“The Menace of Mastodon Valley” by Kenneth Gilbert (1889-1973) is one of the strangest Northerns I have ever read. Gilbert is best remembered as a writer of adventure and dog stories for children. Before this he wrote dozens of pieces for the Pulps, primarily for Street & Smith’s Western Story. Many of his works were Westerns and Northerns. With “The Menace of Mastodon Valley” (Action Stories, September 1926) he slipped a little closer towards the Science Fiction magazines, at least the Edgar Rice Burroughs variety. (Gilbert did write “The Winged Doom” for Hugo Gernsback’s Amazing Stories, October 1927).
Tom Franklin, aviator, agrees to take Edith Gresham and Lanning Beardslee to Fort Nelson, British Columbia. The couple want to look for Edith’s missing uncle, Professor Wentworth, an archaeologist who went missing while searching for a lost valley. They depart from Telegraph Cove on Vancouver Island. All goes well until a “willawaw”, a sudden air current, forces the plane down in a mist-covered valley. Tom does some fancy flying to get the plane down safely, though causing damage to the aircraft.
Once safely on the beach, the trio is attacked by a native man carrying an old fashioned gun. (This is the scene H. C. Murphy chose for the cover. All the mammoth-soaked action to come and he picks this one!) Tom subdues the attacker, ties him up and forces him into the plane. Beardslee, being a milktoast type, does nothing to help. Tom quite likes Edith, who has plenty of courage, and doesn’t quite know why she would marry Beardslee, ten years her senior.
Tom paddles the broken plane out into the lake. An Indian in the mist shoots at them but misses. Only, it’s not a lake but a river. The current pulls the aircraft along, despite Tom’s improvising an anchor. The pilot even dives into the freezing water to try and halt the plane.
The four, three visitors and their captive, are swept into a mountain. The plane catches on a ledge, allowing them to get out and explore. Edith, it turns out, can talk with the captive Indian since she learned a similar language on the Prairies. The man’s name is Anak. He is one of the Liard tribe who live beside the lake. He warns them they have entered a sacred and terrible place. The cavern leads into a volcanic valley where they see a saber-tooth attack a deer. Later they camp and Anak is attacked by a mastodon and badly hurt. During the attack, Beardslee sees a strange ape-like figure.
The next morning, after a short argument, it is decided that Beardslee will return with the injured Anak to the plateau above while Tom and Edith continue searching the valley. The pair cross a mesa and see smoke from a fire and a distant human figure. Unfortunately the mastodon, the menace of Mastodon Valley, sees them and a race for high ground begins. They climb a cliff but the elephantine monster tries to grab them off with its trunk. Tom shoots the beast as a rope drops to save them.
The rescuer is Edith’s uncle, Professor Wentworth. He takes them back to his cave and explains what has been happening over the last eight months. When Edith mentions that she is marrying Beardslee, the Professor tells her no, but won’t explain what happened between the two men. Instead he introduces the couple to the ruler of the valley, Akut. The ape-like Indian eyes them suspiciously but will allow them to leave the valley alive. He is friend to the mammoth and is mad that Tom injured it. The man was driven from the Liard tribe because of his strange atavistic appearance. He was branded a witch and casted out. Befriending the mammoth, he has been waging war on the tribe ever since. He leaves to go and kill Anak but promises he will not harm Beardslee.
The three decide they must get back to the plane and their camp. They leave in the misty darkness since the mammoth will be busy with Akut. Tom encounters the saber-tooth and has to shoot it. The noise draws the mammoth and a desperate race across the mesa begins. (Edith sprains her ankle and Tom has to carry her. It is now that he acknowledges to himself that he loves her.) The humans make it to the forest then lose the beast in a river. When they make it back to the plane, they find Beardslee running from a fight, Anak and Akut are locked in a death struggle that plunges both of them down a waterfall.
The group decide to abandon the plane and walk out. The Professor had originally wanted to stay to search for a treasure trove of mammoth remains but without Akut he won’t find it. They pack up their food and gear and begin the long march to civilization. To do this they have to cross the mesa again to get to a pass through the mountains. The mammoth gets wind of them and a new race begins. The professor leads them to the quicksand pits. A forest of mammoth skeletons dots the ground. It is the treasure trove the professor has been seeking. Beardslee gets stuck in the morass just as the mammoth is upon them. Franklin makes a last stand, protecting the rival for Edith’ love, shooting with his feeble pistol. A lucky shot drives the beast into the quicksand, where it sinks, trumpeting its exit from the world.
Having saved Beardslee, the man confesses his crimes. He knew of the valley from a trapper, had tried to dissuade Wentworth from going there. The man desired the wealth in ivory that lies all about them, and has been actively slowing the group in hopes of getting rich. Now he just wants to get out of the woods and go home. But it’s not over yet. The Liard Indians capture them that night. Professor Wentworth tells them about the death of the mammoth. Seeing proof, the hostile natives show the outsiders more respect. They agree to help them free the plane and leave the valley forever.
Back on Vancouver Island, Beardslee decides to take the steamer to parts unknown and start again. Tom and Edith snuggle as they dream of their life together. The last whistle of the steamboat echoes the dying call of the mammoth as it sank into the quicksand.
“The Menace of Mastodon Valley” was a lot of fun for me since it was set in British Columbia. The author even mentions the settlement at Findlay Forks near the Peace River. I used to live in the town of Mackenzie, which is a mill town located near Findlay Forks. Fort Nelson and Telegraph Cove are familiar though I never visited either. All these places were remote (and exotic) back in 1926. Today, there are highways to all of them.
The idea of finding a lost mastodon dates back to at least Jack London’s Northern “A Relic of the Pleistocene” (Collier’s Weekly, January 12, 1901) but it is Manly Wade Wellman’s The Last Mammoth (1953) that really feels similar. In Wellman’s juvenile novel, he has a young Daniel Boone exploring lands not yet open to the white men. He encounters a native tribe that is plagued by the last of the mammoths, a surly beast that wants vengeance on the locals. (He dedicated the book to Irving Crump, another author who knew how to write prehistoric adventures for children.)
