they lived in an enchanted land, bright and tranquil under an indian-summer sun while mid-day hours endured, crisp with frost of mornings, calmly cold throughout the nights.
charmian had not transferred her dwelling-place to the redwood hut after all her labours at removing the ghastly reminders of a vanished clan. andy, when he saw it, opined that it would be far from water-tight despite his efforts with a wooden shovel that he had made with hunter’s axe and jackknife. what they wanted to do, he said, was to find a cave in the cliffs somewhere up the river. who ever heard of castaways living in anything but a cave! and there must be caves in those craggy cliffs. where was the romance of the valley of arcana if it could boast no caves? anyway, he was not content to remain in the grove that harboured the ruined village. there were over a hundred square miles in the enchanted valley, and few of them had been explored.
they set off early the following morning, charmian loaded with the packs, andy carrying her store of nuts, acorns and half-dried fruit and mushrooms in a blanket. they struck out for the river, deciding to explore its mysteries first. if it was in reality the lost river of the upper benches, andy wanted to see how it found its erratic way into the valley.
[202]they crossed smiling meadows, lush with bronze-green grass. once, from a little rise, they caught a glimpse of the distant blue lake. they came upon herds of deer which were too curious to continue their flight after the first startled dash, but turned and surveyed them in blank amaze. a skunk was hunting bugs in the grass, rooting in the turf, his plume asway above his striped back. the banks of the river were endowed with graceful willows, alders, yews, incense cedars, cottonwoods, oaks, california buckeyes, red madrones, spicy bays, and occasional pines and spruces, with grape vines crawling and climbing everywhere. the river bottoms were rank with huckleberry bushes, and andy said:
“find a bee tree and we’ll get some honey and preserve those berries and grapes in indian jars—if we find any more. stretch a piece of hide over the mouth and seal it with spruce gum. stay here all our lives, by golly! no? yes?”
it was like a park, this valley of arcana. meadows merged into woodland stretches or necks of timber, to continue on the other side as grassy and level as before. the river plunged over outcroppings of bedrock, often in foaming cataracts from ten to fifty feet in height. in a neck of woods, in a drift that had collected about the roots of trees, they found a large canoe. flat bottomed it was, blunt at either end, and burned and gouged from solid sycamore. near it on the river bank they found an ancient temescal, or indian sweat house.
these were the men’s clubs of the rogue river[203] indians or the klamaths, andy said. the canoe, also, pointed either to these tribes or pitt river tribes, all belonging to the north. the temescals were never entered by the women, he explained. the males lolled in them after bathing in the icy water, which usually followed a terrific sweat over heated stones, or beside a blazing fire. the canoe, he thought, might prove serviceable if they could discover some means of calking the checks and cracks that time had wrought in its sides and bottom.
they camped at noon by the river, and andy cast a line for trout. they rose to the bait readily, some big ones so eager as to leap entirely from the water at the cast. they roasted them wrapped in leaves, and buried in the heated ground, indian fashion. the trees were alive with grey squirrels, impish little douglas squirrels, and impertinent chipmunks. birds sang ceaselessly. their tramp of the afternoon showed them herd after herd of deer, and once a herd of antelope. quail, grouse, jackrabbits and the little “blue peter” rabbit in the plateau chaparral, ducks, mudhens and dabchicks on the river, a condor, rarest of california vultures, riding overhead in the beryl heavens. closely flying flocks of wild pigeons threw hovering shadows across the valley, into which they swooped to feed on the bitter black berries of the cascara bush. as they neared a pyramidal mountain in the centre of the valley they saw bighorn sheep browsing off the brush.
abreast the mountain they came upon rugged country, where the river plunged down incessantly in a[204] hundred falls and cataracts. and here, as they crossed the ridge, andy found his cave and made lengthy apology to the valley of arcana for doubting its claims to romance.
it was in the ridge of rocks that extended at right angles to the river on both sides. if they made a habitation of the cave there would be constantly in their ears the roar of the waterfall that found its way through the ridge and plunged down about thirty feet to the lower level. centuries of the rushing water had worn down the ridge, and the stream leaped through a narrows, with the piled-up boulders towering above it on either side. on the side where the cave was located grew a clump of sucker redwoods, which had sprung up from a mother stump about six feet in diameter. examination of the perdurable stump showed that the original tree had been felled with axes. many years had elapsed since its fall, for the redwood is of tremendously slow growth, and the tall, slim suckers that surrounded the stump were a foot in diameter. andy decided that he could cut down two of them and cause them to fall side by side directly across the chasm. this would give them a bridge from one rocky eminence to the other, and it would hang twenty feet or more above the waterfall.
though all evidences of a beaten trail to the cave had disappeared, it was an easy matter to trace the upward progress of the one that had existed in the days of the lost tribe. boulders of large size evidently had been rolled away from the most logical route. they wound their way in and out among the[205] towering rocks to the mouth of the cave, probably seventy feet above the narrows. from below they had seen its gaping mouth, but were fearful that it would prove a shallow disappointment—a mere niche in the rocky hillside. but it turned out to be a substantial, denlike tunnel, forty feet or more in length.
men had not fashioned it, but within they had moved huge boulders to one side or the other to make more room in the middle. irregular stones had covered the floor, too, and smaller ones had been thrown into the crevices, with dirt piled on top, to level it off. the width and height were probably fifteen feet.
they found more skeletons, more pottery, more implements of war and the chase, and crude tools of stone and bone. the boulders inside were decorated, designs and hieroglyphics having been hacked below the surface. some sort of red paint of a decidedly perdurable quality had been worked into the gouged lines. once again charmian saw an unhappy lady ridding herself of the frog that she had swallowed. but in this instance she did not suffer alone. if misery loves company, she must have been in an amiable mood, despite her throes. for no less than a dozen of her unfortunate sisters were engaged in a like performance on boulders and stony walls.
“i’ve got it, charmian,” andy cried with the enthusiasm of an amateur ethnographer. “i know now what it means. the northern tribes had woman doctors, and they treated their patients by sucking the flesh. they were supposed to suck out the evil spirit that was tormenting them, and this evil spirit often[206] took the form of a snake or a lizard or a frog. in order to make good, a doctress is said to have sometimes swallowed a live frog before beginning treatment; and when she threw it up the patient and his relatives were convinced that the faker had done her best. this was probably the cave of the doctresses. say—doesn’t it stand to reason?”
“how pleasant!” laughed charmian. “i see now how the nursery term ‘quack frog’ had its birth. let’s remove the wizards’ remains and take possession of the cave. can we ever make it cheerful after what you’ve told me? i christen it the cave of hypocritical frogs. that’s rather long and confusing, but so the indians might have called it had there been unbelievers. we could live in this cave indefinitely, andy. it will be dry and warm, don’t you think? i hope no bear has decided to hibernate here throughout the winter.”
somehow or other both of them were always unconsciously planning for a long stay in the valley of arcana. andy had proposed hunting up a bee tree, the honey from which might be used in preserving grapes and huckleberries. he had planned a bridge over the waterfall, when a mile below they had passed a riffle which offered an easy fording. now charmian was looking at the cave in the light of a more or less permanent habitation. she thought of this directly after she had spoken and bit her lip in vexation. wasn’t dr. shonto to hurry right back to them? two weeks, at the most, and he should be worming his way into the valley, searching the distances for the smoke of their signal fire. she threw off her sudden[207] depression. it was best to be prepared. the fact that they were planning for months to come meant nothing. that was only the part of wisdom. and they had nothing else to do. what if they did leave behind them two weeks hence the results of their trifling labours in the valley? it was only play. weren’t they like children playing at the game of keeping house?
andy removed the skeletons, cleaned house, carried their belongings up to the cave, and arranged things for their temporary comfort. then he went to catch some trout in the swirling pool below the waterfall for the evening meal.
charmian slept in the cave that night, andy in the open. they were about and had breakfast early in the morning, and they spent the greater part of the day in carrying flat stones into the cave to be used in building a partition. the inner room was to be the girl’s, while andy would occupy the space within the mouth of the cave and guard her. they doubted whether there was anything to guard her from, but it seemed the proper thing to do.
when the stone partition was up andy hacked at two of the redwood suckers with his hunter’s axe until they fell almost side by side across the water. the top of the last to fall, however, was pitched off when it struck the top of the first down. this left a rather wide gap between the trunks, so they busied themselves at cutting and carrying poles, which they laid close together and parallel with the stream, from trunk to trunk.
[208]“that’ll make a better bridge than ever,” andy approved. “you won’t be afraid to cross now. what next? let’s see—there’s no particular hurry about sweating the bitterness out of the acorns, or furnishing our home, or anything like that. we can do all such things after the winter sets in.” (there it was again!) “what d’ye say we go back and drag that canoe out of the drift pile and see what we can do toward filling the cracks?”
they spent a day at this task. spruce gum, they found, filled the gaps admirably and stuck there, hardening when the clumsy craft was in the water. andy got in it and guided it about with a makeshift paddle. but the current was swift and threatened to carry him down to one of the many cataracts, so he quickly beached the canoe and dragged it up on the pebbles until he had time to make a paddle that would serve.
they busied themselves during following days at turning the acorns from cold water into hot water, and reversing the process time and again to “sweat” out the bitterness. there were large stone mortars in the cave, and in these, with the pestles they found, they powdered nuts for their daily use and made rather tasteless bread and pasty bellota of the powder. their grapes and huckleberries and mushrooms were thoroughly cured by now, and they stowed them away. they gathered acorns, loose piñon nuts, and buckeyes by the thousand, catching them like squirrels. the cones of the piñon pines they heaped in piles and built fires over them, which loosened the[209] nuts and roasted them at one operation. andy taught charmian to make and set figure-four traps for rabbits. of willow boughs they made traps for quail, and gathered the larger grass seeds for bait. they were constantly employed, and ten days slipped by before they were aware. now and then clouds glided across the blue dome above, but the weather remained dry and tranquil, though noticeably colder. daily andy trapped game for food, for it was an easy matter to lure the quail and rabbits and grouse. they jerked rabbits over cedar-wood fires and hung them in the cave. charmian had set her foot down on shooting deer, though andy had a heavy-calibre rifle. they were so tame and inquisitive and confident, with their big glistening eyes fixed upon the usurpers in friendly wonder, that to kill one of them seemed to her wantonly cruel. she turned her back when andy took live quail and grouse from the traps and dispatched them. the rabbits, caught in deadfalls, died instantly under falling stones or logs.
and so the short days passed until the sky was overcast with mackerel clouds and the wind rustled the dead leaves of the deciduous trees and sent them scurrying through the air. andy’s hair was growing long. they had missed a day or two, they thought, but they knew that dr. shonto should be nearing the valley on his return. all day long they kept their signal fire smouldering near the mouth of the cave of hypocritical frogs, and from it a thin stream of smoke rose constantly.
then one morning andy confessed to charmian[210] that his stock of tablets was growing alarmingly low, and that for the past four days he had been splitting them and taking only half doses.
that night the air over the valley was filled with a peculiar moan. all seemed quiet about them on the valley’s floor, but up above the moan continued, a weird, dismal battle anthem of the mountain winds. next morning soft snowflakes were falling into the sink, while up above a great storm raged, and snow-dust blew from the tops of distant peaks in awe-inspiring banners half a mile in length. the war banners of the mountain winds, mobilizing for the grand charge and chanting triumphantly!
