Chapter 10: The Lost Herd

They extended their investigations further and further, Charles and Herbert usually together and ranging far and wide. These expeditions were partly for game, partly for the purpose of unveiling the country and partly to find signs corresponding to the story of Ananias Brown. The two lads departed on such a trip one morning, taking with them enough food for two days. They often stayed out a night now, and the Professor and Jed would feel no uneasiness, knowing that they were sure to come back in safety.

The two made no pause as they descended the slope that led back from the plateau, two erect, strong youths, bearing their rifles lightly and walking with easy, tireless steps. They entered the little marshy valley, where the beaver colony lived and flourished, and there they stopped for the first time. They had made no noise as they came and they remained a few moments at an undisturbing distance, watching the busy beaver people. They saw them float more sections of logs down their canals, and, as they looked, a maple at the edge of the forest fully four feet in circumference, but cut through by the sharp beaver teeth, fell with a crash.

“I suppose it’s going to be a hard winter,” said Charles. “Look how our beaver friends are working and accumulating supplies.”

“Well, we’re imitating their example, at least as best we can,” rejoined Herbert.

They slipped silently away, not wishing to disturb the busy and innocent little people, and swiftly continued their journey to a point in the northwest, further than they had ever yet gone. After they had walked some distance the traveling grew easier than they had expected to find it. They were ascending again, but it was up a comparatively smooth incline, among fine forest trees, free from undergrowth.

It was about noon when they stopped to eat a little venison and rest under the shade made by a group of magnificent pines. The high peaks, crested with snow, seemed nearer now, and below them they could see the tiny valley where the beaver home lay hidden.

“It’s a little world, way up here on top of the high mountains,” said the imaginative Herbert, “and it’s ours alone.”

They resumed their march and a half hour later Herbert, who was in advance, stopped with a cry of delight. He had just reached a summit and he was looking downward. Below them like a bowl of blue set in the mountain rock was a beautiful little lake, a gem of a lake, so very blue that it flashed back a deeper tint in reply to the blue skies above. It was almost perfectly round, perhaps not more than three hundred yards across, and apparently of immeasurable depth. Cliffs nearly perpendicular rose about two hundred yards above the water’s surface and they were fringed all around with fine straight pines.

There lay the little lake, a deep well of blue, glittering and basking in the sunlight and Charles and Herbert felt all the joy of the discoverer. They were sure that theirs were the first white faces ever to bend over these blue waters, and in their minds the red did not count.

Herbert threw down a stone. It sank with a plunk that told of the mighty depths below, and a flock of startled wild fowl, rising from the water’s edge, winged an arrowy flight. A great eagle, too, soared up, but he sailed slowly, as if in outraged dignity, and the boys fancied that his little red eyes were looking angrily down at these impertinent intruders.

“I suppose that Mr. Eagle was fishing down there in Lake Carleton, and regards it as a piece of presumption on our part to interrupt him,” said Charles. “I’ve a good notion to take a shot at him for his arrogance.”

“Don’t waste good cartridges,” said Herbert, “I think we’d better push on toward Mount Wayne over there, because you know that is where we intended to go.”

He was pleased because Charles had named the lake after him, and Charles, in his turn, was pleased because Herbert had bestowed the name of Wayne upon the mountain.

They looked at each other and smiled.

“Well, why not?” said Herbert. “We’re the discoverers, and it’s what other discoverers do.”

“Right you are,” replied Charles stoutly. “It’s Lake Carleton, and it’s Mount Wayne now and forever.”

They left their blue lake reluctantly and pushed on for Mount Wayne. It was their object to see what lay behind that peak. They were far up on the shoulder of it by the middle of the afternoon, and then they curved around the side among thick groves of pines and other trees, and then dense patches of undergrowth. The sun was now going down the western heavens and touched everything with red light.

Charles parted the twining bushes in front of him with both hands and pushed his body through a cleft while Herbert stood by to see the issue. He took but a single step and then threw himself back, like a soldier who would escape a bullet, his face, now turned toward his comrade, showing a yellowish hue in the fading sunlight. He raised his hand and wiped his damp forehead, while Herbert gazed at him in silence, seeing fear, sudden and absolute, in his gaze, as if death had faced him with no warning.

They stood so for a few moments, until the terror died slowly in Charles’ eyes, when he took another step back, and laughing a little in a nervous way, pointed before him with a long forefinger.

Herbert advanced, but Charles put a restraining hand upon his shoulder, and bade him take only a step. Herbert obeyed and, with his hand still on his comrade’s shoulder, looked down a drop of a thousand feet, steep like the side of a house, the hard stone of the wall showing gray and bronze where the light of the setting sun fell upon it.

They saw at the bottom masses of foliage like the tops of trees, and running through them a thread of silver which they felt sure was the stream of a brook or creek. They were looking into a green valley, and now Herbert understood Charles’ terror, when instinct or quickness of eye, or both, saved him from the next step which would have taken him to sure death.

The valley looked pleasant, with green trees and running water, and Charles suggested that it would furnish a good camp for the night.

Herbert pointed straight before them, and three or four miles away rose the mountain wall again, steep and bare, the hard stone gleaming in the moonlight. Charles followed his finger as he moved it around in a circle, and the wall was there, everywhere. The valley seemed to be enclosed by steep mountains as completely as the sea rings around a coral island.

Both boys gazed with the most eager curiosity. This seemed to them the most singular place that they had ever seen, more singular even than the village of the cliff dwellers when they first came upon it. Both lay down for greater security and stared over the brink into the valley, which looked like a huge bowl, sunk there by nature. The sky was clear and they could see the boughs of the trees below waving in the gentle wind. The silver thread of the brook widened, cutting across the valley like a sword blade, and they almost believed that they saw soft green turf by its banks. But on all sides of the bowl towered the stone walls, carved into fantastic figures by the action of time and mountain torrents.

The green valley below could not remove the sense of desolation which the walls, grim and hard, inspired. Their eyes turned from the foliage to the sweep of stone rising above, black where the light could not reach it, then gray and bronze and purple and green as if the sun’s fading rays had been tinted by some hidden alchemy. They assisted nature with their own imaginations and carved definite shapes—impish faces and threatening armies in the solid stone of the walls. Charles felt the shiver of Herbert’s hand, which was still upon his shoulder, and he felt, too, that he was chilled. He knew it to be the stony desolation of the walls, and not the cold of the night, that made him shiver, for he too felt it in his bones and he proposed that they look no more, at least not then, but build a fire for the night and rest and sleep.

“Good enough,” said Herbert. “It’s a rather weird-looking place down there, and I want to see into it, but I don’t feel like climbing down in the night time.”

They gathered fallen brushwood and built a fire, but they were rather silent about it. Each knew what was in the other’s mind. The mystery of the valley was upon both, and they would wait only until the daylight to enter it and see what it held.

Charles lighted the fire, and the blaze rising above the heaps of dry sticks and boughs was twisted into coils of red ribbon by a rising wind. A thin cloud of smoke gathered and floated off over the valley, where it hung like a mist, while the wind moaned in the cleft.

Herbert complained that he was still cold and wrapping his blanket tightly around him sat close to the fire where Charles noticed that he did not cease to shiver. Then Charles spread out his own blanket and both lay down, seeking sleep.

“We’ll tear its inmost secret right out of that valley to-morrow,” called out Charles in a defiant tone.

“We surely will,” replied Herbert in the same challenging voice.

Neither knew just what he was defying but each felt that it was something very powerful.

Then they closed their eyes and said no more.

Charles awoke far in the night. The fire had burned down, there was no moon and Herbert’s figure beyond the bed of coals was almost hidden by the darkness. Damp mists had gathered on the mountain, and his hand, as he drew the corners of the blanket around his throat, shook with cold.

Not being able to sleep just then, Charles rose, and put more wood on the heap of coals. Rut the fire burned with a languid drooping blaze, giving out little warmth, and offering no resistance to the encroaching darkness. Herbert slept heavily, and was so still that he lay like one dead. The flickering light of the fire fell over his face sometimes and tinted it with a pale red. He was so unlike his real self that Charles felt for a moment as if some genii of the Arabian Nights had changed his comrade in his sleep.

He sat by the coals a little while looking around at the dim forest, and then the attraction of the great pit or valley drew him toward it. He knelt at the brink, holding to the scrubby bushes with each hand, and looked over, but he could no longer see the trees and brook below. The valley was filled with mists and vapors, and from some point beneath came the loud moan of the wind.

The boy stayed there a long time, gazing down at the clouds and vapors that heaped upon each other and dissolved, showing denser vapors below, and then heaping up in terraces again. The stone walls, when he caught glimpses of them, seemed wholly black in the darkness of the night, and the queer shapes, which took whatever form his fancy wished, were exaggerated and distorted by the faintness of the light.

The place put a spell upon the lad. He was eager for the morning to come that Herbert and he might enter the valley, and see what, if anything, was there, besides grass and trees and water. He felt the strange desire to throw himself from a height which sometimes lays hold of people, and at once pulling himself back from the brink he returned to the fire.

Herbert was still sleeping heavily and the flames had sunk again, flickering and nodding as they burned low. Charles lay down and slept until morning when he awoke to find that Herbert was already cooking their breakfast.

“You looked pretty tired as you lay there, old fellow,” said Herbert, “and so I thought I’d let you sleep a while longer.”

“Thanks,” said Charles. “Then I’ll do the cooking next time and you can rest. Suppose we start down in half an hour?”

“That suits me,” replied Herbert.

The valley assumed a double aspect in the bright light of the morning, green and pleasant far down where the grass grew and the brook flowed, but grim and gaunt as ever in its wide expanse of rocky wall. The rising sun broke in a thousand colored lights upon the cliffs, and the stony angles and corners threw off tiny spearpoints of flame. The majesty of the place which had taken hold of them by night also held its sway by day,

“The most impressive of all our discoveries,” said Charles.

“It surely is,” said Herbert with emphasis.

They had no doubt that they would find a slope suitable for descent, if they sought long enough, and they pushed their way through the bushes and over the masses of sharp and broken stone along the brink, until their bones ached and their spirit was weak. But the two lads encouraged each other with the hope that they should soon reach such a place, though the circle of the valley proved to be much greater than they had expected.

After a while they were forced to rest and eat some of the cold food that they had wisely brought with them. The sun was hot on the mountains and the stone walls of the valley threw the light back in their eyes until, dazzled, they were forced to look away. But they had no thought of ceasing the quest; such a discovery was not made merely to leave the valley unexplored, and rising again, after food and rest, they resumed their task. About noon they saw a break in the wall which they thought to be a ravine or gully of sufficient slope to permit of descent into the valley, but it was late in the day when they reached the place and found their opinion was correct.

The ravine was well lined with short bushes which seemed to ensure a safe descent, even in twilight, and they began the downward climb, seeking a secure resting-place among the rocks for each footstep and holding with both hands to the bushes and vines.

The sun, setting in a sky of unbroken blue, poured a flood of red and golden light into the valley. The walls blazed with vivid colors, and the green of the trees and grass was deepened. Herbert stopped, and touching Charles on the shoulder pointed with his finger to the little plain in the center of the valley where a buffalo herd was grazing. Such they were they knew at the first glance, for one could not mistake the great forms, the humped shoulders and shaggy necks.

Neither sought to conceal his surprise, and perhaps neither would have believed what his eyes told him had it not been for the presence and confirmation of the other. They knew as everybody else knew, that the wild buffalo had been exterminated in the southwest years ago, and that even then the only known herd left in the whole United States was somewhere in the tangled mountains of Colorado, and yet here they were gazing upon another herd of these great animals, at least fifty of them, for they could count them as they moved placidly about and cropped the short turf.

“Herbert, it’s me, isn’t it?” asked Charles anxiously but ungrammatically. “I’m really here, am I not? I’m not dreaming?”

He touched his forehead tentatively with his finger, as if to see whether it were genuine flesh and blood.

“Yes, Charlie, it’s you, I certify to it,” replied Herbert in a loud whisper, “but I’m glad that you’re here to certify to me, too.”

“And it’s no delusion? Those are buffaloes, real live buffaloes? I’m not just imagining?”

“No, I see ‘em, too. And we two couldn’t imagine exactly the same thing.”

They remained a quarter of an hour in that notch in the wall, exulting over their second discovery, for they considered the tenants of the valley of as great importance as the valley itself, and exchanged with each other sentences of surprise and wonder. The sun hovered directly over the further brink, and poised there, a huge globe of red, shot through with orange light, it seemed to pour all its rays upon the valley.

Every object was illumined and enlarged. The buffaloes rose to a gigantic height, the trees were tipped with fire, and the brook gleamed red and yellow, where the rays of the sun struck directly upon it. Again they said to each other what a wonderful discovery was theirs and looked to the rifles that they had strapped across their backs, for seeing the great game of the valley they had it in mind to enjoy unequaled sport. Herbert lamented the speedy departure of the second day, but Charles thought the night would give them a better chance to stalk the big game, and thus talking, they resumed the descent. The sun sank behind the mountains, the red and golden lights faded, and the valley lay below them in darkness. The buffalo herd had disappeared from their sight, but feeling sure that they should find it again, they continued their descent, clinging to the bushes and vines, and wary with their footing.

The twilight was not so deep that the gray mountain walls did not show through it. and, as they painfully continued their descent, the trees and the brook rose again out of the dusk. Nearing the last steps of the slope they could see that the valley was much larger than it had looked from above, and their wonder at the presence of the herd was equaled by their wonder at the manner in which it had ever reached such a place, as there seemed to be no entrance save the perilous path by which they had come.

At last they left the bushes and stones of the ravine and, standing with feet half buried in the soft turf of the valley, looked up at the sky, as if from the bottom of a pit.

The twilight was as clear around them as it had been on the mountain above, and they could see a pleasant stretch of sward, the land rolling gently, with clumps of bushes and large trees clustering here and there.

They did not pause to look about, both being filled with the ardor of the chase, and walked quickly toward the little bit of prairie in which they had seen the buffaloes, examining their rifles to be sure that they were loaded properly. Both felt that sense of unreality which strange surroundings always give.

The night, now fully come, was not dark. Stars came out, and a pale light glimmered along the edges of the cliffs, which seemed, as they looked up, to threaten them.

They reached the brook that they had seen from above, a fine stream of clear water, a foot deep and a dozen or more across. They paused there to drink and refresh themselves and found the water cool and natural to the taste.

“This must flow into some cave under the mountain,” said Herbert. “It’s bound to have an outlet somewhere.”

But Charles did not reply, merely twitching his sleeve and urging him on to the chase. Herbert was nothing loth. The minds of both were now filled with thoughts of the buffalo herd, which each in his secret heart now began to fear was some sort of a delusion after all.

Another thing that impressed them with this sense of weirdness and unreality was the absence of life in the valley. No little burrowing animals sprang up at their feet as they passed. There were trees with foliage, but no birds flew among the boughs. All around them was silence, save for the crush of their own footsteps and their breathing, quickened by their exertions. Herbert spoke of this silence and absence of life, and they stopped and listened, but heard nothing. The night was without wind. They could not see a leaf on the trees stir, the air felt close and heavy, and each lad noticed that the other’s face was without color.