Kitabı oku: «Unexplored!», sayfa 10
CHAPTER XII
GOLD!
In the pass between two appalling peaks the two boys sighted the smoke of a cook-fire, and without once reflecting that they were unarmed, pan-caked down for a closer inspection. But there was no need to land. It was a band of Indians. And though they searched till they were ready to drop with fatigue, – and all but frozen stiff in those high altitudes, – not the sign of a Mexican did they sight after that.
They returned utterly discouraged.
“What kind of Indians were they?” asked Long Lester.
“Oh, just Indians,” said the ranch boy.
“That is like saying, oh, just whites,” said Norris. “Indians differ more than you would ever imagine.”
“Why is that, Mr. Norris?” Ted wanted to know. “They’re mostly mighty good for nothing specimens, to judge from our Diggers.”
“I’ll tell you after supper,” Norris promised them.
Pedro had been out with his trout rod. Descending to the river, which here circled around a huge bowlder from which he thought he could cast, he had a string in no time.
Now Pedro was thoroughly well liked, with his Castilian courtesy and his ever ready song. The lack of physical courage had been his greatest drawback. Always had the fear been secret within him that at some crucial moment he might show the white feather. His experience with the Mexicans had removed that, but he was still mortally afraid of three things, – bears, rattlesnakes, and thunder storms, – that is, real wild bears, not the half tame kind that haunt the Parks.
Still, he had not noticed the furry form that stood neck-deep in the riffles, fishing with his great, barbed paw, – so perfectly did he blend into the background.
The shadow of the canyon wall had made twilight while yet the sun sent orange shafts through the trees on the canyon rim. Suddenly around the turn of the trail rose a huge brown form that gave a startled grunt, rising inquiringly on its shaggy hind legs and swinging its long head from side to side. Pedro’s heart began beating like a trip-hammer. (He wondered if the bear could hear it).
He wanted to run, to scream, – a course that would have been most ill-advised, for the bear might then have given chase. As it was, the boy remembered that the animal was probably more afraid than he, – or more likely merely curious at this biped invasion of his wilderness, – and would not harm him if no hostile move were made. The cinnamon bear of the Sierras, like his blood brother, the New England black bear, is a good-natured fellow.
With an iron grip on his nerves, he forced himself to stand stock-still, then back – ever so amenably – off the trail. The bear, finding no hostility intended, turned and lumbered up the mountain-side.
“‘Minds me of one time,’ said Long Lester, when he heard the story, ‘I was down to the crick once when I was a shaver, and along came a big brown bear. The bear, he stood up on his haunches, surprised like, and just gave one ’woof.’ About that time I decided to take to the tall timber.” (At this, Pedro looked singularly gratified.) “Well, that bear, he took to the same tree I did, and I kept right on a-climbin’ so high that I get clear to the top, – it were a slim kind of a tree, – and the top bends and draps me off in the water!”
“What became of the bear?” Pedro demanded.
“I dunno. I didn’t wait to see. But Mr. Norris here were a-sayin’ there’s nothin’ in the back country a-goin’ to hurt you unless’n it’s rattlesnakes. Now when I was a-prospectin’ I allus used to carry a hair rope along, and make a good big circle around my bed with it. The rattler won’t crawl over the hair rope.”
The boys thought he was joshing them, but Long Lester was telling the literal truth. “Once I was just a-crawlin’ into bed,” he went on, “when I heard a rattle,” and with the aid of a dry leaf he gave a faint imitation of the buzzing “chick-chick-chick-chick-chick” that sounds so ominous when you know it and so harmless when you don’t. “I flung back the covers with one jerk, and jumped back myself out of the way. There was a snake down at the foot of my blankets. They are always trying to crawl into a warm place.”
“Then what?” breathed three round eyed boys.
“First I put on my shoes and made up a fire so’s I could see, ’n’ then I take a forked stick and get him by the neck, and smash his head with a stone.”
“And yet I’ve heard of making pets of them,” said Norris.
“They do. Some do. But I wouldn’t,” stated Long Lester emphatically. “Ner I wouldn’t advise any one to trust ’em too fur, neither.”
“They say a rattler has one rattle on his tail for every year of his age,” ventured Pedro.
“A young snake,” spoke up Ted, “has a soft button on its tail. And then the rattle grows at the rate of three joints a year, and you can’t tell a thing about its age, because by the time there are about ten of them, it snaps off when it rattles.”
“Down in San Antonio,” said Ace, “we had an hour between trains once, and we went into a billiard parlor where they had a collection of rattlesnakes, stuffed. And they showed some rattles with 30 or 40 joints to them.”
“Huh!” laughed Ted. “That’s easy! You can snap the rattles of several snakes together any time you want to give some tourist a thrill.”
“You seem to know all about it,” gibed Ace. “They had 13 species of rattlesnakes down in this – it used to be a saloon. And ten of them Western. They had a huge seven foot diamond back, and they had yellow ones and gray ones and black ones and some that were almost pink. I mean, they had their skins. All colors–”
“To match their habitat,” supplemented Norris. “Our California rattler is a gray or pale brown where it’s dry summers, and in the Oregon woods where it’s moist, and the foliage deeper colored, it’s green-black all but the spots. I’ve seen them tamed. There was one guide up there who kept one in a cage, and it would take a mouse from his fingers.”
“I wouldn’t chance it,” shivered Ted.
“Oh, this one would glide up flat on the floor of the cage. They can’t strike unless they’re coiled.”
“I suppose he caught it before it was old enough to be poison,” said Pedro.
“A rattlesnake can strike from the moment it’s born. It’s perfectly independent a few hours after birth.”
“Ugh! Bet I dream of them now.” But such was their healthy out-of-door fatigue that they all slept like logs.
It was only the next day, however, that the two boys, Ace and Ted, poking exploratively into a deep cleft in a rock ledge, were startled by an abrupt, ominous rattle, and beheld in their path the symmetrical coils of the sinister one. The inflated neck was arched from the center of the coil and the heart-shaped head, with red tongue out-thrust, waved slowly as the upthrust tail vibrated angrily. A flash of that swift head would inject the deadly virus into the leg of one of the intruders. Yet Ted knew the reptile would never advance to the attack.
Dragging Ace back with him, he instantly placed at least six feet between them, so that, should the snake charge, it could not reach them. But with the enemy obviously on the retreat, the snake glided to cover in a tumbled mass of rocks at one side.
“Gee! We nearly stepped on him!” the ranch boy exclaimed, with a voice that was not quite steady. “Next time we go poking into a place like that, let’s poke in a stick first, or throw a stone, to make sure there’s ‘nobody home.’”
“Wish I’d a brought a hair rope,” mused Ace. “We might have had one that would go clear around all our sleeping bags. First chance we get, I’m going to buy one.”
“Naw! We won’t need one. Did you ever see a rattler catch a rabbit?” asked his chum.
“No, d’you?”
“Once I was going along when I noticed the trail of some sort of snake going across the road. Next thing I heard a rabbit squeal, and by the time I spotted the snake it had a hump half way down its throat, and it was swallowing and swallowing trying to get that rabbit down whole.”
“I consider the possibility of rattlesnake bite the one biggest danger in the whole Sierra,” declared Norris, one night, lighting each step carefully over the rocks. “And he does his hunting by night.”
“Considerate of him!” laughed Ace, “seeing that campers do most of theirs by day. But why is it such a danger? I’ve heard opinions pro and con.”
“Rattlesnake venom disintegrates the blood vessels, makes the blood thin and unable to clot. I knew a man who was struck in the ankle, and they had to amputate the leg, and the very bones of that leg were saturated with the blood that had seeped through the weakened walls of the blood vessels.”
“How does it feel to be struck, I wonder?” the boy shuddered.
“This man’s ankle became discolored practically immediately and began to swell. Of course the bite was through his sock, which must have kept a little of the poison out of it, and it fortunately did not happen to penetrate an artery. We could have cut and kneaded the wound instantly to clear out as much as possible of the venom before it had time to enter the blood system, but the fellow refused such heroic measures. We should have taken him by force; it would have saved his leg, likely, for ordinarily this, and a ligature, will do the work.
“Or we could have burned it clean, or injected the serum if we’d had it. But as I was about to explain, he soon became dull and languid, breathing noisily, for the poison affected heart and lungs. It was then that he let us get to work, – almost too late, – or rather, that he ceased his protest. His whole leg swelled and turned black, clear up, he got feverish and nauseated, and for hours he kept swooning off, while we worked over him, almost giving up hope, and one of our men had gone post-haste for an old guide who made the serum, – anti-venom serum.”
“Did he finally pull through?”
“With the loss of a leg. If he hadn’t had that off pronto, gangrene would likely have set in and he’d have gone.”
“But this serum – where do you get it?”
“I don’t know. We got it of a man who made it. First he injected into a mule a tiny drop of the venom.”
“How did he get the venom?”
“Killed a snake. You know the poison is in a tiny sac at the root of each fang. Well, after he had given the mule the first dose and he had recovered, he tried a larger one, then a still larger one, and so on, every few weeks for a year or more, until the mule’s blood serum had developed enough anti-toxin to make him immune to rattlesnake bite.”
“But then what?”
“He let some of the mule’s blood, separated the serum, sterilized it, and put it up in sealed tubes, which he kept in the cellar. This serum is injected into the victim’s blood with a hypodermic syringe, and if it is used before he has collapsed, it will cure him every time. We really ought to have brought some along, just in case of extreme emergency. I have, however, a bottle of permanganate of potash crystals,” and he showed a little hard rubber tube two and a half inches long, one end of which contained the crystals and the other a well sharpened lancet, as the stuff has to be put right into the wound. This outfit, he explained, had only cost a dollar, and was so tiny it could be carried right on the person when in danger of being snake bitten. However, it has to be used instantly, (within three or four minutes at the outside), “if it is to neutralize the corroding acid of the poison and do any good.”
That night a bon-fire built up into a log cabin with a tepee of pine fringed poles atop sent the sparks flying, but was not uncomfortably hot except on their faces. These they shaded with their hat brims.
“I wonder why there is so much difference in Indians,” mused Ace. “When Dad and I visited the Hopis, there, on our way to the Grand Canyon, we were impressed by their high degree of civilization. Like all the Pueblos, they raised good crops, had a regular government, and even an art. And look at these Digger Indians, filthy, thieving creatures, grubbing for roots like wild animals, eating slugs and lizards, because they are too lazy to cultivate a piece of ground!”
“I remember,” said Norris, “one of my favorite professors at Yale always said that civilization was largely dependent upon civilization,” and he pointed out the Indians as an illustration. Of course he gave due credit to what he termed inherent mental capacity. But to climate he laid the energy with which that capacity is developed, – always provided there were sufficient material resources. That is to say, even white men with fine brains could not evolve as high a degree of civilization in the Arctic Circle as they can where they have the material resources necessary to supply the physical needs.
“But I should think the material resources of the Arctic Circle were a result of the climate.”
“In large part, they are. That just strengthens the point that climate has had a lot to do with civilization, and incidentally with the differences between different tribes of Indians. I wonder if I can give his theory straight! Well, anyway, here’s the general idea. It applies quite as much to all nationalities as it does to Indians in particular.
“What is our conception of The Noble Red Man? He is observant, he has unlimited physical endurance, but he does not adapt himself to our civilization, nor does he work out new methods for himself, as we have done since America was settled. He is conservative, in other words, – lacking in originality and inventiveness.
“Of course they came at some stage of their evolution from the primitive home of man in Asia. So also did the Scandinavians, – so also did the Japanese. But while both of these finally located in cold but not too cold climates, nor steadily cold, they were merely stimulated. The Indian, though, – the American Indian, – likely migrated by way of Bering Strait, and passing generations in the Esquimo lands, where it is about all they can manage to keep alive at all during the long, dark winters. The result? Those who were high strung nervously went insane, – just as many an Esquimo and many a white man does to-day, under the necessity of idling in a stuffy hut in the cold and darkness. It was only the mentally lazy who could survive that phase of their evolution. That accounts for certain differences between all Indians and all white men.
“Remember, it wasn’t the sheer cold so much as the monotony of the unbroken cold and darkness. The negroes of Africa also failed to progress, but in their case it was the energy-inhibiting equatorial climate, and especially the monotony of unbroken equatorial conditions. The European Nordics, – remember, of ancestral stock originating in that same Asiatic cradle, – had severe cold, and in summer, often, extreme heat, – but there was no monotony.
“The too active Hottentot soon killed himself off, and only the indolent survived. The races that have had long sojourns, in the course of their racial wanderings, under desert conditions, where patient endurance is an asset, also suffered a decimation of their more alert members. The stolid were the more fit to survive desert conditions. You will find races now dwelling in favorable climates who may exhibit these unprogressive qualities, but back of them is a history of some experience that has weeded out the more active individuals.
“But am I getting too long-winded?”
“You haven’t told us yet why one tribe of Indians will be so different from another, if they both came here via the Arctic Circle,” urged Ace.
“Well, there is where another factor comes in, – that of material resources. What could an Arab have accomplished with nothing but desert sands to work with? What can the Esquimos accomplish with little but ice to grow crops? They must secure their food by hunting, and hunters must be nomadic. Nomads cannot carry many creature comforts with them, nor can scattered groups be much mental stimulus to one another. Nor can the arts develop when the mere struggle for animal existence demands one’s whole energy.
“These Digger Indians came from the as yet unirrigated deserts around Los Angeles, with its long dry season, whereas Hopis and other Pueblos around Santa Fe, though up against as dry a climate, taking it in actual number of inches rainfall per year, have enough of their rain during the summer months to enable them to raise crops, and hence to establish permanent habitats, and hence to work out a form of government, a social system, an art and an organized religion.”
“But the Utes around Salt Lake City, who were living on grasshoppers when the Pueblos were eating squash and beans, – utter savages, – didn’t they have much the same climate as the Pueblos?”
“What I said of the Diggers of Los Angeles applies to them. Their rainfall did not come at the right time of year to raise crops, and of course in such desert conditions there were practically no wild fruits.
“The Indians of the more fertile parts of North America, like the early people of Europe, had wild vegetation to supply the means of subsistence. And the wild vegetation also gave wild game a means of subsistence, to say nothing of the means for clothing and shelter. Of course that is not the whole of the story. There is, for instance, coal and iron, but iron has to be smelted where there is forestation, and we come right back to climate, as one of the principal factors in civilization.
“There is also energy, – zeal, determination. But what about the effect of proper food and shelter on those qualities? And more important, what about the effect of climate?
“Elaborate tests have been made. Without going into all that, perhaps you will take my word for it. But the best climate for either physical or mental efficiency is one that is variable, – for change is stimulating, – and that goes to no unlivable extreme, but offers the cold, dry winter and the warm, slightly rainy summer of, say, for instance, the Eastern United States, or Central Europe, Italy, or Japan.”
“But why does a winter in Southern California do an invalid so much good?”
“The change. The beneficial effects wear off with time.
“And just one word more, while we are on the subject. I’d hardly do my old professor justice unless I mentioned that he lays that third factor in civilization, inherent mental capacity, to the climatic conditions, not of the present, but of the ancestral history of the past. But remember, the climate of, say, Greece, has not always been what it is to-day. Our Big Trees show, by an examination of their annual rings, the same story that the rocks tell, – and that history tells, – that there have been constant fluctuations of climate, within certain limitations. The records of geology lead us to believe that California and the Mediterranean countries have undergone the same climatic variations.”
The next day the boys were so tired of sleuthing for the fire-bugs that they decided to join the others in a holiday and explore one of the neighboring peaks, leaving the burros and outfit at their camp of the night before. About noon, the trail ended abruptly at a peak of granite blocks each no larger than a foot-stool. Off to the left they could see a peak higher than the one immediately before them. It seemed to be a ridge of three peaks, theirs the middle one, and once on the ridge, they could pick a course along the crest.
A little further on, the trail narrowed till they could see a tiny lake on either side, and a stone’s throw below, pools as clear as mirrors reflecting the twisted growth about their brims. Then Ace gave a shout, for down a hollow between two ridges to the north lay a patch of snow.
Sliding, – on their feet if they could manage it, – and snow-balling, the boys were surprised to find how short of breath they were at this elevation, a trifle over ten thousand feet, Norris estimated, – for on their steady upward plod they had not particularly noticed it, or had not attributed their slightly unusual heaviness to altitude.
They were therefore willing enough to rest on top, though even at noon the wind blew cold upon them. Stretching almost north and south before them rose the main crest of the Sierras, – peak after peak that they could name from the map. They could see for at least a hundred miles. First the wild green gorges that made the peaks seem higher, then snow-capped and glacier-streaked altitudes rising one above another till they faded into purple nothingness.
They did their climbing single file, with arms free, having disposed of their lunch at timberline. But where Norris had led the way up, Pedro was the first to start back. “Come on, why not take a short cut?” he shouted in competition with the wind.
“All right.” Norris stepped on a rock at that moment that turned with him, barely escaping a wrenched ankle. He kept his eyes on his footing for some moments after that. It was therefore not surprising that he did not notice where Pedro was leading, till the latter called:
“Why, there’s our lake, isn’t it?”
The way began to be all bowlders, larger and larger ones. “Here, that isn’t the way we came,” cautioned Norris.
“I know it,” Pedro assured him, “but see, Mr. Norris, we’re just going around this middle peak instead of over it.”
“Better not try any stunts,” warned the Geological Survey man. Had he been by himself, he would have gone straight back till he came to the way they had gone up. But the boys were tired, and he hated to ask them to retrace their steps. Besides, he did not want to discourage initiative in the Spanish boy.
But soon they found themselves scrambling over slabs so high that they had to take them on all fours, clambering over one as high as their heads, then letting themselves down into the cranny between that and the next.
“We sure never came over anything like this!” the rest of the party began complaining. But on they scuttled, leapt and sprawled, no one finding any better way.
“Hurry, there’s our lake!” shouted Pedro finally. “I’ll bet if I could throw a stone hard enough, it would scare the fish.”
But Norris spoke in alarm: “We couldn’t see any lake on the trail going up. On the contrary, we saw the peak to our left. Don’t you remember? Now see! That peak is on our right!”
“Fellows, we are on the wrong side of this ridge,” he decided. “And what is more, instead of going back down the middle crest, we have gone clear on to the third peak.” (For the ridge was a three peaked affair, the middle being the lowest.) “The best thing now is to circle around as near the top as we can go, till we strike the trail. If we keep circling, we are bound to strike it sooner or later. But let’s not all go together, or we might start a rock-slide. Let’s ‘watch our step!’ What would we do if one of you put his ankle out of commission?”
The boys had little breath to waste on comment. Probably none but Norris had any vivid realization of the danger they were in, but each fellow had a keen eye to keeping his footing. Rock-slides the three boys had never seen, but a sprained knee or a crushed foot was something they could understand. Pedro also had a weather eye out for rattlesnakes, to whom these rocks would have been paradise if it had not been such a chill elevation.
As the sun sank lower and lower, they began secretly to wonder what it would be to have to spend the night on this windy peak, without even an emergency ration, – unpardonable over-thought! They circled steadily, Norris now in the lead, the boys spreading out fan-wise as they followed, Pedro even getting clear to the foot of the granite where he thought he would have easier going through the woods, though he would also have a larger arc to traverse. He felt safer on solid ground, though had he measured, he might have seen that he had climbed as far in going down as did the others in circling around.
Once a huge bowlder that overhung a precipice rocked under Ted, and it was only by a swift spring that he saved himself. Many of the smaller rocks tipped warningly, and he frequently stumbled. How slow their progress seemed! How fast the sun was sinking in the west! And how astoundingly their shoes were wearing through! It was three hours later that Pedro, down in the edge of the woods, gave a shout and began waving his arms in the wildest manner. Then along the way that he picked in coming to meet them, Norris with his glasses could just make out the brown ribbon of the trail.
Fifteen minutes more and they were lined up ready for the homeward march, cured once and for all of short-cuts, and divided only as to whether it would be better to run, at the risk of a turned ankle, while there was light to see their footing, or walk, and have to go the last half of the way in darkness.
They finally did some of both, running where the trail lay free from stones, and eventually having to make their way by the feel of the ground under the feet, and the memory of the mountain meadows whose perfume they passed, and the sound of the creek to their right. The stars were out, giving a faint but welcome light that served as guide when finally they stumbled into camp, bone-weary but safe, and nothing loth to set all hands for a square meal before tumbling in.
Throwing some of their reserve supply of fuel on the fire-place, they soon had the home fires burning cheerily, and Pedro was demonstrating his can-opener cookery.
Next day a glitter from beneath the water of a rivulet high on the mountain-side, caught Ted’s eye. Dipping with his tin cup, he brought up a specimen of sand and water. Could it be only mica that glistened so? Saying nothing to Ace, (for he remembered Long Lester’s tale of salting a mine once when “the boys” wanted some one of their number to stand treat by way of celebration of his new-found riches), he slyly slipped an aluminum plate from out the pack and began that primitive operation that used to be known as pan and knife working. Falling a little behind, he kept at it until he had separated out some heavy yellow grains that proved malleable when he set his teeth on them. It was coarse gold!
It was now time to announce his find, which he did to the amazement of all but the old prospector. A more careful inspection of the bend where he had found it proved it to be only the tiniest of pockets, though under their combined efforts that day it yielded what the old man pronounced to be about a hundred and fifty dollars’ worth of dust. Still, even that was not to be sneezed at, as Long Lester put it, in terms of Ted’s college fund, – for they all insisted on contributing their labor to his find. Ted, though, insisted equally that it be their stake for another camping trip.
Later that same day they came to the remains of an old hut, now overgrown inside and out with vines and underbrush. In one corner the old man unearthed what he pronounced to be the rusted mining tools of the early days. A fallen tree that lay across the doorway had to be chopped through and cleared away before they could enter, and on stripping a bit of the dry bark away for firewood, Pedro was puzzled to find what appeared like hieroglyphics on its nether side. He showed Norris, but what it could be he could not imagine, till Norris happened to try his pocket shaving mirror on it. Then, clear as carving, only inverted, they spelled out the legend:
“CLAME NOTISE – JUMPERS WILL BE SHOT.”
These were evidently the letters that had been carved on the tree trunk – as they judged, about six feet above its base, and though the sap had long since obliterated the original, the bark still told the story where it had grown over the wound. By chopping through the log at that point and making a rough count of the annual rings of growth, they estimated that all this had happened forty years ago. What had become of the old miner? For such his tools acclaimed him. Why had he never come back? Had he been overtaken by bandits, robbed of his buckskin bag of dust, and murdered? Or had he struck a richer claim elsewhere?
They dug beneath what once had been his crude stone hearth, in the hope of buried treasure, but no such luck rewarded them, and finally they moved on up the mountainside, past vistas of green-black firs and yellow-green alders. As usual in these dry altitudes, the fiery sun of noonday had grown chill at sunset, the wind stopped singing through the pines, and the weird bark of a coyote seemed to accentuate the loneliness that the wilderness knows most of all when some abandoned human habitation brings it home to one.
But a heaped up bon-fire and a singing kettle soon drove the shadows from the circling mountain meadow that was to be their home for the night.
“Thet there cabin,” drawled Lester, “sure made me feel as if I were back on my old stamping grounds. ‘Minds me of the place where I once found a chunk o’ glassy white quartz half the size of my head with flakes of color in it that netted me $200. I spent quite consid’able time hunting for the vein that came from, but I never did, nohow.”
Norris explained to Ted and Pedro that a quartz bowlder will often be washed along a river.
They were awakened by the usual concert of hee-haws, as the burros, who followed at their heels all day like dogs, (except when they got contrary), woke the echoes with their loneliness.
That day led them over another of the parallel ridges that comb the West flank of the Sierra, and into a precipitous canyon, over red sandstones and green shales, and slates of Tertiary formation, till they came to another hot spring and decided to pitch camp and all hands make use of the hot water. A natural bath tub and a smaller wash tub were found hollowed out of the stony banks, doubtless carved by whirling bowlders from the spring floods, and with the joy known only to the weary camper they performed their ablutions, filling the tubs, each in turn, by means of the nested pails. What grinding and whirling it must have taken, they reflected, as they felt the smoothness of their symmetrical bowls, to have hollowed these from the solid rock! With accompaniment of drift logs tumbling end for end, as the river rose and foamed beneath the thousand trickles of melting snow!
“Ever been up here in winter?” Ace asked the old prospector.
“Not exactly here, but I been places almighty like it.”
