She closed both eyes as he stepped upon the trunk. Then she opened them again and looked up into his face. His strong jaw was set, she noted, but not a tremor did his body convey to hers. The roaring of the cataract was in her ears. Again she felt faint and dizzy. But without hesitation he placed one foot firmly and elastically before the other on the swaying bridge, until he stepped from it to the solid rocks on the other side.
“Nothing to it, was there?” he laughed, without a sign of nervousness, as he gently stood her on her feet.
“You have wonderful control over yourself, haven’t you?” she said. “You never even trembled.”
“Didn’t I?” He was looking straight into her eyes. “I thought I was shaking like a leaf—especially when I reached this side and just before I set you down.”
“Why, how funny! You certainly weren’t frightened.”
“No, tempted,” said Shonto, while Charmian’s face flushed crimson.
They wandered through an open forest of immense live and black oaks, with gnarled trunks and bulbous boles, and roots moss-upholstered where they were exposed. Gray moss hung from the upper limbs, draped and festooned with the delicacy of nature’s artistry. Wild grape vines clambered in all directions, drooped in loops down the trunks of lofty trees, or extended in masses from the ground to the topmost branches like the standing rigging of a sailing ship. The clusters of grapes were ripe and ready to fall with their seed to the earth from whence they sprang.
They came upon large flat-topped stones, in which holes the size of a man’s head had been gouged. In these the Indian squaws had powdered the acorns to make flour for their native bread, using heavy stone pestles as pulverizers.
A half-mile from the river they suddenly entered a clearing, studded with tall, monumental stones of granite, and with wide-branched oaks scattered about here and there. In the middle were the ruins of a house—the remnants of what had been a large house built of stones and sod and poles.
“That,” said Shonto, “speaks plainly of some Northern tribe. The Northern Indians were further advanced than the tribes of Southern and Central California. The stone abutments back there made me believe that a tribe of comparatively high intelligence once occupied this valley. This ruin confirms it. Few of the California tribes built large public houses, as this undoubtedly was, for their ceremonial dances and big dinners and other social activities. I have never told you—for I hadn’t the slightest idea that we’d find evidences of Indian life in the valley—but I’ve made quite a hobby of studying the aborigines of the Pacific Slope. So has Andy. We took it up together while nosing around in the mountains and on the desert, and we became intensely interested. I wish I could—” He came to a stop and gave her a look that was as near an admission of discomfiture as she had ever seen him reveal. “It’s getting late. No doubt there’s a spring close by, for this evidently is the site of the old village. Let’s camp for the night and cook our rabbit.”