There was little underbrush. The grass, though frost-nipped, was still green. Digger pines were sprawling, their immense cones beneath the branches on the ground, many of them munched down to stems and scaly fragments by foraging squirrels. Linnets were singing in the willows. Wild canaries, mere dabs of pale yellow, flitted about importantly, bright-eyed, businesslike.
Charmian’s brief sojourn in the land of Don’t-give-a-whoop was over. The effects of the cocaine were waning. Her mouth was dry, and she was nervous and depressed. The reaction had set in, but the melancholy period would last little longer than the space of blissful unconcern for which it was the price.
The doctor took her hand. “You won’t feel tough long,” he consoled her, as, together, they invaded the solitary valley. “I would have given you a little touch of morphine to counteract the effects of the cocaine, but— Well, you know why I couldn’t.”
He heaved a sigh, and she looked up into his face questioningly.
“Does the loss of your medicine case mean so very much to you?” she asked.
“More than you know now,” he said soberly. “Not only to me, but to you and Mary and Andy. But don’t question me just now, please. My mind was never so busy before. I must decide what is best to do—and decide right. And every expedient that presents itself strikes me as impossible.”
“Why, how serious you are! You worry me, Doctor. Won’t you—”
“Not now,” he interrupted hastily. “I shall be obliged to explain soon enough—after I have made my decision. To-morrow I’ll tell you—well, tell you all that I dare tell.”
He came to a halt as he finished speaking. They were following a well-defined trail that led them among natural obelisks of stone, tall and freakish. There was no other route to the floor proper of the valley. And at their very feet yawned a hole of large dimensions.
Shonto sank to his knees and looked in. “I thought as much,” he muttered. “Look, Charmian! See those skeletons down in there?”