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.
“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 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 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!
CHAPTER XXII
DR. SHONTO RIDES ALONE
DOWN on the desert, a day’s journey in the saddle from Diamond H Ranch, where the pilgrims to the Valley of Arcana had left their cars, lived an old man named Gustav Tanburt. His rancho had its existence because of an oasis similar to the one at Diamond H, and he had prospered throughout the years that he had lived there as a desert rat.
Through his broad acres passed a road extending at right angles to the road that entered the property of his distant neighbour. This last-mentioned road—the one by which Charmian’s party had reached Diamond H Ranch—went no farther, and the trackless sweeps of the desert separated the two properties. But Tanburt’s road was moderately well travelled. Freighters driving eight- and ten- and twelve-horse teams pursued it on their way to a distant mining community in the mountains. Gus Tanburt’s ranch was a station for them and all other travellers passing that way, and Gus took a heavy toll for meals and feed for stock and even water. In the mountains he had cheap pasturage in the National Forest, for he was an old-timer in the Shinbone Country and had used the grass long before the passage of the act which placed the forest lands under government control. Hence he had the preference, as is the government ruling, and he used it to force out all competing cattlemen in the district.