They had accomplished much. Probably never before in the annals of exploration had any one been forced to blaze a trail into an unknown country crawling on all fours. They were painfully weary and sore from the unaccustomed strain; their provisions were low, and but several mouthfuls of water remained in the canvas bags. But they had found the Valley of Arcana, and its myriad delights rewarded them for the torture they had undergone.
It was Charmian Reemy who broke the silence. “I think,” she said, “that Ranger Reed was nearer to the Valley of Arcana than he knew when he turned back, discouraged. In an hour, Doctor, we might have turned back, too, with our grub and water so low.”
They seated themselves on stones to discuss the situation.
It would be absolutely necessary for them to find a route down into the valley to replenish the water-bags. Also, they must have more food. They had lived principally on jerked venison for that day and the day before, conserving the other supplies, and had nibbled the strong nutritious chocolate from the army emergency rations which they carried. They had not dared to make coffee because they could not spare the water. The only firearm that they had brought along was the doctor’s .22 rifle, because of its lightness. Shonto was a crack shot with the little weapon, and Charmian was obliged to shelve her repugnance for the slaughter of the innocents and give him permission to kill jackrabbits or any other small game that they might see.
These things decided, they nibbled a cake of chocolate each and divided the remaining “jerky” between them. They drank the last of the water. Then they set off along the lip of the precipice in search of a possible way to get down into the valley. After a mile or more of winding in and out among the outcroppings, boulders, and tentacles of chaparral that extended from the main thicket to the edge of the declivity they were seriously wondering whether it was possible to reach the floor of the valley at all. For the wall below them was, figuratively speaking, as perpendicular as the side of a skyscraper. They discovered several false breaks that promised to open upon routes leading downward, but each time they were halted by a yawning precipice as steep as any yet encountered.
A few oak trees grew close to the lip of the gorge, some of them on the very edge and slanting over the abyss as if straining to gaze down upon the mysteries below. Under one of these, as they walked around a point of chaparral, they came face to face with a big brown bear. He was an industrious bear and had not seen them nor smelled them, as the slight breeze that was astir was blowing in their faces. His majesty was sitting on his haunches, profile toward the surprised adventurers, with both paws to his mouth and with huge jaws working. As they came to a stop he lowered his body to all fours as lightly as a squirrel, for all his several hundred pounds of weight, picked up an acorn with one paw, and broke the shell of it with the butt of the other paw. He carried the kernel to his mouth and chonked with satisfaction. He sat erect again, saw the intruders, lowered both paws droopingly in abject surprise, and, with a startled Wuff, wheeled and went lumbering off at astonishing speed.
At the end of about fifteen shuffling leaps he swung abruptly toward the precipice and disappeared between an overhanging oak and an upstanding rock.
But for him, then, Charmian and Dr. Shonto would have walked directly past what seemed to be an animal-made trail that zigzagged down into the Valley of Arcana, the gateway of which was the monumentlike stone and the twisted black oak. They halted in the pass and heard the rattling of stones below and the scraping footsteps of the fleeing bear. A trail, narrow but plainly outlined, descended along the side of a portion of the precipice less steep than heretofore. The brush that grew over it here and there had been scraped of its bark in many places, and the smooth wood showing through had been polished by contact with the hair of various animals that had ascended and descended the trail for unreckoned years. The stones protruding from the earth were claw-scratched and eroded.
“I christen thee Bear Pass,” saluted Charmian. “Can we go where that bear can, Doctor?”
“He may be bound for a den in the side of the precipice,” suggested Shonto. “The trail may lead only to that. But it’s worth a trial, provided—”