"It's not all that far," said the Dragon. "Look this one over," he added, referring to the next canyon. "It looks like a deep one and long, too!"
He banked to follow the run of the new canyon. His passengers peered down into the shadowy depths of the great rift in the mountainside. If it has been earlier or later, they could not have seen the bottom at all for the shadows, but now, near noon, the sun shot its rays straight down into the deepest part.
"Water!" cried Clem. "Not a little but quite a bit, friends. See there?"
The new canyon ended in a sheer, blank wall over which a steady stream of water fell, dashing itself to silver spray in a deep catchment below.
With the spray and the water, a fair grove of oaks, aspens, and larches had taken root in the canyon bottom, and grass dressed the sand-and-gravel flood plain of past springtime freshets. The miniature meadow was covered with a thick blanket of yellow daisies.
"Go down," cried Manda. "That water looks so good!"
Furbetrance alighted softly in the midst of the daisies and his passengers tumbled off his head to run and taste the water of the stream. In a few moments they all were splashing gleefully under the fall itself, washing away days of accumulated dust and fatigue.
"Let's have lunch!" cried Tom, exhilarated by the cold water and the odor of the flowers that perfumed the soft air of the box canyon.
"My turn to cook," claimed Manda and, together with Momie, she set about laying out lunch for the four while the Dragon sauntered off to explore the lower canyon from ground level.
"Quite a lot of water comes into the canyon," observed Tom after their meal. "Where do you think it goes when it reaches the desert? It doesn't all evaporate, does it?"
"Probably," answered Clem. Manda and Momie had gone to the edge of the brook to wash the lunch dishes and repack them for another flight. "The sand of the desert is very loose and porous, however. It's possible the water sinks in and runs down to Carolna River, way to the south, without appearing aboveground again. Never been there, but I hear to the south of the river are swamps and jungles. Place of crocodiles and hippopotamuses, they tell me. Not many people live therea- or at least, not the civilized sort."
"Manda was saying that the new young queena-Beatrix, I think she is nameda-came from that part of the country."
"I believe that's right," replied Clem. "What's that noise?"
Tom sat up to listen. Down by the stream Momie and Manda stopped chattering and rattling pans to listen, too.
Tom said, "It sounds likea the sound we heard last night! Rumbling, sort of, but with a musical tone of some deep, bass sort."
Manda waved her hand and shouted, "It's just our talented Dragon, vocalizing."
Furbetrance appeared from downstream, making the noise until he stopped in embarrassment, realizing that the others were listening.
"Just enjoying the echoes and acoustics," he explained sheepishly. "If it bothers you, I'll forgo the experiment."
"No, no!" cried Manda, rushing over to hug the Dragon's foreleg, or as much of it as she could reach. "I love to hear people singing. It makes me happy!"
Tom was looking at Clem, speculatively.
"Did you hear the sound last night, Clem?"
"Aye. As I was about to sleep, I heard it and heard you and the Dragon speaking of it. Yes."
140 Don Callander DRAGON COMPANION.
141.
Furbetrance, noting their seriousness, strolled over, munching a clawful of daisies.
"That singing, just now," began Tom.
"I've apologized," huffed the Dragon.
"No, no, old fire pot," said Clem. "When we first heard it, before we saw you coming up the creek bed, it sounded just like the rumble bumble we heard last night, and it couldn't have been you then."
"Didn't sound like that to me," protested the Dragon.
"It's the echoes off the canyon walls," deduced Tom. "They make the sounds quite different, more sustained, deeper, sort of mixed together."
"Very interesting," commented the Dragon. "Shall we mount up and go on?"
"You're missing the point altogether!" cried Tom. "The sound we heard last night was almost exactly the sound you made, just now."
"But I didn't make any sound last night," objected Furbetrance.
"That's the point! If you didn't make the Dragon sounds last night, then who did make the Dragon sounds last night?"
"Only one other Dragon in these parts I know of," prompted Clem.
"Retruance!" shouted Furbetrance, leaping fifteen feet into the air and clashing his wings together. "We heard Retruance singing!"
"If we heard him, maybe he can hear us and tell us where he is," exclaimed Manda. "Let's return to last night's camp!"
"Come on!" shouted Furbetrance, and as soon as the lunch things had been replaced in his saddlebags and his passengers were aboard, he flung himself at the sky and headed west.
IT wasn't as easy as all that.
"These hills and ridges change their appearance as the sun moves," Furbetrance complained. "How many canyons did we pass over without looking, this morning?"
"Five," said Manda.
"No, six," contradicted the Librarian. "I counted, just to be sure."
"I hate people who're efficient," exclaimed Manda. "How many do you say, Clem?"
"I would guess, only, and I would guessa-six or maybe seven," said the trapper. "Now, that one looks familiar."
"Not to me," wailed the Dragon. He began to speed.
"A bit slower, old boy," warned Clem. "It'll be easier to see landmarks."
"Sorry!" said the Dragon, and he applied his air brakes and soared instead like a giant kite, sliding down the slopes of warm air rising from the rocky ridges.
"That's better!" shouted Clem. "Me, I watch landmarks, and I swear that pinnacle over there is at the head of the canyon we left this morning."
"You're right," called Momie.
"Fly that way," Manda told the Dragon, pointing. In a few minutes they arrived at the pinnacle in question only to find no canyon.
"Could it be magic? Is someone fuddling our eyesight or memories?" Momie wondered.
"No! Not magic," the fur trapper said emphatically. *This sort of thing happens all the time in wilderness. I'm still looking for a peak that is twin to the one we saw a moment ago. There! To the south and a bit east. Yes, our canyon was not as long as we thought."
This time they found the right valley and followed it to the spring, the tiny pool, and its runoff.
"Now what?" asked Furbetrance. "I don't hear the singing now."
"Noise, singing, whatever," said Tom. "Perhaps if Furbetrance sang in the narrow part of the canyon, it would produce the same effect in reverse. If it's really Retruance, maybe he'll hear and answer!"
"I'll try," said Furbetrance. "Wait here."
"Stop every minute or so, so we can hear if there's a reply," advised Tom. The Dragon nodded his understanding and trotted off down the stream bank and around a comer, out of sight.
In a moment they heard him humming in a deep basso voice and, now that they knew what it was, they could recognize an occasional word. The hard, flat, vertical walls distorted and rearranged the echoes and timbres of the Dra-gon's song.
142 Don Callander DRAGON COMPANION.
143.
"It sounds like somebody rolling a big empty barrel down the aisle of an empty church," murmured Manda, slipping her hand into Tom's.
"Or a piano being rolled in an empty room. That's what I thought of last night when I first heard it. There, he's stopped!"
Silence for a full minute.
The song began again and went on for a much longer time.
Silence again.
"Keep trying!" called Manda. And the singing, roaring, mumbling, rumbling, humming, whispering, keening resumed.
"Changed his tune now," said Manda. "I think it's *A-Milking We Went,' isn't it, Momie?"
"More like *A Changeling's Tale,' " replied the maid, tilting her head to one side, the better to hear.
"I don't know either of those," said Tom, softly.
"I learned them from my mother," said Furbetrance's voice, coming nearer, "and I'm sure Retruance did, too."
"Purbie! That's not you singing now?" they all cried together.
"Not me! I heard Manda call something and came to see what it was she said. Words don't carry well here, although music does, it seems."
"That's Retruance's voice, I'm sure of it!" cried Tom. "I thought it was familiar."
"I'm sure, also. Where is it coming from?" Furbetrance said in anguish.
The singing faded away and Tom signaled the Dra-gon to resume his recital. "Try something you both know well, so he can be sure it's you, and we can be sure he is hearing us. We'll try to work out where it's coming from."
So as the Dragon sang, one by one, his Dragonet songs and nursery rhymes, filling the canyon with deep, strum-ming, humming, and rolling vibrations, something between a bass viol, the lower register on a harp, and a mellow tuba, the others spread out, listening carefully whenever Purbetrance fell silent.
Tom climbed the end wall of the box canyon near where the spring gushed forth. The sound seemed clearer, closer.
Manda hiked up her skirts and waded across the pool, keeping her ear close to the water. The sound was no louder here than elsewhere, she thought.
Clem, his ears undulled by years of noisy crowds in towns and castles, stood in the very middle of the pool, near the soft splash of the tiny in-flow, letting it soak his trousers to the knees.
He called, "The sound issues from the spring, itself!"
Tom waded into the icy water. Manda came behind him. They stood listening. Momie and Furbetrance stood on the bank, saying nothing.
"Retruance, old friend!" shouted Tom, with his mouth close to the spot, a mere crack, from which the water issued.
Very, very faintly they heard a reply from deep within the rock.
"Is it you. Librarian? I knew you'd come sooner or later!"
^14^ Murdan Wins the Draw MURDAN the Historian, Lord ofOverhall Achievement, rose early and was looking from Foretower window with a worried and ill-pleased gaze. Graham, the captain of his guard, knocked on his chamber door and entered.
"He's there, now," Graham puffed and huffeda-the two-flight climb to Murdan's apartments was getting more and more difficult as the years caught up with him.
"He won't come within the walls?" asked Murdan, not turning.
"No, sir! Said he preferred the open air to a falling-down, musty old pile like Overhall."
"Damned young puppy!" swore the Historian. "Well, the better for us, then. *Twould be a messy, noisy, nosy Gantrell crowd if they all wanted shelter within. I wonder if Arcolas 144 Don Callander could raise a good rainstorm while he's here, living in that gaudy palace of a tent."
"He's already demanded the release of the Sponge," Graham said, pulling a wry face.
"Well, in a different case I'd give him up and gladly, but that pale, hungover worm kidnapped my only and beloved daughter and my grandchildren! I'll see him before the king! It's time that Gantrell lordling learned that Carolna's ruled by law, not by the whims of men."
"Yes, sir!" replied the soldier, standing at ease.
"I'll tell Gantrell about it myself this afternoon. Turned down my invitation to lunch, even, did he?"
"That he did," answered Graham.
"His loss, not mine! No camp cookie can prepare a meal like my castle chefs can."
Murdan leaned over his worktable. He scribbled a note to speak to Mistress Grumble about lunch.
"I'll lunch on the parapet above the main gate. You and all my staff will lunch with me. Grumble can arrange something really spectacular and make sure all Lord Peter's people see us enjoying ourselves. After lunch, I'll go down and sit in my gold armchair on the drawbridge exactly halfway across the span. And I'll wait. If Peter of Gantrell wants to bespeak me, he'll have to come to the drawa-and bring his own chair if he wants to sit."
"Sounds all sort ofa wella childish," said the straightforward Graham.
"Of course it is! But the alternative is to stand on the battlements and yell at each other. He pretends he won't come inside our gates out of fear, but what he really wants is to make me look ungracious, disrespectful of his rank, and personally ridiculous."
Murdan made a note to have his hair cut before lunch.