Adventure stories; California -- Fiction; Love stories; Mate selection -- Fiction; Widows -- Fiction; Young women -- Fiction
Then, with another pang, Dr. Inman Shonto interpreted the strange
silence that had existed between these two. It was the result of an odd
embarrassment that both had felt since they first clasped hands. It was
love at first sight between them, and they were backward and afraid of
each other.
The eyes of both now were lowered. Shonto glanced quickly at Mary
Temple. Her gaunt face was set in hard lines. She knew, and she
disapproved--at least until she knew more about this handsome young man
who had invaded their quiet retreat.
And Shonto-- Well, Shonto disapproved, too. Shonto was far older than
Andy--too old, perhaps, to think of loving a woman of Charmian Reemy’s
age. But he put all this behind him. If Andy and Charmian were going
in search of the unexplored valley, he meant to go along. Several
years her senior though he knew himself to be, Shonto believed that he
was the man for a woman like Charmian Reemy rather than Andy Jerome.
Anyway, he meant to know more about her. It would not do for Andy to
win her away from him if she was what he believed her to be. Yes,
Shonto would go along, and his life’s work could go hang, for all he
cared. Until he knew the truth about Charmian Reemy, at any rate.
“We could find it easily, I guess, in an airplane,” Andy suggested.
“An airplane!” scoffed the girl. “Not I! I hate airplanes--I hate
anything mechanical. I’ll find that valley as my forefathers would have
found it, or I’ll stay away. And I must think up an appropriate name
for it. Doctor Shonto seems undecided between ‘the undiscovered valley’
and ‘the unexplored valley.’ Neither is romantic enough. I’ll think up
a name before morning. I like to name things. And I’m going, really--if
we can overtake Leach and Morley. Do you approve, Mary Temple?”
“No!” snapped Mary Temple, and passed the venison to Andy with jerky
hospitality.
CHAPTER IV
A MEMBER OF THE CLAN
DR. INMAN SHONTO, always an early riser, was the first one stirring at
El Trono de Tolerancia the following morning. He left the log house by
the door through which he had entered it the night before, and gazed
off into the timberland to the east, through which Andy and he had
reached the place. He turned and walked around the cabin, and then he
realized what Charmian Reemy had meant when she stated that it was next
to impossible for one to be intolerant when he looked from her home to
the west.
The cabin was set on a gigantic rock that overhung the brow of the
mountain. A metal railing had been erected along the edge of the rock
to prevent the unwary from plunging down at least forty feet to the
rock’s massive base. From the base the land sloped off sharply for
perhaps half a mile. And beyond that it continued to slope more gently
to level wooded stretches below. The great forest over which one looked
would have seemed endless were it not for the broad Pacific in the far
distance, which began at the end of the mass of green and rolled on to
the uttermost ends of the earth.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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