Allen Chaffee

“ With a peek at castor oil and gasoline, they started, looping and curving straight to 15,000 feet, then Westward, away from the fire zone. Though the day was fair, the spiral of hot air rising above the flaming forest kept them pitching 100and lurching in a short chop that made Ted look green, and gave even Ace a cold feeling at the pit of his stomach.
The sea of snow-clad peaks slid by beneath them, the sun flashing from the granite slopes. Rising and falling, rising and falling in the rough, upper air, they felt as if they were in a swift elevator. ”

“ Pedro always used a spoon when he wasn’t fishing for pure sport. On this sunny stretch, so clear in the red glow of approaching sunset that the bottom was plainly visible, he could see the fat old patriarchs lazing the late afternoon away. But he was soon rousing them to find out what that little shining thing could be that darted so rapidly through their habitat,—that tiny bit of metallic white so unlike anything their jaded appetites had yet negotiated. ”

“ How he wished he knew more of cave formations! Should he find opportunity to escape, how would he ever find his way out again?
Retracing their steps, they took the right hand turn. Here was another high roofed vault,—he could not see how high, he could only guess from the reverberation of their voices,—whose stalactites had become great pillars that gleamed yellowly. The floor sloped toward them till they had stiff climbing. On one wall was a limestone formation like a frozen cataract. And thrust into the wall beside it he saw a torch stick. ”

“ Now Ted had been lost before. He knew the panic feeling, the sudden sense of utter and helpless isolation, the absurd fearfulness, almost the temporary insanity of it. His scalp prickled,—as did Ace’s,—and for a little while his wits seemed befogged. Then he remembered that bed-rock advice Long Lester had once given him. When you don’t know which way to go, sit down and don’t move one step for half an hour. ”

“ The tooth-brush brigade sallied forth as soon as the sun began slanting its long morning rays through the forest aisles, and the boys often began nodding at a ridiculously early hour around the bon-fire, tired from their strenuous day in the open. But each day found their spirits higher, their muscles harder, their eyes brighter,—and their appetites more insatiable. Ted was plumping up and Pedro trimming down on the self-same medicine. ”

“ Had he known the Ranger’s whereabouts at that precise moment, he would have felt very differently.
Radcliffe, meantime, was staring into the dark recess of the cavern, but all he could see was the two shining eyes of whatever occupant was there. Was it bear or cougar? For both, he knew, took refuge in caves. The largeness of the eyes inclined him to the belief that it was a California mountain lion, and such it was part of his work to exterminate,—though the state also hires an official lion hunter.
That the great cats are cowards he well knew. ”

“ Ted and Pedro, with their pick and shovel, had descended rapidly into that deathly silence of the doomed forest slopes, deserted alike by song birds and chipmunks, the hum of insects and sound of any living thing, save alone the never-ceasing roar of the ravenous flames. ”

“ Where these level-lying meadows failed them pasturage for their burros, Norris guaranteed that there would be plenty of hanging meadows,—long, narrow, bowldery strips of weed enameled verdure slanting up and down the moraine-covered canyon sides, beginning away up at timber line, where springs the source of their life-giving moisture. ”

“ As Long Lester drawled over the camp fire, the drowsy boys lived again in the days when a pinch of gold dust in a buckskin bag was currency, and red shirted miners gambled away their gains or drank it up, in a land of hot sunshine and hard toil, where a tin cup and a frying pan largely comprised their bachelor housekeeping apparatus, their provender such as could be brought in on jingle belled mule teams, their chief diversions the occasional open air 256meeting or the lynchings of their necessarily rough and ready justice. ”

“ Loosened rocks and bowlders began bounding down the cliffs.
261With the mountainside a choice between slippery, dripping rock slopes and sliding mud, fallen tree trunks and soggy forest floor, it was no mean test he had to meet. But as the irrepressible California sun once more burst forth in golden glory, the clean-washed air was all balsamic fragrance, every leaf and fir needle held at its tip a drop of opal, and the birds,—emerging from the holes in which they had safely hidden, those who survived,—burst into happy gratitude. ”

“ Uneasy on account of the flying stones and falling tree trunks, Pedro was about to take shelter by crawling under a shelving rock when the rock itself was dislodged by a flash of lightning, and went pommeling to the slide-rock on the slope below.
Seemingly all in the same breath, the rock-slide started, with a roar as of fifty express trains, as it seemed to Pedro’s long-suffering ears. An electric storm always does start snow and rock slides. ”

“ The burros, five in number, had each his individuality. There was Pepper, the old prospector’s own comrade of many a mountain trail, who, knowing his superior knowledge of the ways of slide rock and precipices, insisted always on being in the lead. This preference on his part he enforced with a pair of the swiftest heels the boys had ever seen. There was old Lazybones, as Pedro had named the one who, presenting the greatest girth, had to carry the largest pack. ”

“ The sounds, ear-splitting in the smoke-filled gloom,—thundered like a thousand siege guns, it seemed to Radcliffe, stalactites tumbled about his ears like crockery, and more appalling than all the rest was the weird, almost human scream of the wounded animal, which likewise reëchoed for several minutes. ”

“ The fire had been eating slowly through a stretch of manzanita chaparral, whose hard stems resisted them as the evergreens could not. Though the wind still blew up-canyon, they approached the river gorge at right angles, and were able to make their way to the lower levels in the shelter of the East side of a dry creek bed, where the hot blast could not reach them. ”

“ How secure it must feel, on those slopes never climbed by man, with the autumn rains months away, and the fire fighters like so many ants trying with axe and shovel to mark off on the hot forest floor a boundary beyond which the fiery tongues must not lick. ”

“ Ted loved nothing better than a good horse.
The plainsman, he used to argue, may have his twin six, the airman his ship, but for the 119outdoor man, give him the comrade who can take the mountain trails, the needle carpeted forest floor, the unbridged streams, the glacier polished slopes.
The black horse wore the high Visalia saddle, against which his rider could rest on steep grades. It would be more dangerous, should the animal throw him, though of course the high horn would help him to pull leather should need arise. ”

“ The combined roar of the flames and the river beneath nearly drowned the nearer sound of the descending ’plane.
Raced quivering down the gorge of canyon-cooled air.
101With heart that fluttered near to bursting, Ace accomplished the quick swoop, Ted snatched the girl aboard, and they were up again.
The miracle had been accomplished!—The mountains lay like a relief map beneath them, greenest down the canyons that branches Westward from the gleaming crest of the main divide, the snow-capped peaks gleaming silver in the sunlight. The fire zone lay like a small inferno behind them. ”

“ It was by comparison of fossil remains that the well known evolution of the horse from a little fellow the size of a fox was learned. Ted often thought of that three-toed Miocene horse, and the giant monsters of his time,—of the upthrust of the Rocky Mountains, cutting off the moist sea breeze from the marshy country to the Eastward and making desert of it. This made life too hard for the heavy, slow-witted creatures, and they failed to survive the change. But the nimble footed little horse trotted long distances with ease, to find food and water. ”

“ During the times I spoke of last night, when the earth crust is breaking, the molten rock and gases and water vapor in the interior of the planet rise in the hearts of the mountain ranges, and often break through as active volcanoes, pouring their lava and ash over the underlying granite, and building it still higher.
“These heightened mountain ranges bring about the glacial climates. For the snows on their cold peaks do not melt when summer comes, and consequently they accumulate, and accumulate, till their own weight presses them down as hard as ice,—that is, makes glaciers of them. ”

“ That is why they have developed so little intelligence.”
“Is that why it’s such an insult to call any one a poor fish?” grinned Ted.
“An ichthyosaurus?” supplemented Ace.
“As has been said before,” Norris took up the thread of his talk, “with a drier climate and soil, comes the need of developing a faster mode of locomotion, for food no longer lies or swims everywhere about, as it did in the ocean, and in the swamps, and tropic humidity. Food and water are scarce, and it is the speediest animal that fulfills his needs. ”

“ The glaciers left by the last ice age naturally melted first in the lower reaches, and as those that now cap the peaks and flow down between ridges like the arms of a starfish, melt in their turn, they will leave their icy, green-blue crystal pools higher and higher up the mountainsides. ”

“ Ace assured them, as Norris lighted his pipe on the lee of a bowlder. “Can’t we rest here a few minutes, Mr. Norris? Those burros were about winded. Can’t get ’em to budge yet. Come on, fellows, snuggle up,” as Norris seated himself compliantly, back against the bowlder. They all crept close, for the wind was blowing hard.
“Where did this earth come from in the first place?” asked Ted.
“Well, of course you know that our sun is only one of millions of stars, and very far from being the largest, at that. ”

“ Ted, sighting another creek, climbed back along the canyon wall to follow it down-stream with his bait can and his short, stiff willow rod, cut for the occasion with his good old jack-knife. His bait was the remnant of the ham sandwich he had saved that noon for the purpose,—though 73he had little dreamed at the time how much would depend on their next fishing jaunt.
Keen to out-do his chum by back-country methods, he pushed through the brush that made the gully a streak of green against the granite, until he came to a bend. Here, he knew, there would likely be a pool. ”

“ The discussion was cut short by Pedro’s discovery that a bear had invaded the lean-to.
The American black bear, and his California cousin whose coat has generally lightened to the cinnamon brown of the soil, is all but tame in the National Parks, where for years he has been unmolested. A friendly fellow even in the wild state,—for the most part,—he roams the Giant Forest as much a prized part of the landscape as the Big Trees themselves. He has learned to visit the garbage dump regularly 50every night, and it causes no sensation whatever to meet one on the trail. ”

“ You know in the age of reptiles there was nothing to divide the Atlantic from the Pacific. Added to that, the high mountain ranges took the moisture out of the winds from the oceans, as the Rockies now do the Pacific trade winds, so that by the time they reach Nevada there is no moisture left in them to form clouds and fall in rain, and we have desert.
“Of course the animals that lived on the earth in its flatter, more temperate stage now have to adapt themselves to life on high, cold elevations, or in dry, hot desert areas, or to migrate via the land-bridges to more favorable climates. ”

“ That they would start more fires at their first opportunity had also been established by their conversation.
“We can’t let ’em go,” argued the ranch boy.
“We can’t capture them,” the Castilian was as positive. “We are unarmed, and they have their daggers.”
Ted pondered, peered out at the still, smoking ground, soothed the nervous horse, then came to a conclusion, which he unfolded to his comrade.
He must go for help. He would ride that horse, find Norris, get Ace to wireless Radcliffe, and summon help. But—he eyed Pedro doubtfully, knowing his uncourageous bearing at the rodeo. ”

“ The newest theory is in line with what I learned in 1917 at Yale.”
“It’s all theory, then?” asked Ted.
“Just as all sciences are, to some extent. Did I tell you that when our planetary system was disrupted from the sun, it was less than a 178hundredth part of the parent body? And our earth is a good deal less than a millionth of the size of our sun, and our sun is among the smaller of the stars of the firmament.”
“Phew!” whistled Long Lester, round eyed, while Ted and Pedro sat motionless. ”

“ Ace reproached himself, as he thought of the lost flour and bacon, rice, onions, cheese, smoked ham, dried fruit, coffee, canned beets and spinach, tinned jams, and other compact and rib-stretching items of their so lovingly planned duffle. “Never should have packed it all on one burro.”
The Senator’s son had a dry fly outfit that was his treasure. Ted used the crudest kind of hook and line for bait casting. The subject was one of keen rivalry between them.
“Dad always prayed: ‘May the East wind never blow,’ when we went fishing down in Maine,” dogmatized Ace. ”