THE BOYS DISCOVER THE TOLTEC’S “SESAME.”
They arrived at camp as day was breaking and found everything just as
they had left it. The first thing to be done was to get out the medicine
chest and bandage Billy’s wounded head after antiseptics had been
applied to it. It was only a flesh wound but the weapon,—most probably
the butt-end of a rifle,—with which he had been struck, had inflicted a
glancing cut that was painful. After a hasty breakfast the boys turned
in and slept like tops till late afternoon.
The remainder of the day was spent in describing to the astonished
Billy, who soon recovered his usual cheerful attitude toward life, the
queer incident of the bell-ringer and the carved quesal on what the boys
had already termed Treasure Cliff.
“Yes, but,” objected Billy, “any one might have amused themselves by
carving it there,—cave-dwellers or something,—of course,”—he hurried
on—“I don’t know much about these things, but it looks to me like a
waste of time to go digging round there on a chance.”
“I guess you don’t know much about it, Billy,” smiled Frank, “the quesal
was a sacred symbol of the Toltec priests and it would have been as much
as an ordinary citizen’s life was worth to have carried it or drawn it
anywhere, at any time.”
“That’s so,” agreed Billy, “as you say, Frank, I don’t know much about
these things. I’m better at digging up stories than treasure. What do
you propose to do?”
“Well,” said Frank, “my idea was this. We will overhaul an outfit
to-night, and to-morrow morning we will start out for the foot of the
cliff. We will mark out a space there extending in a semi-circle of
which the center will be a point directly below the quesal’s beak and
see what we can turn up. We three should be able to do a good bit of
earth turning in a day, and if we find nothing we can take a fly back to
La Merced. We are due there to-morrow night anyway, and if we don’t show
up father will be worried.”
“A bully program,” cried Billy.
“With a bully lot of hard work involved,” retorted Frank.
Before they turned in that night the boys had selected the outfit they
would take. Frank and Harry, of course, carried their pocket electric
torches, rifles, revolvers and canteens. The blankets and such
provisions as they thought it necessary to take along were done up in
neat rolls. Billy was nominated the axe-man of the party, and Frank and
Harry took the spade and the pick. Altogether when they set out as soon
as it was light enough to see they were a formidable-looking party of
pioneers.
They arrived at the foot of the cliff without adventure and set to work
clearing away the dense undergrowth which matted the ground at the foot
of the rocky wall. Frank had first driven a peg into the ground at a
point as nearly in a plumb line with the down pointing beak of the
quesal as he could strike. He attached to this a bit of cord about
fifteen feet in length and with this improvised compass marked out a
semi-circle in which to carry on operations.
The boys’ watches indicated noon by the time they had the brush cleared
and three very tired but excited lads sat down to a hasty lunch. They
knew that the preliminary work had now been done and if they were on the
eve of any important discovery that the afternoon’s work would probably
decide it.
Lunch disposed of they set to work with a will on breaking up the
ground. In this the axe and the pick wielded by Billy and Frank came in
useful. They pulverized the ground—which in some places was as tough as
hard-pan—so that it was easy for Harry to follow along with the shovel
and spade up great clods of it. The hands of all three were soon covered
with blisters and Billy, who had not yet fully recovered from his trying
experiences, was fain, before the work had progressed very far, to throw
down his axe with the confession:
“Boys, I’m all in.”
He was directed to sit in the shade and watch the work which he did in a
rather shamefaced way although he had endured the struggle against
exhaustion pluckily enough while his strength held out.
Frank’s semi-circle had been pretty well dug over by the time that the
great clouds of nesting parrots from the feeding-grounds in the valley
began to circle with harsh cries above the trees on the mountain-side
which formed their dormitory. Harry threw down his shovel with a cry of
disgust.
“Hadn’t we better call it a day, Frank,” he said, “we have dug up enough
earth for a subway excavation and haven’t discovered a clue. I guess
that quesal of yours was put up there for a joke—it looks like it’s been
one on us all right.”
But Frank was not discouraged so easily.
“Half-an-hour more and then we quit,” he agreed, “but let’s give it one
more try.”
“On that condition all right,” replied Harry, “but I’m a union man, when
it comes to this sort of a job. Eight hours is enough for me, thank
you.”
For perhaps twenty minutes more the boys dug in silence when suddenly
Frank uttered a sharp exclamation.
His pick had struck something that gave out a ringing sound!
When he announced the news in a voice choked by excitement there was no
more lethargy on Harry’s part—even Billy forgot his aching head and sore
hands and went to work with a will. In fifteen minutes or so they had
uncovered a large flat stone with a ring of some kind of dull metal
imbedded in the center. With a loud cheer all three boys, their fatigue
entirely forgotten, joined hands and executed a wild sort of war-dance
round their excavation, which was perhaps three feet or so deep.
When they had danced their enthusiasm out the practical Frank somewhat
dashed the hopes of the others, after carefully examining the stone, by
saying quietly:
“It looks good, boys; but we’ve got to raise it.”
Here was indeed a poser. They all three tugged at the ring till their
already sore hands were almost raw but not even a tremor ran through the
stone which was about four feet long by three wide.
“We have no means of telling how thick it is,” said Frank, in a
discouraged tone, “it may weigh ten tons for all we know.”
“We might dynamite it,” suggested Billy.
“Yes, and advertise our find to the whole country,” retorted Harry.
“I wonder what’s under it,” surmised Billy.
“Lemons perhaps,” mischievously laughed Harry.
While the other two were talking the energetic Frank had been at work.
Jumping into the hole he had carefully scraped round the edge of the
stone like a man trying to get a waxed cork out of a bottle.
The edges of the stone fitted so closely to the live-rock surrounding
it, however, that his hope of finding a crack, in which they could put a
lever and pry up the rock, was blasted. There seemed to be no way of
solving the puzzling problem. All the treasures of Golconda might have
been concealed under the mighty rock and the boys would have no more
chance of getting at them than if they had been securely locked in the
center of the earth.
It was not Frank’s nature to give anything up without a struggle to
solve it, however, and he suggested one more try.
“Maybe it is balanced in some way,” he suggested.
“A good idea,” commented Harry. “What’s the matter with our all getting
on one side of it and jumping together when one of us says, ‘Go.’”
“We might try it,” said Frank dubiously, “but I’m skeptical that we will
obtain any results.”
“We’ll get a lot of exercise anyhow,” chimed in Billy.
“As if we hadn’t had enough to-day,” indignantly cried Harry.
Laughing—despite their anxiety—at the ridiculous sight they must present
the three boys placed their arms on each other’s shoulders and solemnly
pranced up and down on the rock first at one end and then at the other.
Then they tried jumping on its sides. The great boulder didn’t even
quiver. It was as solid under their feet as the face of the cliff
itself.
“Looks like we’ll have to give it up,” said Frank at last in a disgusted
tone.
“Yes, I don’t see what else we can try,” Harry agreed, “whoever stowed
that rock away meant that no one but himself should ever get it up
again.”
“He must have been a hopeful young party if he ever figured on doing it
by his lonesome,” commented Billy, “unless he was some sort of a giant.”
“Maybe he had some magic words he chanted over it like:
“Eeny, meeny, minney mo,” suggested Harry, solemnly chanting the mystic
rhyme, as if he half expected to see the rock swing back in response.
“Yes—or open sesame,—like in the Arabian Nights,” scornfully remarked
Billy. “Come on, let’s quit it. It will be dark before we get back to
camp if we don’t hurry.”
“We certainly have had a fine day’s work for nothing. Just to think that
we’ve got to pack all this stuff back to camp with us after all instead
of using it to explore the Toltec Caves of Treasure Cliff,” cried Harry,
speaking the last words in a highly melodramatic tone.
“You’re a fine old fraud,” he yelled at the unmoved quesal,—looking down
from the cliff, with its sunken eye, as it had gazed for almost
uncounted centuries. “If I could get up there I’d fix you so as you
wouldn’t fool anyone else. I’ll just take a chuck at you for luck
anyway. That old unwinking orb of yours irritates me.”
As he spoke the lad stooped down and selected a large flat stone and
flung it full at the carved figure with the down-pointing beak.
“Bang in the eye;” he shouted, “give me a walking-stick, Mr. Showman,
I”—
Whatever he was going to say was cut short by a wild shout from Frank.
“Good lord!” he yelled, “Look there!”
Billy and Frank followed his finger as he stood pointing on the edge of
the excavation.
Slowly; as if some invisible hand was pushing it up on
delicately-adjusted hinges—the big rock was swinging open from its sleep
of the ages!
As it yawned wider and wider the first steps of a rough flight of
stairs,—apparently cut out of the living rock,—were disclosed. From the
aperture, as it gaped wider, rushed out a breath of air so fetid and
poisonous that the boys grew sick and faint under its baleful odor.