For an hour she lay looking up at the black sky and the tracery of pine branches against it, thinking, thinking, groping patiently but fruitlessly.
Next morning at an early hour they climbed the hill again, crossed the wooded plateau, came upon the thinning trees and the encroaching brush. That afternoon they left all traces of the forest behind them, and faced a desolate sweep of chaparral, stretching away as far as the eye could see, hemmed in on the south by snowy peaks barely outlined against the paleness of the sky. And somewhere in the midst of that seemingly unbroken sea of hoary grey and antique gold the undiscovered Valley of Arcana lay in hiding.
CHAPTER XVII
BEAR PASS
YEARS beyond conjecture had passed since a great forest fire had swept across the waste of chaparral which Charmian and Doctor Shonto looked upon. Probably never before or since in the history of the California forests had such a far-reaching fire ravaged the peaks and valleys.
A mighty forest had stood there then, to be laid low by the consuming flames. In its place had come the comparatively rapid growing chaparral, claiming the land to the exclusion of all other vegetation. Here and there a lone pine stood erect and disdainful above the twelve-foot brush, and here and there on the ground under the bushes lay down trees, ancient corpses that had disintegrated to corklike particles and powder, mere shadows of logs that were ready to crumble when a boot toe touched them.
The chaparral was compromised of buckthorn bushes, interspersed with manzanita. The buckthorn bushes formed what is known as locked chaparral—which means that their prickly upper branches are twined and intertwined until they form a solid mat, more impenetrable than a hedge. So compact was this mat that little sun trickled through to the earth, and as a consequence of this not a blade of grass could live under the dense canopy. But even where a single chaparral bush grows in the open no grass will be found within a radius of ten feet on all sides of it. It claims the land, selfishly sucks all the nutriment from the soil, and will share existence with no other plant.
The ground under the canopy was covered with the tiny leaves that had shattered off through countless years. This carpet was several inches thick, with dry, newly shattered leaves on top, and, below these, leaves in various stages of disintegration, down to the bottom layer of powdered leaf-mould. To stand erect and try to push one’s way into this thicket would be as useless as attempting to forge through a barbed-wire entanglement. But underneath the branches the ground was clean, and no limbs grew from the sturdy trunks of the bushes lower than a foot from the earth. And as the limbs had a decided upward trend, like the limbs of a cypress tree, there was ample opportunity for one to crawl on hands and knees for any distance that he might choose. Of course now and then close-growing bushes would balk him, but there always would be a way around. To travel through the thicket depended entirely on one’s powers of endurance in reverting to the mode of going calling employed by his simian precursors. To hack a trail through was a task for an army of axemen.
The pilgrims seated themselves on the ground and looked expectantly at each other.
“What do you think of it, Doctor?” asked Charmian.
“I think,” replied Shonto, “that we’d better go back.”