Part 6 (1/2)

”Looks more like a fire starting off there,” contributed Norris. ”Whew!

See old Red Top, there?”

”Red Top!--Where Rosa is?”

”I think it must be.”

”Radcliffe's plumb worried, with the woods so dry, I'll bet,” Ted surmised. ”And short a coupla fire outlooks, at that, I heard there in the Canyon.”

At this point they reached the mouth of the creek that had wriggled down from some spring, and Ace elected to follow it upstream with his Brown Hackles, which he dropped on the water with the most delicate care lest their advent appear an unnatural performance to the wary troutlets watching from the shady pools.

The slender stream raced dazzlingly in the reddening suns.h.i.+ne, as Ace tickled the placid surface of each pool, and the upstream side of each fallen log, careful lest his shadow fall betrayingly across his miniature hunting grounds. He kept a good ten feet from the bank. And before the red glow had started climbing the Western slope, he had a full string of little fellows,--the prettiest rainbow trout he had ever seen.

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 he had little dreamed at the time how much would depend on their next fis.h.i.+ng 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. He approached warily from above, lengthening his line. He cast well above the bend, so that his bait would sink to the bottom. He was rewarded at once with a bite. With a quick flip, he drew the fish away, and began his string.

For some time he followed down-stream before he saw another likely-looking place. An upturned stump awoke his sporting blood. Safe refuge for a trout in more ways than one, it offered a 50-50 chance of losing his hook. But Ted lifted skyward at the instant of the bite, and all was well.

An eddy of foam, the shade of an overhanging bowlder, then another upturned stump, (on these wind-swept mountain sides there were many such), and Ted's spirits rose by degrees.

Meantime Pedro pa.s.sed the rapids, climbed to a point well above, and selected a smooth green stretch of river for his operations. It had meant stiff going, and would mean more before he made his way back up the canyon wall, but something about their present crisis had challenged his reserves.

Pedro always used a spoon when he wasn't fis.h.i.+ng 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 s.h.i.+ning thing could be that darted so rapidly through their habitat,--that tiny bit of metallic white so unlike anything their jaded appet.i.tes had yet negotiated.

The bright silver blade, only a quarter inch in width, perhaps three times as long, spun against the current, cavorting along jerk by jerk, (with time between jerks for the scaly ones to think it over), soon began to get results. As the trout were all on the bottom resting till twilight should set in, Pedro craftily allowed the spinner to sink till it all but raked the bottom before beginning that tantalizing play.

Norris, too, tried a spinner, though he chose rapid water. There was one great beauty, green above and orange beneath, that baited his fancy. For some time he dangled the lure before he felt the heavy fish. Then a long rush, that sent his line whistling out like lightning, a moment's quiet, followed by another rush, and he had landed a great beauty of a five-pounder with the hook hard fast in his jaws.

After that Norris returned to camp, where Ace and Ted were already jubilantly comparing notes. Long Lester came in with a bag of birds and rabbits.

Of course their catch had to be broiled. Pedro arrived in time to join them in ”which will you have, or trout,”--for the game had been saved for breakfast. The boys ate with relish, though without salt, and later listened to Long Lester telling tales with his boots to the bon-fire, bronze faced, nonchalant. At 8,000 feet, the air grew noticeably cooler with the turning of the wind down-canyon, and the boys heaped down-wood liberally in a pyramid. The dry evergreens snapped in a shower of sparks as the full moon, silvering the snow-clad peaks, deepened the shadows under the trees.

On the fragrance of crushed fir boughs they finally slept, all thought of the morrow drowned in dreams.

Out of the painted sunsets and yellow sands of the Salton Sea, land of centipedes and cactus, blistering sun, and parching thirst, and all things cruel and ugly, had come Sanchez, a Mexican, with his son and an old man who had been his servant, to lay ties for the narrow gauge railway that was to zig-zag up the canyon walls for a lumber company. King's Lumber Company had fired them for reasons that will appear. Suffice it now that all their blistering bitterness and parching hate had focused on these forests.

Rosa, alone on the Red Top fire outlook scaffold, had seen a pin-point of light the night before that she took for a camp-fire, but whose, she could not know.

Breakfast, such as it was, disposed of, the four deceptively meek looking burros were lined up in the lupin perfumed meadow, in semblance of a pack-train, (the hundred pounds of duffle divided between them that they might make faster time, as well as a safe-guard against further accidents). A committee of the whole now decided they must catch more fish and dry them, then lead a forced march to Guadaloupe Rancho, and if they found range cattle, they would bring down a calf and square it later with the owner.

For two days Norris, Ace and Ted caught fish, while Pedro dried them, and Long Lester scoured the woods for game birds, rabbits,--anything and everything he might find. Then came two strenuous days during which they bore in the general direction of Red Top.

Without warning, they came to a sheer ledge fringed with minarets, and stared across a glacier-gouged canyon a mile wide. Progress in that direction was effectually checked. They found themselves with a view of such miles of snow-capped peaks that they stood speechless, with little thrills running up and down their spines at the sheer beauty of the scene.

To the right, the way was clear across a rock-strewn elevation where the only trees were squat, twisted, with branches reaching along the ground as if for additional foothold against the never-ceasing trade winds.

Again they were brought to a halt by a peak of granite blocks.

”Do you know, fellows,” said Norris, suddenly, ”mountain-building is still going on, under our very feet.”

”Is there going to be an earthquake?” gasped Pedro.