinghis arms in the wildest manner. Then along the way that he picked incoming to meet them, Norris with his glasses could just make out thebrown ribbon of the trail.
Fifteen minutes more and they were lined up ready for the homeward march,cured once and for all of short-cuts, and divided only as to whether itwould be better to run, at the risk of a turned ankle, while there wasl
ight to see their footing, or walk, and have to go the last half of theway in darkness.
They finally did some of both, running where the trail lay free fromstones, and eventually having to make their way by the feel of the groundunder the feet, and the memory of the mountain meadows whose perfume theypassed, and the sound of the creek to their right. The stars were out,giving a faint but welcome light that served as guide when finally theystumbled into camp, bone-weary but safe, and nothing loth to set allhands for a square meal before tumbling in.
Throwing some of their reserve supply of fuel on the fireplace, theysoon had the home fires burning cheerily, and Pedro was demonstrating hiscan-opener cookery.
Next day a glitter from beneath the water of a rivulet high on themountainside, caught Ted's eye. Dipping with his tin cup, he brought upa specimen of sand and water. Could it be only mica that glistened so?Saying nothing to Ace, (for he remembered Long Lester's tale of salting amine once when "the boys" wanted some one of their number to stand treatby way of celebration of his new-found riches), he slyly slipped analuminum plate from out the pack and began that primitive operation thatused to be known as pan and knife working. Falling a little behind, hekept at it until he had separated out some heavy yellow grains thatproved malleable when he set his teeth on them. It was coarse gold!
It was now time to announce his find, which he did to the amazement ofall but the old prospector. A more careful inspection of the bend wherehe had found it proved it to be only the tiniest of pockets, though undertheir combined efforts that day it yielded what the old man pronounced tobe about a hundred and fifty dollars' worth of dust. Still, even that wasnot to be sneezed at, as Long Lester put it, in terms of Ted's collegefund,--for they all insisted on contributing their labor to his find.Ted, though, insisted equally that it be their stake for another campingtrip.
Later that same day they came to the remains of an old hut, now overgrowninside and out with vines and underbrush. In one corner the old manunearthed what he pronounced to be the rusted mining tools of the earlydays. A fallen tree that lay across the doorway had to be chopped throughand cleared away before they could enter, and on stripping a bit of thedry bark away for firewood, Pedro was puzzled to find what appeared likehieroglyphics on its nether side. He showed Norris, but what it could behe could not imagine, till Norris happened to try his pocket shavingmirror on it. Then, clear as carving, only inverted, they spelled out thelegend:
"CLAME NOTISE--JUMPERS WILL BE SHOT."
These were evidently the letters that had been carved on the treetrunk--as they judged, about six feet above its base, and though the saphad long since obliterated the original, the bark still told the storywhere it had grown over the wound. By chopping through the log at thatpoint and making a rough count of the annual rings of growth, theyestimated that all this had happened forty years ago. What had become ofthe old miner? For such his tools acclaimed him. Why had he never comeback? Had he been overtaken by bandits, robbed of his buckskin bag ofdust, and murdered? Or had he struck a richer claim elsewhere?
They dug beneath what once had been his crude stone hearth, in the hopeof buried treasure, but no such luck rewarded them, and finally theymoved on up the mountainside, past vistas of green-black firs andyellow-green alders. As usual in these dry altitudes, the fiery sun ofnoon-day had grown chill at sunset, the wind stopped singing through thepines, and the weird bark of a coyote seemed to accentuate the lonelinessthat the wilderness knows most of all when some abandoned humanhabitation brings it home to one.
But a heaped up bon-fire and a singing kettle soon drove the shadows fromthe circling mountain meadow that was to be their home for the night.
"Thet there cabin," drawled Lester, "sure made me feel as if I were backon my old stamping grounds. 'Minds me of the place where I once found achunk o' glassy white quartz half the size of my head with flakes ofcolor in it that netted me $200. I spent quite consid'able time huntingfor the vein that came from, but I never did, nohow."
Norris explained to Ted and Pedro that a quartz bowlder will often bewashed along a river.
* * * * *
They were awakened by the usual concert of hee-haws, as the burros, whofollowed at their heels all day like dogs, (except when they gotcontrary), woke the echoes with their loneliness.
That day led them over another of the parallel ridges that comb the Westflank of the Sierra, and into a precipitous canyon, over red sandstonesand green shales, and slates of Tertiary formation, till they came toanother hot spring and decided to pitch camp and all hands make use ofthe hot water. A natural bath tub and a smaller wash tub were foundhollowed out of the stony banks, doubtless carved by whirling bowldersfrom the spring floods, and with the joy known only to the weary camperthey performed their ablutions, filling the tubs, each in turn, by meansof the nested pails. What grinding and whirling it must have taken, theyreflected, as they felt the smoothness of their symmetrical bowls, tohave hollowed these from the solid rock! With accompaniment of drift logstumbling end for end, as the river rose and foamed beneath the thousandtrickles of melting snow!
"Ever been up here in winter?" Ace asked the old prospector.
"Not exactly here, but I been places almighty like it."
The old prospector told them how, in the days of the 49ers, (vividrecollections of which his father had collated to his youthful ears), theMexicans had been treated in a way they had practically never forgiven.The land was free. Discovery and appropriation of a mining claim gavetitle, provided it was staked out and a notice scratched on a tin plateaffixed to the claim stake, and likewise provided that the size of theclaim accorded with the crude ruling for that region. Fifty feet wasgenerally allowed along a river, or even a hundred where the claim wasuncommonly poor and inaccessible, though where it was uncommonly rich,miners were sometimes restricted to ten square feet apiece.
But Mexicans were generally refused the benefits of the gold claims, the"greasers" often being ejected by force of arms from the more valuableclaims. Sometimes they were given three hours' grace for their get-away.More within the letter of the law, a tax was imposed on alien claimholders, but at first such a heavy one that it was practicallyprohibitive. This resulted in border warfare, and to many of the Mexicansoriginally on the land, abject poverty. At the Mexican dry diggings,which, with their bull rings and fandangoes, had sprung up here and therein the foothills, there was bloody defiance of the tax collector. Othergroups became highwaymen, who robbed and murdered the blond race whomthey felt had cheated and maltreated them, stabbing from ambush, ororganizing into bands of road agents, who systematically robbed miners oftheir dust and stage drivers of their express boxes, and as oftenmurdering their victims.
There was Rattlesnake Dick, among other desperadoes, who with twogangsters, Alverez and Garcia, had terrorized the gold diggings till,five years after the gold rush, he had been killed by a rival bad man.
Ace was so tired, he rested again that day, merely bringing his bi-planein to the new camp site.
As Long Lester drawled over the camp fire, the drowsy boys lived again inthe days when a pinch of gold dust in a buckskin bag was currency, andred shirted miners gambled away their gains or drank it up, in a land ofhot sunshine and hard toil, where a tin cup and a frying pan largelycomprised their bachelor housekeeping apparatus, their provender such ascould be brought in on jingle belled mule teams, their chief diversionsthe occasional open air meeting or the lynchings of their necessarilyrough and ready justice.
The more adventurous always abandoned a moderate prospect for a goldrush. Some of them made rich strikes; others ended their days in poverty,after all.
The fire drowsed to a bed of red coals and the old man's chin was sunk inhis whiskers, but still he talked on, almost as if in his sleep, andstill the boys propped their eyes open while they stowed away in theirmemories pictures of the pony express riders, of the horse thievesbranded--in this land of horseback distances--by having their ears cutoff, and
of the unshaven miners, sashes bound Mexican fashion around thetops of their pantaloons, the bottoms thrust into their boots, slouchhats shading their unshaven faces, as they panned the glitteringsediments or built their sluices, with rocks for retaining the heavyparticles of gold washed over them.
Gold had been found in a belt 500 miles long by 50 wide,--and it was acherished myth that somewhere along the crest of the range lay a motherlode.
But that, Norris told them, was not the way of the precious metal. The"mother lode" was a myth.
The next day the two boys started once again to look for theincendiaries, for when Ace set out to do a thing, it was do or die.
Pedro had now overcome his fear for bears, Mexicans, and getting lost,but the too-gently reared youth had never conquered his nervousness atthunder storms. He meant to, though, for he had come to consider uselessfears as so much surplus luggage. Just as when he was a small boy he hadovercome his fear of the dark by going right out into it and wanderingaround in it till he felt at home in it, so now he meant to go right outinto the next thunder storm that came, becoming its familiar, till heknew the worst, and no longer felt this unreasoning fear.
It was therefore with a certain satisfaction, (though coupled with anequally certain inward shrinking), that as he scanned the skies for somesign of the returning bi-plane, he noticed, rising above a green fringeof silver firs across the canyon, the snowy cumulus of a cloud. This wasabout an hour before meridian, the time the usual five minute daily noonthunder storm began to gather.
But to-day he noted with surprise, not unmixed with alarm, that beyondthis one small mountain of the upper air,--so like the glacier-polishedgranite slopes beneath that it might have been a fairy mountain, swellingvisibly as it rose higher and higher above the canyon wall,--beyond thisfor as far as he could see were other domes and up-boiling vapormountains. What did it betoken? A cloud-burst?--For Sierra weather is notlike that in the Eastern mountain ranges, and such an assemblage sweepingalong the slopes and flying just above the green firs of the lowerforests must mean something beyond ordinary in the line of weather.
Had he known more of Sierra weather, he would that instant have given uphis plan of being out in this specimen, but his new-born resolution wasstill strong within him, and--he did not know. One above another for asfar as he could see the pearl-tinted billows rose from among theneighboring peaks, swelling visibly as it rose higher and higher. Thenthey began floating together, the cloud canyons taking on grayer tints,then deep purplish shadows, and their bases darkened with the weight oftheir vapory waters.
With the sudden reverberation of a cannon shot, the first thunderboltcrashed just ahead of a blinding zig-zag of lightning, and echoing andreechoing from peak to granite peak, with ear-splitting, metallicclearness, it rang its way down the canyon walls, till the echoes diedaway. Soon the big drops began spattering loudly on the granite slopes,till the drenched boy, bending his hat-brim to the onslaught, lost hisfooting in the new slipperiness of the smooth, sloping rocks, down whicha solid sheet of water now raced, dimpling silver to the pelt of eachadditional drop.
Before he could collect his scattered wits, another thunder peal camecannonading at the mountain mass, and almost behind him a solitary oldfir tree shook the ground with its fall. Another fir was slivered intohuge splinters that flew--fortunately for Pedro--just too far away to hithim. Then loosened rocks and bowlders began bounding and re-bounding downthe cliffs till their thunder seemed as loud as that from the heavens.
The lightning struck now here, now there, among the peaks, attracted byveins of mineral.
Uneasy on account of the flying stones and falling tree trunks, Pedro wasabout to take shelter by crawling under a shelving rock when the rockitself was dislodged by a flash of lightning, and went pommeling to theslide-rock on the slope below.
Seemingly all in the same breath, the rock-slide started, with a roar asof fifty express trains, as it seemed to Pedro's long-suffering ears. Anelectric storm always does start snow and rock slides.
As if that had been the grand climax, the storm ceased almost as suddenlyas it had begun. By his watch it had not been an hour, but from theamount of damage done to both the geography and Pedro's feelings, itmight have been a year, or a century.
"But here we are, safe still," he told himself in surprise. "After thisexperience, I don't believe there is anything worse anywhere to lookforward to. So what's the use of worrying about anything any more?Ever!"--The experience had been worth while. Just how he was to make hisway back to camp was another question.
Loosened rocks and bowlders began bounding down thecliffs.]
With the mountainside a choice between slippery, dripping rock slopes andsliding mud, fallen tree trunks and soggy forest floor, it was no meantest he had to meet. But as the irrepressible California sun once moreburst forth in golden glory, the clean-washed air was all balsamicfragrance, every leaf and fir needle held at its tip a drop of opal, andthe birds,--emerging from the holes in which they had safely hidden,those who survived,--burst into happy gratitude.
As luck would have it, an hour before the storm broke, the two boys hadsighted the smoke of a camp-fire hidden away down in the bottom of agulch, with slide rock to cut off any approach from the main ridge.Flying low, they could actually identify fat Sanchez and his twocompanions, who had their pack burros with them. It seemed too good to betrue! But before they could decide whether to sail down and try tocapture them themselves, or to go for Long Lester, the oncoming stormbegan to set them careening, and they had to fly out of the elements atright angles to the storm's approach.
Returning three hours later with the old ex-deputy sheriff,--it was aspot not to be mistaken,--Ace gazed in complete stupefaction at the gulchwhere the Mexicans had been encamped. For there was now nothing there butslide-rock!
The dust that still grayed the atmosphere spoke clearly of thecatastrophe. And there would not have been one chance in a million oftheir escaping. That they had not done so, their non-appearance anywherein the neighborhood bore abundant testimony.
The Mexicans had been captured by those same natural forces they hadtampered with when they set the forest fires. The little camping partywas free to return as soon as their time was up.
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[Transcriber's Note: Each term described in the glossary originally hada pronunciation key in parenthesis. This key contained letters that arenot available in any modern font, including UTF-8, and therefore is notdisplayable. Images of the original pronunciation keys are provided inthe HTML version. Pronunciation keys are omitted in this text version.]
GLOSSARY
Archeopteryx, a fossil bird that had teeth and whose spinal columnextended into the tail.
Archeozoic, the era in which the simplest forms of life originated.
Basalt, a dark brown or black igneous rock.
Calcite, calcium carbonate, a rock that includes limestone and marble.
Cambrian, the first period of the Paleozoic era,--that of the firstabundance of marine animals.
Carboniferous, producing or containing coal.
Cenozoic, the age of mammal dominance. It included the last great iceage, the time of the transformation of apes into man, and the rise ofthe higher mammals.
Comanchian, that period of the Mesozoic era that gave rise to flowersand the higher insects.
Cretaceous, that period of the Mesozoic era that gave rise to theprimitive mammals.
Dinosaur, an order of extinct reptiles, of which there were a dozenvarieties, mostly lizardlike and of huge size.
Exhume, to dig out of the ground, or in the case of a fossil, to takeout of its place of burial in the rock.
Faulted, interrupted continuity of rock strata by displacementalong a plane of fracture, generally caused by an earthquake.
Formative, the era of the birth and growth of the earth out of thespiral nebula of the sun, the beginnings of the atmosphere andhydrosphere, and of the continent
al platforms and ocean basins.
Fossil, the remains of plants and animals of prehistoric times, nowfound embedded in the rocks.
Psychozoic, the era of man, including the time during which manattained his highest civilization (perhaps the past 30,000years), to the present.
Geology, the history of the earth as read in the rocks.
Geyser, a boiling spring which periodically sends forth jets of water,steam and gas.
Glacier, a slow moving river of ice, remnant of the last ice age,generally found flowing down the mountain peaks.
Granite, a granular rock consisting of quartz, mica and feldspar,--thematerial of the original crust of the earth.
Gypsum, the mineral from which plaster of Paris is made.
Ichthyosaurus, an extinct fishlike reptile of huge size.
Igneous, produced by the action of fire (i.e., a rock).
Jurassic, that period of the Mesozoic era that gave rise to birds andflying reptiles.
Lava, the melted rock ejected by a volcano.
Limestone, a rock due in the main to the accumulated debris of plantsand animals, especially to the shells of marine animals.
Lithosphere, the rocky crust of the earth.
Mesozoic, the era of reptile dominance, in which occurred the rise ofdinosaurs, birds and flying reptiles, flowers and higher insects, andprimitive mammals.
Metamorphic, recrystallized by heat (i.e., a rock), or changed bypressure.
Metamorphose, to change into a different form.
Miocene, that period of the Cenozoic era when apes were transformedinto man.
Paleozoic, the era of fish dominance, in which occurred the firstabundance of marine animals, the first known fresh-water fishes, thefirst known land floras, the first known amphibians, the first insectsand the first accumulations of coal.
Proterozoic, the age of invertebrate dominance, containing anearly and a late ice age.
Reconnaissance, a preliminary survey.
Scarp, declivity.
Shale, a fine-grained, layered, sedimentary rock, generally easilycrumbled.
Silica, a form of quartz.
Stalactite, a pendant cone of calcium carbonate deposited by drippingwater (as in a cave).
Stalagmite, a deposit (on the floor of caves) resembling an invertedstalactite.
Strata, layers of rock or earth.
Striated, marked with fine grooves or lines of color.
Triassic, the period that gave rise to dinosaurs.
Triceratops, a fossil giant lizard.
Uplift, an upheaval of rock strata.
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KEY TO GEOLOGIC TIME
Archeozoic era. (Protoplasms.)
Proterozoic era. (Invertebrates.)
Paleozoic era. (Fish.) Cambrian period. Ordovician period. Silurian period. Devonian period. Mississippian period. Pennsylvanian period. Permian period.
Mesozoic era. (Reptiles.) Triassic period. Jurassic period. Comanchean period. Cretaceous period.
Cenozoic era. (Mammals.) Oligocene and Eocene time Pliocene and Miocene time. Pleistocene time.
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