“But what I’m talkin’ about,” said Henry patiently, “is reg’lar crawlin’. Sure enough on yer hands an’ knees, ma’am. An’ f’r miles an’ miles at that. Th’ patch o’ chaparral we’ll have to go through ain’t got its match in th’ whole West, I’m thinkin’.”
“Do you mean, Henry, that we’re actually to crawl for miles and miles? Like a father playing bear with his baby on the floor?”
“Jest crawl, ma’am,” replied Henry softly. “Unless we cut our way through with th’ axes—an’ that would take forever ’n’ ever ’n’ after.”
“And you realize that, do you, Charmian?” Mary asked of the head of the party.
“Oh, yes—it’s all been explained to me,” Charmian assured her.
“All right,” said Mary. “Then let’s find a place to eat. I’m so hungry I could eat quirkus.”
“Which is?”—Andy’s question.
“Quirkus,” Mary explained, “is the stuff you skim off the top of a kettle of fruit when you’re cooking it for canning. Or it’s the stuff that grows on the bottom of a watering trough in summer. Or sometimes it’s any soft stuff that you don’t know the name of, and that isn’t fit to eat, but looks too valuable to throw away.”
They spent two nights in the forest, forging onward throughout the short, cold, crystal days in the same southwesterly direction, up and down, up and down, but always gaining in altitude. They had left the Canadian Zone and were well into the Hudsonian, which constitutes the belt of forest just below timberline. Lodgepole pine, Alpine hemlock, silver pine, and white-bark pine had replaced the Jeffrey pine, red firs and aspens of the life zone immediately below them. They were over eight thousand feet above the sea, Henry told them, when at last, about ten o’clock of the third day after leaving the creek, the woods began to grow thinner, and they encountered frequent patches of short chaparral, bleak and rugged and rock strewn. They were entering the Arctic-Alpine Zone, comprising an elevation of from ten thousand five hundred feet to the tops of the highest peaks.
On and on, always climbing higher into an atmosphere more breath-taking, more crystalline. The chilled silences became awesome. Unfamiliar growths presented themselves, stunted, grotesque. An occasional patch of snow was crossed. A snow-white bird as large as a pigeon fluttered down to their camping ground, cocked his head on one side, and surveyed them with comical curiosity. A few grains of rolled barley, left by the wasteful burros, lay on the ground, for a small quantity had been brought along to tempt them back to camp when they wandered, browsing throughout the nights. The white bird pecked contemplatively at these, chattered his bill over one, and dropped it as unfit for avian consumption. As he hopped about, still intent on trying the unfamiliar particles that looked like food, his course took him directly over the foot of Charmian, who was standing very still and watching him. Utterly without fear of these human beings, he hopped upon the toe of her hiking shoe, and from that vantage point lifted his body and gazed about as a robin does for worms.