Unexplored!

CHAPTER V

A DARING FEAT

As sun-set turned the wind down canyon, all hands made a sally down the mountain side in the hope of establishing a line of back-fire, but the ground soon became too hot for them, while the air was filled chokingly with ash and char-dust. They had to retreat to the ridge. It was a night never to be forgotten.

When the wind turned at dawn, – with their line still intact, – the exhausted party took turn and turn about, snatching a few hours’ sleep, wrapped in their blankets on the rocks, or making coffee.

Ace had forgotten all about his wireless message when, shortly after noon, his own ship arrived. It had had a search for him, and had landed, apparently, on the very ledge of basalt where the DeHaviland had picked them up.

The beauty of the Spanish ship was that it was built to land on a space no bigger than a house roof. It carried two propellers at the top. The pilot had only to start these and it sucked itself straight up into the air. Then he twirled the propeller on the front and sailed away, as easily as you please.

He landed by reversing these operations. He could alight on a shed roof if he had to, (provided, of course, that the roof was flat). The only danger would be if the propellers should go on strike.

“I’ve been getting a wireless message,” said the pilot. “There! Better take it, Mr. King,” to Ace.

Ace’s eyes grew dark as he interpreted the frantic ticking that his apparatus gave him. “Why —Rosa’s sending this! – She’s marooned – there at the Red Top fire-outlook! – ‘Fire on three sides, on fourth, rapids of Kawa River Gorge. Send help – if you can,’” he translated, while the boys waited, breathless. “Three men where first-fire started – silver buttons – shining in the sun.”

“That sounds like Mexicans!” said Pedro.

“Now what?” asked Norris. “Where’s the Ranger, do you suppose?” But just then he saw a flaming branch blown across their line. Like tinder the dried firs burst into a shower of sparks, and with a call to the men, he darted after it. Ace remained behind to wireless, and Ted to quench their cook-fire, while Ace’s pilot flung off his coat and ran after the fire fighters.

Ace King did one thing supremely well. He knew his ship. He was born to fly.

“Hey, Ted,” he brought a certain line of reasoning to a head, “the Ranger can’t land with that DeHaviland, if he does go after Rosa. You know the lay-out on Red Top.” (The boys had passed that way.)

“Yeh, – Cæsar! – That’s right. No place there half large enough for the bombing-plane! – That poor kid!” He shuddered. “What’s the answer?” for he saw that Ace had some plan. “I’m with you!”

“Just this. We can’t leave her there to be burned alive. Radcliffe can’t do any more than we can about it. Besides, he’s got his hands full, wherever he is. But a forest guard was killed last year directing fire fighters from a plane. Went into a tail spin and fell into the flames.”

“I know. It’s mighty dangerous flying over a fire. Isn’t there anything Rosa can do?”

“That’s just what–” Ace hesitated, deep in thought.

“I’ve heard of people taking refuge in caves, but where would she find the cave? – ’N’ I’ve heard of ’em going to a rock-slide and piling up a barricade of stone and lying behind it while the fire swept that way. It cuts off some of the heat and flying sparks–”

“Look here!” Ace vociferated with the suddenness of a machine gun. “I’m going for her.”

“What–!”

“Yes, sir! I can land there, anyway. Then if it queers the machine, I’ll take Rosa down to the rapids. I know a fellow that was in a big fire in Montana. When it cut them off, each man soaked his blanket and got under it in midstream while the fire jumped to the other bank. They made a sort of tepee around their heads, got clear under water, and just came up for an occasional breath. Gee! He says it roared like a thousand trains as it swept over them. So that’s what we’ll do – that is, unless we can get back in the ship.”

Unconsciously he patted his machine, and Ted knew what it would mean to him to lose it.

“Perhaps – perhaps you can bring it back,” he ventured.

“Sure thing!” Ace gave his spirits a toss. “Anyway, here goes! – Good-by.”

“What’s the idea?” yelled Ted aggrievedly. “Going to leave your side-kick behind?” and he climbed into the observer’s place.

“Coming!” Ace wirelessed the girl. “Be on meadow – we’ll pick you up.”

“If our propellers don’t go on strike,” he added to himself. Still he knew he could slow to 80 miles an hour and pancake down. He would first circle well away from the fire, with its super-heated air column, till they came to the gorge of the Kawa. There would be a narrow zone, he figured, of less destructive atmosphere, the air channel over the 2,000 foot canyon.

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 and 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. A cloud to the West looked like a fleecy carpet beneath them. The West wind kept swinging the machine till Ace had continually to bring it back in line with the rapids of the Kawa which was his objective point.

It took but instants, though it seemed ages to both boys. Now it was time to race quivering down the gorge of canyon-cooled air. Would they make it against the devastating breath of the flames! – Now they were looking straight down into that picture of red and – black. Rosa, watching frantically from the wee patch of green which was her mountain meadow, looked like a dot with waving arms. The air became a stretch of dizzy rapids. The combined roar of the flames and the river beneath nearly drowned the nearer sound of the descending ’plane.

With 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.

Back at fire-fighting headquarters, Ace’s nerves took toll of him in trembling knees. He had been all steel. Now he literally dropped in his tracks, and in ten minutes was fast asleep.

Rosa, now that the danger was all over, broke down and wept hysterically, to Ted’s infinite embarrassment.

Norris was just returning with the triumphant fire-fighters. They had actually not missed them. When, four hours later, Ace awoke and responded to Pedro’s “Come and get it!” as he ladled out the ham and beans, he found himself a hero, and Ted his press agent.

“This country would do well to emulate France,” Norris was explaining. “France offers a government subsidy to encourage commercial aviation. Our Congress has thus far refused to realize the need of appropriations. For it is by trade that aviation will develop.

“We need above all things more airplane fire patrols. We have the men, trained aviators left from the war, – we have the equipment, and the men could protect not only our National Forests, but at the same time keep a watchful eye on the millions of acres of state lands and timber privately owned, which lie adjacent to Government holdings.

“Do you fellows realize that in five years, areas have been burned that would more than fill the state of Utah! At that rate how long will our forests last? And think what a paper famine alone would mean!” He paused for lack of breath to express the intensity of his feeling.

“Hundreds of men have given up their lives in the service, – fighting fire.”

“Yes,” said Ace, “but Dad says there’s a bigger fight to put up in Congress for forestry appropriations.”

“Your father is doing good work,” stated Norris.

“He’s trying to, you bet!”

“These fire-fighting ’planes can sail over the highest peaks in the United States. They can travel 14 hours without a landing. They can communicate with those below by radio. And they don’t have to have smooth landing places, merely ground that is free from stumps. We have over twenty million acres of National Forests alone, (not counting those in Alaska), and they are worth $220,000,000.”

“Gee! And there’s just as much risk as in dodging enemy ’planes,” Ted enthused, “flying over fires, and finding landing places when your motor goes on strike.” His eyes glowed across at Ace.

“Huh, you’re safe enough above a thousand feet,” minimized Ace, modestly. “These accidents practically all happen below a thousand feet.”

But by now supper was eaten, and it was time to get back to work. Norris, acting on Radcliffe’s suggestion, had been stationing the men at intervals to back-fire as far down the ridge as they could stand the heat. If anything, the fire seemed bigger than it had the night before, – a maelstrom of the inferno.

They worked in pairs, Ace being his, Norris’s, right hand man. He now assorted the six miners along the slope, planning himself to take the extreme Western post, where the ridge ran lowest and where the rocky crest dwindled to a dangerous line of mountain pines.

Ted and Pedro he directed to the opposite end of the ridge, where, like the tooth of a comb, it joined the main crest of the Sierra, – another strategic point.

“If worst comes to worst,” his final words were, “take refuge in some cave. This is a limestone region, – as you may have noticed, – and it’s likely riddled with caves. Keep an eye out for indications of cave mouths. I saw one yesterday, somewhere down there, when I didn’t have time to investigate.”

“All right,” acquiesced the boys, though inwardly scorning the possibility.

Rosa remained at camp to have food ready for the men on their return.

She began by taking stock. There was flour and lard, but no bread. She would have to bake for eleven hungry men. There were rice, beans, onions and tomatoes, dried fruits and coffee, and fresh meat for one meal, and for the next, erbwurst and pickles, macaroni to be baked with cheese, and tea. She hoped – for more reasons than one – that the Ranger would bring more supplies. She got out the Dutch oven and the gallon coffee pot, and with the hatchet provided with the outfit, started getting in a supply of down-wood.

As on the day of the rodeo, she was attired in trim khaki riding breeches and high-heeled moccasin boots, – good on horse-back but mighty hard to walk in, where the ground was rough. Her bobbed curly hair, red silk blouse and fringed sash added a touch of the Rosa that underlay her gritty side. She would surprise Radcliffe with her ability to cook for a fire crew.

The huge loaf safely ensconced in a Dutch oven buried in red coals, she sallied forth on a little exploring expedition. She wished she might find some fir sugar to cap the feast. She had, once, when camping in the Thompson River Valley. She had found the delectable sweet on a Douglas fir. Some of the dry white masses had been all of two inches long, though most of it had been in the form of mere white drops at the tips of the needles. There had also been a quantity of it in a semi-liquid condition on the ground underneath the tree, where some rain had dissolved it from the branches.

Just where should she search? The Indians had told her that time to look on the dry Eastern slopes of the range, in open areas where the trees got lots of sunlight, but where the ground has not dried out too quickly after the spring rains, as moisture is necessary as well as sunlight, – (so long as it does not rain and melt off this excess of the tree’s digested starch). She had a hunch that she could find some on the desert side of the Sierras, that being, of course, unattainable – unless Ace could take her over in his ’plane. It would do no harm to look on this side.

Neither did it do any good. She returned to camp empty-handed save for some cones of the sugar pine, which she proceeded to roast that the nuts might fall out of the spiny masses.

She found the deserted camp over-run with chipmunks. The little striped rascals had ravaged all the food supplies they could nibble into. She watched a couple of them actually shoving on the tin lid that she had left insecurely loose on the syrup can. Finally sending it clattering to the stony ground, – as she watched from behind two trees that grew close together, – the wee things sat up there on the edge of the can, dipping out its contents with their hand-like paws and licking them. Then one tried to reach down and drink it outright, at which he fell in, and Rosa felt impelled to fish him out and launder him, – to his terror, – before turning him loose, then put the syrup on the fire to sterilize.

Meantime what of the fire fighters? 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.

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.

They were stooping to drink at a spring when the terrified neigh of a horse sounded from a clump of saplings almost behind them. In the same instant the stretch of seedling firs that clothed the creek bank, showering into sparks at the far end, shot toward them sky rockets of leaping flame. Turning in a panic to race out at right angles from this unexpected peril, they thought to make time on horse-back. The animal was tied and hobbled with a rawhide lariat!

Frantically the hobbled horse jerked at the rawhide.

Pedro plucked Ted by the arm and tried to drag him on, for the fire was snapping through the under-brush at the speed of an express train. Its sound was that of many trains, and its wind hot as the breath of a blast furnace.

But as Ted had stooped to cut the thongs, his parched nostrils had caught a cooler breath. It seemed to issue from a cranny in the rocks behind the clump of saplings. Then it was too late: The shooting tongues of red were upon them. Dragging Pedro down beside him, – for the roar drowned his voice, – he waited, reasoning that the two- or three-foot seedlings would go like tinder, leaving a strip of ground hot, to be sure, but no longer flaming.

If they could but endure its passing! He turned to press his scorched face against the rock wall.

To his amazement, he fell into a cave mouth, tripping Pedro, who stumbled after him. Quick as thought they dragged the horse in after them and held him, trembling and snorting, his eyes rolling wildly, during that blistering moment until the line of fire had passed them.

“We’re safer now than before,” declared Ted. “This made a fine back-fire, didn’t it? – Let’s rest awhile.” His nerves were taking toll of him. “Ground’s too hot yet anyway.”

For perhaps an hour they rested, flat on the floor of the cave, – after having tied the horse to a bowlder just outside. He was a fine animal, black as jet and as high-spirited as Spitfire himself. Ted appraised him with longing eyes, for he loved horses as Ace loved his ship. But who could he belong to, and how did he come to be there?

His bridle was embellished with silver. “Mexican handiwork, that!” Pedro thought. But the mystery was no nearer solution.

The answer came sooner than they expected.

CHAPTER VI

THE INCENDIARIES

The red glow of the sun on the snow-clad peaks of the main ridge had begun glinting through the smoke gloom when voices seemed to echo from within the very rock against which they were leaning. The boys crept to look behind it. Then their eyes rounded in astonishment. As Ted would have spoken, Pedro clapped his hand over his mouth with a look that bade silence. Crouched motionless at the side of the cave mouth, – for a deep cave it now disclosed itself, – the two boys peered at the spectacle that greeted their eyes.

Three Mexicans, aglitter with the silver buttons of their native costume, appeared suddenly from some black depth, carrying torches.

With these one of their number kindled a bon-fire, whose flame revealed a couple of burros standing patiently under their packs, tied to a mammoth stalagmite. For the red flare behind the three figures of the Mexicans, showed a cave roofed with amber-tinted icicles of smoke-stained rock, beneath which up-rose for each a pyramid of the same formation.

The Mexicans might have been father and son and old servant, from their general appearance and from the fact that most of the work of supper-getting was performed by the shabby, white-haired one, while the fat middle-aged one struck the younger a blow that was not reciprocated. They were talking in a tongue that Ted could not translate, though from the peppery tone of it, he judged they were quarreling. Pedro assured him later they were not. (He knew Mexican.) They were merely regretting that their horse had been burned.

The fat one, evidently too fagged to move, was demanding that one of the others go see for sure, while they argued that it was no use, the animal could not have survived. They must have been exhausted, lame, besides, to judge from the creaky way they moved. The fat one poured some verbal vitriol on their heads for not having brought the horse inside, while the white haired one deprecated that they had not intended to be gone so long.

“It’s the fat one’s, and now he’ll have to hoof it like the others; he’d sure break the back of a burro,” translated Pedro in huge enjoyment, to his mystified companion. “Wonder if they’re the fire bugs Rosa saw?”

“Let’s listen and find out,” said Ted.

As the blaze by which they dried their mysteriously muddy feet died down to red coals, from the pack of one of the burros the old peon extracted some ready-made tamales and proceeded to add the heat of cooking to the hotter peppers within their enwrapping corn husks. This fiery mixture they quenched from a round-bellied bottle passed from lip to lip, though the fat one took his first and longest.

“They’re the fire bugs, all right,” said Pedro softly into Ted’s ear. And it was agreed that they might safely creep in along the shadows till Pedro could hear more plainly.

Sanchez was the name of the fat leader, and his son and his servant the others proved to be. They had, it developed, a grouch against the lumber company down on the Kawa, (in which, as it happened, Ace’s father had an interest). They had been fired from the crew, and no punishment was too great for a company that would do that to a workman who merely asked his accustomed afternoon siesta.

“Detestablemente!” (And other remarks that sounded like fire-works.) The pigs of Americanoes! Pedro convulsed Ted with his recital when they had crept back to the cave mouth, despite the seriousness of the situation.

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.

“But what?” insisted the Spanish boy. But had he not guessed it! Of course he would remain behind to keep track of the desperadoes.

But how could Ted start with the ground so hot? He would have to wait awhile, then make up for lost time by break-neck riding.

So be it. They were hungry now, and ate the ration of tinned corned beef and hardtack from their pockets. Ted also fed the horse some hardtack, and brought him several hatfuls of water from the spring, – scorching his soles as he crossed the charred ground.

Pedro propped his tired body in a sitting posture with one ear cocked for the conversation within. Ted flung himself flat on his back in the smoky gloom, which obscured even the light of the moon. He was mentally exploring that cave, – remembering what Norris had once told them of the region and wondering into what limed recesses the Mexicans were likely to retire when capture threatened. That the cave had its depths he felt assured by their having so suddenly appeared with their torches. And what could Pedro do if they tried to leave before help came? – My, but he must ride! Three such incendiaries loose in those dry forests, and there would be no end to the harm they could do!

The limestone of which these caves were formed, – sediment of the shells of myriads of sea creatures, – had been deposited in the primeval ocean that once flowed over that whole region from the Gulf of California. Uplifted by contractions of the earth crust, it had been cut as the surrounding granite could not have been by the percolating rains and streams, flowing along the cracks of the uplift.

This cave was probably a network of water-worn passage-ways extending no telling how far underneath the ridge. There were reputed to be caves almost as large as Mammoth in these unexplored recesses of the Southern Sierras. Could this be one of them, or was it just a two- or three-cavern affair, he wondered? On that depended a very great deal of their success in the coming capture, for once entrenched within these labyrinthian caves, the Mexicans could hold them at bay until they had made good their get-away. It had been so, he had been told by military men, in chasing Mexicans over the border.

Perhaps there were other caves in the region. Where, indeed, had these men secreted themselves while the fire had raged in a semi-circle about them? In a cave, the air would be damp and cool, no matter what was going on outside, and they could have been genuinely comfortable with the inferno raging over their very heads. Unless, of course, the smoke suffocated them! That would all depend on the air passages that fed their particular cavern. Some of those caves across the Mexican border were miles in extent, and had exits galore.

Pondering the pendant stalactites that had gleamed like onyx in the firelight, he pictured the water percolating drop by drop through the limestone crevices, dissolving the lime and forming the stalactites a drop at a time through the years. How wonderful it was! He wished he too might study. Perhaps, if he could make a go of his mother’s fruit ranch? – He was half asleep. He roused himself by trying to recall what it was that Norris had told them about stalactites.