Unexplored!, Page 2

  CHAPTER II

  THE CAMPING TRIP

  A week later Norris and the boys arrived at the lumber camp on the Canyonrim, where they were to await Long Lester,--Ace in a piratical andplutocratic black Stetson sombrero, hiking boots and flannel shirt, a redbandanna at his throat, and to supplement his khaki riding breeches hehad bestowed lovingly in his duffle bag the Mexican leather chaps. Healso displayed the eight-inch leather belt of the cow country, and elbowlength leather cuffs studded with silver nails.

  Ted let it go at his second best blue overalls and heavy shoes, a greenplaid gingham shirt, with a brown one to change off and straw hat. Pedrolounged gracefully about in corduroy trousers and elkskin boots, (whichNorris warned him would last about a week on such rough going), and awool jersey in the same soft tan. He took their guying good naturedly,however, and in mockery of Ace's more picturesque accoutrement, gave afirst class imitation of a motion picture director with the Senator's sonfor his prize Bad Man. Norris wore his second best uniform, and all hadsweaters and a change of socks and things, to say nothing of an extrapair of shoes.

  When word came that the old guide had had "some investment business" comeup to delay him, they decided to establish a make-shift camp. There wasnot one chance in a hundred of any rain, but they decided a lean-to wouldbe convenient anyway. They got some shakes of an old lumberman whosefunction it was to split the giant shingles from three foot lengths oflog.

  Four poles for corner-posts made a substantial beginning. Smaller onesmorticed to lie crosswise gave something to which to nail the shakes,which were overlapped shingle-fashion on both sides and roof. Thetarpaulins would make a curtain across the front. The floor was beddeddown a foot deep with springy silver fir boughs, laid butts down andtoward the foot. To this could be added fresh browse as it grew dry andharsh.

  Tables were made by borrowing a saw of the lumbermen and slicing a fourfoot log into eight inch slices, then gouging these out on the under sideso that stout legs could be fitted in. Stools were made from shortlengths of a smaller log, and behold! the open air dining-room andkitchen were furnished, at cost of a few hours' fun.

  Norris even made a sort of steamer chair of poles, using a doublethickness of his tarp for the seat and back.

  Next came a stone fireplace, with an old piece of sheet iron across thetop, and a great flat hearth-stone on which to warm the plates.

  Each tin can as it was opened had its top neatly removed and was washedand set aside as a chipmunk-proof container, and Pedro fashioned arefrigerator by replacing the two sides of a cracker box with screenwire, (bartered from the cook of the lumber camp), hinging the door withdiscarded shoe tongues.

  Cord was strung for clothes-line, and a supply of several kinds of fuelbrought in. The down logs were simply run into the fireplace, butt endsfirst, and shoved closer as they burned. Ted devised a rake for gatheringtogether the dry twigs and cones and bark with which the ground wasstrewn, by using nails for teeth, set in a small board fastened at anangle to the stick that served as handle.

  Following Norris's lead, each fellow heated water and took a sponge bathdaily, (except Ace, who took a cold plunge in the glacier-cold stream),and afterwards washed out his change of socks and underwear and histowel. The dish-washers also laundered the dish towels after each meal.That way, everything was always ship-shape. And, be it noted, any cookwho burned the nested aluminum pans and kettles had to clean themhimself, and though Norris had made that easier by bringing along a boxof fine steel-wool, it was amazing how few scorched dishes occurred! Ofcourse where pots were used over the fire, the outsides got sooty, butafter all, it was only the insides that affected one's health.

  The boys found that they slept warmer by doubling their blankets intosleeping bags, pinning them shut with horse-blanket safety-pins, withtheir tarps for a windproof outer layer. And many's the sleeping bag racethey ran,--or rather, hopped, to the amazement, no doubt, of the wildfolk who very likely watched from the shadows. Agile Ted won the grandprize at one of these stunts by hopping the full length of a fallen login his bag, without once falling off.

  There were also pine-cone battles and bait-casting contests, Pedroexcelling in the throw by reason of his big arm muscles. Thus daysucceeded cool and perfect day, and night followed star-strewn night, fornearly a week. The tooth-brush brigade sallied forth as soon as the sunbegan slanting its long morning rays through the forest aisles, and theboys often began nodding at a ridiculously early hour around thebon-fire, tired from their strenuous day in the open. But each day foundtheir spirits higher, their muscles harder, their eyes brighter,--andtheir appetites more insatiable. Ted was plumping up and Pedro trimmingdown on the self-same medicine.

  The chipmunks soon became so tame that they ran all over the place, overthe boys' feet, on up to their shoulders, and into their pockets for thegoodies they sometimes found. But they never ran under any one's palm.Pedro got one cornered and caught him with his bare hands, and put him ona leash, but the furry mite spent the next half hour straining to getaway, too unhappy to eat,--cowering, trembling, when the boys stroked hisorange striped back with a gentle finger,--and Pedro finally gave himback his freedom, (and a pyramid of peanuts).

  "Camp Chipmunk" it was finally voted to call the place, and the name wasinscribed on the side of a huge fallen log with bits of yellow-green livemoss.

  Though the chipmunks could easily have gone to the creek, as they musthave before the boys came, they displayed a preference for drinking outof the same water pail the boys did, and they sometimes took anunexpected and unappreciated plunge bath.

  Besides the very tiny chipmunks, there were some of the ground-squirrelsize with the same orange and black. They were duller of wit, and moretimid, but they used to chase the little fellows to within an inch oftheir lives. One day a big Sayes chipmunk attempted to fish a cheese rindout of the fireplace. The ashes were still hot, and he plunged into thesoft stuff over his head, he was out and away, with a piercing squeal,almost instantly, trailing white ash behind him.

  The boys used to bury nuts just to see how fast the littlest chipmunkswould smell them out. After repeatedly finding the Dutch oven breadnibbled around the edges, Pedro hung the bread-bag from the clothes-lineone night. He was awakened next morning by the shout Ted sent up when hefound two chipmunks running down the string and squeezing their waydelightedly into the bag.

  Some one always had to watch while the meal was being laid, for themouselike villains would be right up on the table sampling the butter, ifsome one did not keep an eye out. Or they would climb up the leg of thetable and peek over the edge with their beady eyes, wondering how farthey dared approach without danger to their agile persons. But thefunniest thing was when two chipmunks would quarrel,--as generallyhappened when one unearthed a nut that another had buried. Nickering inthe angriest way imaginable, the two tiny things would come at each otherwith ears laid back, in what appeared for all the world like ahead-butting contest. Around and around they would whirl in a spiralnebula, till one got a head start on a race for home and mother.

  Each morning they awoke to the hack-hack-hack of the sawyers and thesteady grating of the log saw, the twitter of the donkey engine and thevolcanic remarks with which the bull-puncher was urging his team forward.The yellow sunshine sifted aslant through the giant trees, birds sang,and chipmunks chattered. A water-packer passed them one day with his muleplodding along under 40 gallons disposed in canvas bags on a woodenframe, and beyond, across the singing creek, they could see the swampersburning the brush they had cut from the pathway of the tree next to fall.

  Breakfast dispatched, the boys hurried over to watch the two-bitted axebiting its huge kerf in the side of a ten-foot trunk. When it had eaten athird of the way through the giant trunk, the sawyers began on theopposite side, nearly as high as the top of the kerf, resting the longinstrument on pegs driven into two holes that had been bored for thepurpose. Iron wedges were driven after the saw. The instant the treebegan to lean, the head chopper had driven a stake about
150 feet fromthe base on the side of the kerf, declaring that the falling tree woulddrive that stake into the ground, so accurately could they gauge thedirection of its fall. The swampers had cleared the way between. Thencame the cracking of neighboring branches, as the mammoth trunk swayedand toppled to the forest floor. There was a crash that shook the ground,which rebounded with a shower of chips and bark dust, and the stump gapedraw and red where for perhaps 2,000 years it had upborne the plumedSequoia Gigantea.

  The boys, far above whose heads the fallen trunk towered, scrambled upthe rough bark and raced each other up and down the novel roadway that itmade. Then, the excitement over, they suddenly realized that they werehungry and ran another race back to camp.

  Later they watched as the donkey engine, stronger than ten oxen, was madefast to a stump and stoked till it could move itself into position tohaul the log lengths to the waiting ox team. Peelers with axes and longsteel bars had been peeling off the thick red bark, which the boys foundcould be whittled into odd shapes and rubbed velvety at the cut ends. Thesawyers were sawing the trunk into lengths short enough to ride on boxcars, and the chain tenders were driving the "dogs" or steel hooks intothe forward segment preparatory to attaching the chain that was to drawthe log after the panting donkey engine. The block shifter was ready withhis pulley, and the gypsy tender was gathering down wood.

  Suddenly, just as the chain had stretched till the log began to move,some weak link snapped and with a rebound like that of a cannon itflashed over the hillside, catching one man and toppling him over with abroken leg. The camp cook, whose accomplishments varied from the abilityto deliver an impromptu and usually unsolicited sermon to that of callingoff the numbers at a stag dance, was summoned in haste and from a longblack bag that went with the framed diploma that hung at the head of hisbunk, this unusual individual administered surgical treatment. Theinjured man took it philosophically,--his out of door constitution wouldrepair the damage with more than average speed,--and the work of gettingout the big log proceeded as before.

  They also watched, fascinated, as the logs at a camp further back weresent down a crude slide that slanted sheer to a sizeable lake. Acethreatened to try riding a log some time, but Norris rendered one of hisrare ultimatums on that score.

  "Let's take plenty to eat!" bargained Pedro, who was beginning to suspectit was no afternoon stroll he had embarked upon. "Hadn't we better 'phoneold Lester to lay in some extra supplies?"

  "There is always fish," Norris reminded him.

  "One gets tired of fish. I say let's take plenty of grub, if we're goingaway off where for weeks we may not see a living soul to buy a pound ofbacon of. Eating's half the fun of camping. And if we get up there on theJohn Muir Trail, we can't even catch fish, can we--always?"

  "That's the stuff!" seconded Ace. "If we aren't tied too tightly to theproblem of rustling grub, we will be freer to roam where we please. Butgosh! Won't it take a whole train-load of burros to pack enough stuff?Five men, three times a day, that's fifteen meals. And thirty days wouldmake it 450 meals. Besides we'll eat just about double the normal numberof calories,--the way I feel already. And twice 450 meals is 900."

  "Whoa, there!" begged Norris. "How much can a burro carry, anyway? Wecan't take all our food, or we'll have such a pack-train we won't havetime for anything but donkey driving, and if we carry feed to keep themgoing on the trail, we'll have to take more burros to pack the feed, andthey will have to have feed too, and--there's no end to it."

  "Well, of course we'll fish, when we can," amended Pedro. "And we cantake compact rations, dried stuff, instead of watery canned goods.They're just as good, aren't they? Only the water's been taken out ofthem, and we can put it back in each night before we eat it. What's theuse of packing tin cans that are mostly full of water?"

  "I wouldn't call canned peaches mostly water," retorted Ace, who thoughless dependent than the plumper Pedro on his three square meals per day,was even more particular what those three meals tasted like.

  "It isn't only the juice," said Pedro. "The peaches themselves are halfwater. Dried peaches are the same thing except for that, and two poundsof dried peaches will go a whole heap farther than a two-pound can, letme tell you!"

  "All right," said Ace. "Dried peaches! What else? Mr. Norris, you've hada lot of experience on these back-country trips."

  "H'm!" said the young Survey man, his eyes lighting reminiscently. "Didyou ever eat black bean soup with salt pork and garlic to flavor it?"

  "I have," said Pedro. "It's a meal in itself, with black rye bread anddill pickle. And what about fried frogs' legs and watercress? Broiledmushrooms, stewed mushrooms and onions, and crayfish soup?"

  "Sounds good to me," Ace admitted. "But have we a mushroom expert in ourmidst? I'm not ready to commit suicide just yet."

  "Nor I," laughed Norris.

  "Nobody asked you to," Pedro looked aggrieved. "Goodness knows I'm noexpert, but I do know a few kinds, and I know those few kinds for sure."

  "Hot dog!" commented the Senator's son. "Go to it, ol' boy!"

  "Then," Norris continued, "there've been times in my life when I didn'tturn up my nose at corned beef hash browned."

  "And spuds!" Ace completed the recipe. "And onions."

  "Dehydrated," Norris admitted. "Can't carry potatoes for more than thefirst few days, and dried onion is just as flavorful as fresh."

  "An onion a day--" began Ace.

  "Keeps everybody away," finished the young Survey man laughingly. "Andthat reminds me of apples,--dried apple pie, apple pudding, appledumplings, (baked or boiled), apple fritter, (made with pancake flour),and apple pan-dowdy with cinnamon."

  "Pan-dowdy!" queried both boys.

  "Yes, when the cook has to roll it out with a bottle, or an oar handle,or a smooth stone instead of a rolling pin, and perhaps bake it in thefrying pan, and he hesitates to label the result, he terms it pan-dowdy,and then nobody has any kick coming if it isn't exactly flesh, fish orfowl, if you get me."

  "We get you!" grinned Ted, who had thus far been a silent partner to theplans. But as usually happened at such times, he had been doing a lot ofthinking. He now added his contribution: "How about rainbow trout broiledwith pork scraps, and served with horseradish? Let's take a bottle ofhorseradish."

  "Dried horseradish and a grater," amended Pedro.

  "All right. Then there's trout baked with tomato and onion sauce, troutbaked in clay, trout boiled for a change, with lemon, (we could start thetrip with a few), trout skewered, griddled, baked in ashes, baked on astone, fried--of course, and roasted and stuffed with sage. Let's takesage. Then how about cold boiled trout salad with mustard dressing, andfish chowder a la canned milk, with dry-dated--what do you call it?Dehydrated potatoes and evaporated onions? Eh? And garlic isn't such abad idea. It's the handiest little bit of flavoring I know of,--if we allgo in for it alike."

  "We'll all go in for it good and strong," winked Ace.

  "Strong is the word," chuckled Norris.

  "Anyway," Ted defended his suggestion. "I've camped through theback-country a heap in my time, and I've generally found it isn't thesameness of the fish-three-times-a-day that lays you out, but the lack offlavorings. Now I even take caraway seed to give a different flavor to abatch of biscuit, and raisins, or some anise seed, or a little strongcheese, that you can grate into it or on it and then toast it till itmelts. Then there's cinnamon and cheese toast for dessert, and plaincinnamon and sugar melted on white bread makes it just bully! And why dowe have to eat white bread all the time anyway?"

  "Of course we'll have cornmeal and buckwheat in our pancake mixture,"said Norris.

  "Bully! But why not take part rye flour too, and part oatmeal to mix in?It bakes fine and flaky. And there's oatmeal cookies mixed with peanutbutter and sweetened!"

  "Good!" Norris pronounced.

  "Y'r _all right_, kid!" Ace thumped affectionately on his thin shoulderblade, "y'r all right," but at the threatened repetition of the bearlikecaress, Ted dodged.

  "Anoth
er idea," Pedro broke in. "Why eat bread all the time anyway? Whynot macaroni and cheese, and spaghetti and tomato paste?"

  "And garlic?" teased Ace.

  "Surest thing you know! And vermicelli, and noodles, and all thosethings. They're all made of flour, and they're different."

  "A little bulky," protested Norris.

  "Oh, well, for the start of the trip, then. They're not so heavy, parkedup on top of a burro's regular pack."

  "Good!" agreed the leader of the expedition. "We may come to cattleranches where we can get beef and mutton occasionally, though not afterwe get into the higher altitudes. And we can start off with a few fresheggs, for compactness and safety broken a dozen at a time into glassjars. After that--I don't know whether you fellows would like scrambledeggs or not, made of egg powder. Personally I don't. Nor the famouserbswurst."

  "Aw!" drawled Ted, barely concealing his impatience. "The thing thatstands by you best on a hard trip, after all, is jerky and pemmican. Ithink old Lester jerked some venison himself last fall, and he's probablygot it yet. And he'll grind us some pemmican, if we get him word beforehe starts."

  "Gee Whiz! Those are emergency rations!" vetoed Ace.

  "We'll have to have a long distance conversation with him to-night," saidNorris. "Meantime we mustn't forget pilot biscuit and peanut butter for apocket lunch and shelled peanuts, of course, and rice, and tea andcoffee, and sugar, and baking powder."

  "There are two things that can compactly," conceded the Castilian boy atthis point. "The best grade of canned beets and spinach are pretty solidweight. I'll make no kick if we load on some of that until we get to thesteeper grades."

  "Hey!" shouted Ace. "In all this time nobody's mentioned bacon."

  "We took that for granted," laughed Norris. "I'll bet Long Lester wouldnever start out without it, whether we told him to or not. But I'mawfully afraid we'll use more tea than coffee. It's bulky, and worse, itloses flavor."

  "Oh," said Ted, "I know the answer to that. Powdered coffee isn't onequarter so bulky, and put up in little separate tins, we keep openingthem fresh, don't you see?"

  "I've never yet seen a powdered coffee that could compare with the realthing," Ace complained.

  "Why couldn't Les buy the real thing and then get it powdered and sealedinto little separate tins for us?"

  "He could," agreed Norris, "I suppose,--if we're going to be as fussy asall that." (Ace flushed.) "But with our woods' appetites----"

  "Oh, and citric acid tablets," the Senator's son hastened to change thesubject. "For lemonade, you know."

  The discussion was cut short by Pedro's discovery that a bear had invadedthe lean-to.

  The American black bear, and his California cousin whose coat hasgenerally lightened to the cinnamon brown of the soil, is all but tame inthe National Parks, where for years he has been unmolested. A friendlyfellow even in the wild state,--for the most part,--he roams the GiantForest as much a prized part of the landscape as the Big Treesthemselves. He has learned to visit the garbage dump regularly everynight, and it causes no sensation whatever to meet one on the trail. Itwas much the same about the lumber camp.

  But to have him visit uninvited, and serve his own refreshments fromtheir selected stores, was a less attractive trick. Nor did he show theslightest inclination to take alarm and vacate when the boys returned. Onthe contrary, he snarled and showed his teeth when they would have drivenhim from the maple sugar can, and even Ace felt at the moment thatdiscretion was in order. It was not till Old Shaggy-Sides had pretty welldemolished everything in sight, and then carried the ham off under hisarm, that he took a reluctant departure.

  This would never do. That night the unprotected edibles were hoisted justtoo high for a possible visitor to reach, on a rope slung over the limbof a tree. The boys still slept under the stars, for they knew enoughabout bears, (all but Pedro), not to be afraid. Pedro, however, gotlittle sleep that night, though he would not have confessed to the factfor anything on earth.

  "There was one bear in Sequoia Park," remembered Ace, "who got too fresh,that way, and raided some one's tent, and they had to send for help toget him out. When it happened half a dozen times, he was ordered shot.But he was the only one I've ever heard of acting that way. Now I'll bet,if we'd inquire, we'd find this bear had been half tamed, and altogetherspoiled by these lumbermen.

  "We were driving through Yellowstone last summer when one of those halftame bears came out to beg. We stopped the machine and I fed him somecandy. Then we parked, and went up to the hotel for dinner. When we cameback, we found he had mighty near clawed the back seat to pieces,--andwhy do you suppose?--To get at a side of bacon we had stowed away inthere."

  "Did he find it?"

  "We never did."

  "That reminds me of something I heard," laughed Norris. "Some friends ofmine in Sequoia left their lunch boxes in the machine while they went toclimb Moro Rock. When they came back they found a cub calmly sitting upthere behind the wheel, eating one lunch after another."

  Pedro was in for moving their headquarters to a great hollow Big Tree,the cavity in which was as large as a good sized room, with a Gothic sortof opening they could have made a door for. But the very next morning theold prospector arrived with the train of pack-burros, and they were off.

  "How do you explain the Sequoias, Mr. Norris? Will we find more of them?"asked Pedro, with a last wistful backward glance.

  "The Big Trees are by no means confined to Sequoia National Park andother well known groves," said the Survey man. "The Sequoia gigantea isto be found in scattered groves for a distance of 250 miles or more, upand down the West slope of the Sierras, at altitudes just lower than thatof the belt of silver firs,--that is, anywhere from 5,000 to 8,000 feetabove sea level. And in fact, south of Kings' River, the Sequoias stretchin an almost unbroken forest for seventy miles. Nor are they all of theproportions so often cited, where a man standing at their base looks likea fly on the wall by comparison with these prehistoric giants. Nor didthey all get their start in life 4,000 years ago. There are young treesin plenty, saplings and seedlings, who will doubtless reach thepatriarchal stage some 4,000 years hence. On what kind of earth will theylook then? On what stage in the evolution of civilization? Will anotherice age have re-carved these mountains? And how will man have learned toprotect himself from the added severity of those winters?"

  "It certainly gives one something to think about," mused Pedro. "It isonly in these younger specimens that you can see what a graceful tree itis!" He glanced from a feathery Big Tree youngster of perhaps 500summers, with its slender branches drooping in blue-green plumes towardthe base, with purple-barked limbs out-thrust on the horizontal half wayup, and at the top reaching ardently heavenward. Near it stood a parenttree of perhaps middle age, born around the time of Christ, whose crownwas still firmly rounded with the densely massed foliage, nowyellow-brown, and the bark red-brown.

  The millions of two inch cones, surprisingly tiny for such a tree, hangheavy with seeds,--they counted 300 in a single green cone.

  "With such millions of seeds," puzzled Pedro, "I should think the treeswould grow so thick that there would be no walking between them."

  "No," said Norris. "In the first place, remember that not one seed in amillion escapes these busy Douglas squirrels and the big woodcocks thatyou hear drumming everywhere. Then even the millionth seed has to riskforest fires and snow-slides, lumbermen and lightning. But I'll tell yousomething funny about them. You'd naturally think, from the number ofstreams in these forests, that they required a lot of moisture. Well,they don't. Further South they grow and flourish on perfectly dry ground.But their roots retain so much rain and snow water that their tendency isto _make_ streams. The dense crown helps too, by preventing evaporation.You'll find Sequoias flourishing in a mere rift in a granite precipice.But wherever you find a dense growth, as you do here, there you will findtheir roots giving out the seepage that feeds a million streamlets, andthese in turn feed the great rivers.

  "You see these trees
_must_ be able to survive drouth or they could nothave survived the changes of so many thousand years. Why, these Sequoiasmight have formed one continuous forest from the American River on South,if it had not been for the glaciers that swept down the great basins ofthe San Joaquin and Kings' River, the Tuolumne and the Stanislaus."

  "But why didn't the glaciers clean them off the basins of the Kaweah andthe Tule Rivers, too?"

  "Ah! There the giant rock spurs of the canyons of the King and the Kernprotected the Tule and the Kaweah, by shunting the ice off to right andleft."

  "There's one thing more I'd like to know," said Pedro. "Where will wefind the nut pines that have the pine nuts? Aren't they delicious?"

  "There are several kinds," said Norris. "There is a queer little one withcones growing like burrs on the trunk as well as on the limbs, but thatis only found on burnt ground. Another, that forms a dietary staple withthe Indians of Nevada, is to be found only on the East slope of theSierra, and the little nut pine that our California Indians harvest isaway down in the foothills among the white oaks and manzanitas, so I'mafraid whatever else we come across on this trip, we won't want to counton pine nuts."

  "What interests _me_ more," said Ted, "is whether we are going to comeacross any gold or not."

  "Now you're talking!" the old prospector suddenly spoke up.

  Ted's eyes shone.

  Ace had an experience about this time that flavored his nightmares forsome time to come. Following a lumber chute, one of these three boardaffairs, up the side of a particularly steep slope one day, where at thetime of the spring floods the yellow pine logs had been sent down to theriver, he thought to try a little target shooting with Long Lester'srifle. But at the first shot a bunch of range cattle,--of whose presencehe had not known,--began crowding curiously near. He fired again, and acow with a calf took alarm and started to charge him, but was driven backwith a few clods and a flourished stick.

  He fired again. This time, quite by accident, his bullet hit an old bullsquarely on the horn. The shock at first stunned the animal, and he fellforward on his knees. Recovering in an instant, however, the enragedanimal made for Ace.

  Leaping aboard a log he sent it shooting to the streambelow.]

  The Senator's son had that day worn his heavy leather chaps. He had foundthem burdensome enough on his slow climb upward. They now impeded himtill he could not have outrun the animal had he tried, nor was there anytree handy between him and it.

  Then a wild thought struck him. The log slide!--It was mighty risky, butthen, so was the bull. Leaping aboard a log that still lay at the head ofthe slide, he pulled the lever and sent it shooting to the stream below,and the fallen pine needles flew out in a cloud before him, as the loghurled down the grade. His heavy leather chaps really helped him balancenow, and his hob-nails helped him cling.

  The log came to a stand-still before it reached the river,--but Ace didnot. And the bull was hopelessly out-distanced.