They discarded the sledge, cached such tin-protected provisions as they could not carry on their backs, and forged on into a land of growing delights. They left the semi-bleak Hudsonian Zone above them and entered the friendly Canadian, where the Yosemite fox sparrow, the Sierra grouse, and the ruby-crowned kinglet greeted them; and among the mammals the jumping mouse, the yellow-haired porcupine, the Sierra chickaree, and the navigator shrew. The forest was heavy again, and there was firewood and the shelter of companionable conifers. Straight into the south Shirttail Henry led the way, down into a gigantic cup of the mountain range where grasses grew and sunlight flooded the land. The forest became patchy, broken by occasional mountain meadows, rubble slides, cañons through which fires had spread their devastation and left sentinel trees and slopes covered with chaparral. Deep, impassible gorges forced them miles and miles to the east or the west, and sometimes turned them in the direction from whence they came. And in descending into one of these, after having followed its grim lip for many miles in search of a crossing, the redoubtable Mary fell, rolled down a steep incline, and terminated her mad descent in an ice-cold creek. “Well,” she remarked, as her anxious friends stumbled and slid down to her, “it’s lucky I landed close to water, for right here I stay until the rest of you forsake your life of sin and come back to me on your way home. I’ve sprained my ankle terribly. Two of you hold me while Doctor Shonto pulls my leg.” CHAPTER XIII AT TWO IN THE CAÑON THOUGH the afternoon was not far spent, the party immediately went into camp in the gorge. If Mary’s sprain was severe, the doctor told the others gravely, it would be impossible for her to touch the injured foot to the ground for many days. The men might carry her back, but it would be next to impossible, and altogether reckless, to carry her forward. What were they to do? Mary was suffering silently beside the campfire, and the others had withdrawn to a distance to hold their conference. Then came her snappy voice: “That’s mighty impolite. I know what you’re talking about. Come over here by the fire and I’ll relieve your minds.” When they had congregated about her she said placidly: “Now, there’s just one thing for you to do. That is to go on, and leave me here in the cañon with enough grub to last me until you give up hope of ever finding the Valley of Tomfoolery. Which will be in a few days, at most, I’m thinking.” “Mary Temple,” Charmian told her firmly, “we’ll do nothing of the sort. We’ll stay with you till you can walk or carry you over the back trail right now--and that ends that. We were only trying to decide which of the two would be the better plan.”