THE papers had been signed. Andy Jerome and Dr. Inman Shonto had wired to Los Angeles to explain that they probably would not be home for a month. Smith Morley’s wife had arrived in San Francisco, since the adventurers’ trip to the city had necessitated a change in their route to the Shinbone Country. Several days were spent in outfitting the expedition. And just a week after Dr. Shonto had told Charmian Reemy of the prospectors they set off early in the morning, with Charmian, Andy, and Mr. and Mrs. Morley in the leading car.
Two days later, having driven leisurely and stopped at hotels en route, they negotiated a steep, wooded pass and saw the yellow desert stretched out before them, three thousand feet above the sea. Across it continued the road, straight as a carpenter’s chalk-line, until it contracted to a pinpoint in the hazy distance and disappeared with the curvature of the earth.
The big cars wallowed into the sandy ruts and continued on. Weird growths were on either side of the road—great flat-palmed cacti, whispering yucca palms, scattering greasewood bushes. The wind was strong, and the sand was driven into the travellers’ faces in waves. Now and then the cars crossed dry lakes, which, before they reached them, had looked deceptively wet. These were smooth, like hardened plaster of Paris, except that now and then the mud, in drying, had cracked and peeled, leaving a sea of shards that extended for many miles. Nothing at all grew on the dark surface of these dry lakes.
In the dim distance a hazy line of calico buttes appeared after an hour of fast travel over the desert. As the machines neared them a long line of mountains showed behind the buttes, and the uninitiated of the party were told that between the buttes and the range of wooded mountains lay another stretch of desert as barren as the one they then were crossing. The buttes marked the beginning of the Shinbone Country, which extended into the higher altitudes. In the buttes were the opal claims.
They came to an oasis, green with alfalfa. Here for forty years a family had lived because of the artesian water that spurted up from the level land. The cottonwood trees, though they had shed their leaves for the coming winter, looked inviting to the sand-blistered pilgrims. The place was called Diamond H Ranch, and the owner herded his cattle on the desert during winter months, when bunchgrass grew, and drove them to the distant mountains for the summer grazing.
Not until they reached the ranch did Smith Morley inform his prospective buyers that here their journey by automobile would end. There was a huge stable, and in it there was plenty of room to store the cars. Also, Morley told them, they would meet with no difficulty in buying or hiring saddle horses and pack animals from the ranchman. Furthermore, he conducted a tiny store in connection with his ranch, and if it should become necessary to do so, they could return to the ranch at any time and purchase such staple articles of food as might be needed.
Roger Furlong was the rancher’s name. He and his family made the guests welcome and treated them hospitably. The afternoon was spent in the selection of saddle stock, and the rancher’s boy was sent scouring the desert for a herd of burros, which were at large and living off the sage. It was late in the afternoon before the herd was rounded up and driven in to the corrals. Here Furlong picked out twelve animals that were old-time packers. The outfit’s supplies and paraphernalia were transferred from the tonneaus and running-boards of the machines to the pack-bags. When darkness came everything was ready for an early start for the calico buttes the following morning.
All of which caused Mary Temple to register a look of high disapproval.
Mary had roughed it considerably in Alaska, so the trip in the saddle had no terrors for her. Neither did she shrink from their proposed sojourn in a wild, waterless, and unfriendly country. But she was amazed and resentful over the whole proceedings.
In San Francisco, while they were outfitting, she had done her utmost to dissuade Charmian from continuing her erratic undertaking. But that young lady had a mind of her own and was not to be led astray from her life’s great adventure. Every plan for preventing her from going having failed, Mary had recourse to a recital of what Madame Destrehan’s second sight had revealed to her. At this Charmian had scoffed disdainfully and laughed hilariously, for Charmian was well aware that Mary often consulted people who claimed to have occult powers. So Mary perforce carried out her original intention and made one of the party, for only death could separate her from Charmian Reemy. But as preparations for the final lap of their journey went forward she continued to glare her displeasure and to shake her greying head with misgivings.