FINDING A WAY UP
That night they kept no fire going. Frank seemed to think it best that
they remain quiet, so as not to announce their presence in the
neighborhood. Though for that matter, it would seem that if any one were
perched aloft in one of those slits in the face of the cliff, that
represented the windows of the cave dwellings, the entire canyon below
must be spread out like a book.
Nothing happened to disturb them. Once Frank thought he heard a distant
shout, and this excited his curiosity not a little. According to what
Charley Moi said they were now in a neighborhood where ordinary tourists
never visited.
He thought of the two sheriffs and the lawless men they were pursuing.
Could it be possible that they were destined to run across those
desperate characters sooner or later?
The thought was a disquieting one. It served to make Frank wakeful, and
his restlessness was communicated to Bob, although the latter did not
know what caused it.
But if the fugitives from justice were loitering around in that
particular part of the Grand Canyon, either hiding from the determined
sheriffs, or looking for rich quarry, neither they or anyone else
disturbed the camp of the saddle boys.
Again, in the morning, Charley Moi lighted a fire, and made ready to
prepare a modest breakfast. As Bob had said, their supplies were running
low, and unless something happened very soon the Chinaman would have to
be dispatched to the nearest store to replenish the food.
Still thinking of the sound he had heard during the night, and which he
believed must have been a human voice, rather than the cry of some wild
animal, Frank, while they sat cross-legged around the fire, eating the
scanty meal, addressed himself to the Chinaman.
"How many times have you come up this far, Charley Moi?" he asked.
The other commenced to figure on his fingers. Having no counting board,
used so frequently by his countrymen in laundries, until they get
accustomed to the habits of the white man, he took this means of
tabulating.
"Allee fingers and this much over," and he held up the first and second
fingers of one hand.
"Ten and two, making twelve in all," declared Bob. "Well, you have
served the man-with-the-bald-head faithfully and long, Charley."
"And in all these times I suppose you've never known anybody to be
around here?" Frank went on.
Charley shook his head in the negative.
"White man, no. Sometime Moqui come 'long, make for stlore down canlon
get glub. See same two, thlee times. Charley Moi see old Moqui last
night," the Chinaman replied.
"What's that you say?" demanded Frank, hastily. "That you saw a Moqui
last night, and after we had come to halt right here?"
"Thatee so," grinned the other, as though pleased to feel that he was
able to interest Frank so readily.
"Just when did this happen, Charley Moi?" pursued the other.
"Flank, Blob, down by river, make muchee look-look in glass," answered
Charley.
"Now, what d'ye think of that?" ejaculated Bob, in disgust. "While we
were away from camp for ten minutes, something happened. Why couldn't it
have come about when we were on deck? There's a fine chance lost to get
track of Havasupai; for I reckon you believe the same as I do, Frank,
and that the old Moqui whom Charley saw was _our_ Indian?"
"Seems like it, Bob," replied the other, "but don't cry yet. Perhaps it
may not be too late to remedy matters. See here, Charley Moi, could you
show me just where you saw this Moqui last?"
The yellow-skinned guide smirked, and nodded his head until his pigtail
bobbed up and down like a bell rope.
"Easy do," he observed, beginning to get upon his feet.
"Come along Bob," remarked Frank. "We'd all better be present. Three
heads are better than one when it comes to a question of deciding what's
to be done."
"Do you think you can track him, Frank?" questioned the Kentucky boy,
eagerly.
"I'm going to try," was all Frank would say; for he was very modest with
regard to his accomplishments as a son of the prairie.
Charley Moi was as good as his word. He seemed to remember just where he
had happened to spy the passing Indian when looking up from the making
of the fire. The Moqui had paid no attention to him; indeed, at the time
he was creeping past as though taking advantage of the absence of the
two boys in order to make a circuit of the camp near the big cliff.
"Find 'em Frank?" asked Bob, after he had seen his chum bending down
over the ground for half a minute.
"Yes, and they are the tracks of an Indian too, for they toe in," Frank
replied. "Besides, they are made by moccasins instead of shoes or boots
with heels. And if I needed any further proof to tell me our friend
Havasupai made these tracks, and not a strange Moqui, I have it in the
queer patch across the toe of his right moccasin, which I noticed when
he was with us before."
"That's just fine!" Bob exclaimed, filled with pride over the way in
which his chum seemed able to fix the facts so that they could not be
questioned. "And will you start after him right away, Frank?"
"Watch me; that's all," came the reply, as Frank began to move away,
still bending low in order to follow the faint traces of footprints on
the rock and scanty soil.
The others came close at his heels, Bob with a look of assurance on his
face, because he felt positive that the game would now be tracked to its
hiding place; and Charley Moi picturing his wonder on his moon-like
countenance.
So the prairie lad led them in and out among the rocks, and the scrub
that grew close to the verge of the river. Several times he seemed a
little in doubt, as the marks faded entirely away; but on such occasions
his common-sense came to the rescue, and, after a look around, Frank was
able to once more find the trail.
"Here's where it ends!"
When Frank made this remark Bob could not keep from expressing his
surprise.
He gaped upward at the bare-faced wall that arose for hundreds of feet,
without any particular ledge or outcropping where even a nimble Indian
could find safe lodgment for his moccasined feet.
"But, Frank, however could the old Moqui get up there to see Uncle
Felix?" he asked. "D'ye suppose he made some sort of signal, and the
hermit lowered a long rope with a noose at the end, which would draw him
up? Wow! excuse me from ever trying to fly in that way! It would make me
so dizzy I'd be sure to drop, and get smashed."
"You're beating on the wrong track, Bob," remarked the other. "No rope
could be lowered all that distance; and even if it could no one man
would be able to pull another all the way up."
"But there must be some way of getting to the place where the slits in
the face of the cliff tell of windows. However do you think he did it,
Frank?"
"Just because you don't happen to see a ladder, Bob, is no evidence
there isn't a way to mount upward. One thing about this great cliff I
guess you didn't happen to notice. That shows you pass things by. Look
again, and you'll see that it seems to have been split by some volcanic
smash, ages ago. There's a regular crevice running slantingly up the
face of the rock. You see it now, don't you?"
"Sure I do; and I was blind not to take notice of the same before," Bob
replied. "Fact is, I did see that uneven mark, but just thought it was a
fault in the make of the cliff, as a miner would say."
"Well, that crack extends four-fifths of the way up to the top; and far
enough to reach the place where we noticed all those dark marks, which
we believed must be windows of the many rooms or houses of the cliff
dwellers. Get that, Bob?"
"Sure I do, Frank, and after your explanation I can see what you're
aiming at. But where does that ragged crevice start from down here, do
you think?"
Frank stepped forward. Just as if he had it all figured out, he bent
down, and with his hand drew aside the bushes that grew against the base
of the cliff.
"Well, I declare, there it is for a fact!" exclaimed Bob, as he saw a
rough opening before him, which came almost together five feet from the
ground, leaving only a dark, uneven, slanting line that crawled up the
face of the cliff like the photograph of a zigzag bolt of lightning
taken with a snapshot camera.
"There you are," said Frank, with a broad smile. "Unless all signs fail,
here's the entrance to the mysterious Echo Cave. We have been more than
lucky to find it with so little trouble."
"Just to think of it," remarked Bob, as he bent over to look up into the
gap as well as he was able; "here's where the queer old Professor has
been hiding for all this time, and no one any the wiser. But Frank,
however in the wide world do you suppose he found out the way to get up
there?"
"We would have found it sooner or later, even if Charley Moi had not
seen the old Indian moving along," replied Frank, with the confidence of
one who knows what he is talking about.
"Y--yes, I reckon we would, after you'd prowled around a little, and had
some chance to look the ground over. Then you believe he must have found
the presence of those windows looking out of the cliff just like we did;
by using a powerful glass? And, thinking that here was the very place
for him to hide and study, he set about looking for the road up, and
found it, very likely."
"He did it by using common sense, and applying all he knew about the
ways of these people of the long ago," replied Frank. "And you can see
that if he chose, he could have thrown that bottle out of one of the
openings up there, so that it would drop in the passing current of the
Colorado, to be carried down-stream until somebody saw it; and finding
the message to my father, sent or carried it to Circle Ranch."
"Well," observed Bob, with a gleam in his eye, "now that we've found a
way to get up to Echo Cave, have we the nerve to start in?"