The eyes of both now were lowered. Shonto glanced quickly at Mary Temple. Her gaunt face was set in hard lines. She knew, and she disapproved—at least until she knew more about this handsome young man who had invaded their quiet retreat.
And Shonto— Well, Shonto disapproved, too. Shonto was far older than Andy—too old, perhaps, to think of loving a woman of Charmian Reemy’s age. But he put all this behind him. If Andy and Charmian were going in search of the unexplored valley, he meant to go along. Several years her senior though he knew himself to be, Shonto believed that he was the man for a woman like Charmian Reemy rather than Andy Jerome. Anyway, he meant to know more about her. It would not do for Andy to win her away from him if she was what he believed her to be. Yes, Shonto would go along, and his life’s work could go hang, for all he cared. Until he knew the truth about Charmian Reemy, at any rate.
“We could find it easily, I guess, in an airplane,” Andy suggested.
“An airplane!” scoffed the girl. “Not I! I hate airplanes—I hate anything mechanical. I’ll find that valley as my forefathers would have found it, or I’ll stay away. And I must think up an appropriate name for it. Doctor Shonto seems undecided between ‘the undiscovered valley’ and ‘the unexplored valley.’ Neither is romantic enough. I’ll think up a name before morning. I like to name things. And I’m going, really—if we can overtake Leach and Morley. Do you approve, Mary Temple?”
“No!” snapped Mary Temple, and passed the venison to Andy with jerky hospitality.
CHAPTER IV
A MEMBER OF THE CLAN
DR. INMAN SHONTO, always an early riser, was the first one stirring at El Trono de Tolerancia the following morning. He left the log house by the door through which he had entered it the night before, and gazed off into the timberland to the east, through which Andy and he had reached the place. He turned and walked around the cabin, and then he realized what Charmian Reemy had meant when she stated that it was next to impossible for one to be intolerant when he looked from her home to the west.
The cabin was set on a gigantic rock that overhung the brow of the mountain. A metal railing had been erected along the edge of the rock to prevent the unwary from plunging down at least forty feet to the rock’s massive base. From the base the land sloped off sharply for perhaps half a mile. And beyond that it continued to slope more gently to level wooded stretches below. The great forest over which one looked would have seemed endless were it not for the broad Pacific in the far distance, which began at the end of the mass of green and rolled on to the uttermost ends of the earth.
Never in his life had the nature-loving man seen a more gorgeous picture. It seemed that the very world was laid out for him to gaze upon from that gaunt pinnacle. He stepped to the iron rail, cold and dewy, grasped it in his strong, lean hands, and stood there, bareheaded, reverent.
“Do you feel tolerant of all mankind now, Doctor?” came a low voice at his elbow.