CHAPTER XI
THE VALLEY OF TEN THOUSAND SMOKES
The next morning they had a good look around before deciding which way to go. On one side pointed firs in patches on the canyon walls contrasted with the snow in the ravines. There was a brook that divided, then reunited in white strands, only to spread out into a smooth, glistening sheet, golden in the sunlight, to join the green river.
The notches between two rounding, glacier-smoothed granite masses disclosed distant peaks, snow-capped, their jagged ledges thrusting through the mantling white, dazzling in the sunshine like a mirror,—now gray under a hazing sky, now dappled under a passing shower cloud.
They finally decided to wind through the gap, and Pedro, Norris and Long Lester started on with the burros, while Ace and Ted started fine-combing the map beneath them for the elusive Mexicans. Very probably, they thought, they had been hiding in some of the caves that honeycombed the region, and sooner or later they would have to reappear. Their supplies could not hold out forever.
All along the Western flank of the Sierra, (as both Norris and Long Lester were able to assure them), from the McCloud River in the North to the Kaweah,—a distance of at least 400 miles,—stretched a belt of metamorphic limestone, reaching up to as high as 7,000 feet, and it was fairly riddled with caves.
But again the day went by without success. Ace only squared his chin. Ted offered to abdicate his observer’s seat in favor of any one of the party, but Pedro and Long Lester preferred terra firma, and even Norris found more to interest him in the rocks beneath their feet.
Once a little spiral of smoke drew them to a canyon head where they found three fishermen with a pack train of seven horses,—but no Mexicans. They searched Southward along the John Muir trail, returning along the Eastern flank,—but to no purpose, so far as the fugitives were concerned.
As no one had had time to fish, they dined on tinned corned beef, which Ace, the cook for the day, made the mistake of salting. (After that he had to make tea twice.)
“One thing I’d like fer to ask you, Mr. Norris,” said Long Lester that night around the bon-fire, “is where does the salt in the ocean come from? I don’t see for the life of me, from what you’ve told us––”