Jim White kept his counsel, waited a couple of days for the opportunity,
then gathered together several coils of rope, a kerosene lantern, some
wire and a hand-axe.
“I got back to the cave about mid-afternoon. You know the opening faces
West, and the sun was in the right place to shine down into it. There
was enough light so I could see the bottom of the shaft. Off to the
right I could see the opening of a huge tunnel, and my imagination
started running ahead of me. Where would that tunnel lead? I made up my
mind to find out.”
[Illustration: _Dazzling White Beauty in the King’s Palace_]
Busy with the hand-axe, Jim cut sticks of wood from the shrubs nearby,
accumulating a sizeable pile. Next, he picked up the rope and the wire
... and with his newly-cut sticks for steps, Jim White’s
rope-ladder-to-adventure was soon lowered into the entrance of the cave.
Cautious rung-by-rung descent led the probing cowboy down into blackness
until his feet touched something solid. Lighting his lantern, he
discovered himself on a narrow ledge—almost at the end of his rope,
literally and figuratively!
From that precarious spot, Jim could see into the tunnel—only a little
farther and he could be on its smooth-looking floor level. Appetite
whetted for exploration, the range-toughened man dared a “human-fly”
approach, holding onto the rough wall for that final twenty feet or so
to wide, level footing!
Standing at the entrance to the tunnel, Jim peered ahead by light from
his lantern ... a sickly glow against a blackness that seemed solid.
Determined to see what was there, dark or no dark, the cowboy summoned
his courage and started walking slowly forward.
“The tunnel grew larger with every step. It seemed to me that I was
wandering into the very core of the Guadalupe Mountains.
“Finally, I reached a chamber—a whale of a big oval-shaped room. Looked
like several hundred yards before there was a sharp curve to the right
and another sharp descent. On the left was another big tunnel leading in
the opposite direction ... and the floor on the left looked a little
more smooth and level, so I tackled it first. It didn’t take long to
discover that this one was the Bats’ Cave, so I went back to the big
entrance and started down the other tunnel.
“I kept going until I found myself in the mightiest wilderness of
strange formations a cowboy ever laid eyes on! It was the first cave I
was ever in, and I didn’t know then that those formations had names like
‘stalagmites’. But I did know, with the kind of instinct the Creator
puts into a man, that there just wasn’t another scene like this one in
the whole world.”
To arrive at this point, Jim White had crept cat-like across a dozen
dangerous ledges and past many a tremendous opening that seemed to reach
downward into the very center of the earth. He dropped rocks to sound
depths; into one opening he pushed a great boulder. It hit something—not
bottom—and kept rolling and rolling until the sound faded into a
haunting memory of sound.
“I walked through more of those ‘stalagmites’, and each one seemed
larger and more beautifully formed than the ones I’d already seen. I
blinked at the sight of giant-size wonders that turned out to be
gleaming ‘onyx’. The ceilings blinked back at me with clusters of
‘stalactites’ ... like great chandeliers. The walls sparkled and
glittered.”
Those walls were frozen cascades of flowstone, with jutting rocks
holding long, slender formations that rang under Jim White’s
experimental touch like keys on a xylophone. Floors were carpeted with
formations with new shapes and new sizes at every turn. Through the
gloom, Jim saw the tall, graceful, ghost-like shapes resembling
totem-poles, stretching upward into darkness. Through crystal-clear
water, Jim White saw that the sides of several pools at his feet were
lined with what appeared to be marble. Lost in the beauty, the
weirdness, the grandeur into which his inquisitive mind had led him, Jim
forgot time, place and distance.
Suddenly, the oil in his lantern was exhausted. The flame curled and
died. Reality descended swiftly, as if millions of tons of black wool
drifted down to smother and choke. With the black loneliness paralyzing
his bloodstream, Jim White tried to refill his lantern from the small
emergency canteen of oil, brought for just such a moment.
[Illustration: _Twin Domes and Giant Stalagmites in the Big Room_]
“My fingers shook so much that I fumbled the filler-cap and spilled more
oil in my lap than I did in my lamp. Then I dropped the filler-cap when
I tried to screw it back on.
“The inky blackness and the almost ‘deafening’ total silence, save for
an occasional drop, drop, drop of water, didn’ help me stop shaking,
either. It’s hard to describe how completely dark, how perfectly still
it is down in that cave. Seemed like a month went by before I got that
lantern going again and looked around in the dim light to get my
bearings.”
Foresight and range experience had prompted the westerner to leave
landmarks for himself so the retracing of steps would be possible, even
if natural sense of direction failed. Resourcefully using what was at
hand, Jim’s guide-marks were broken stalactites taken from the floors
and placed on top of the rocks, ends pointing to the outbound pathway.
Even so, Jim started feeling a mounting fear that he might not be able
to find the markers he had left behind. It was worse when he realized
that no one at camp knew where he had gone—that his chances of being
found were extremely remote even if his companions had known of his
destination. In the cool depths of the cavern, now known to be 56
degrees day and night, summer and winter, the once-bold adventurer felt
the wild alarm in his veins turn into perspiration and panic-chills.
“Suddenly I was seized with a mad desire to run—to charge like a crazy
bull when he’s cornered. I scrambled along the edge of a black gash in
the rock, and rammed my head against those sharp-pointed critters above
me that all at once seemed unfriendly. Those needle-points pierced my
hat and cut a few holes in my scalp ... and that sort of cooled me off.
I leaned back against the wall and talked to myself the way a lonesome
cowboy does. ‘Here, Jim’, I said, ‘don’t get in an uproar. It won’t get
you anywhere. Take it easy’.”
Maybe those formations up there were not so unfriendly after all,
because Jim seemed to hear his own words of advice returning from every
direction. “Take it easy ... take it easy ... take it easy!”
Grasping the thin thread of courage which remained, the man who now
feared that he would never see daylight again held the inadequate
lantern securely in his hand. This was his last chance to reach the
surface—the oil flickering away moment by moment in the little flame.
Desperation was his strength, determination his guide as he held the
lantern forward in search of those arrow-points to safety. Repeating the
cat-crawl in reverse, narrowly clearing the margins of safety because
nerves were jumpy and jangled, Jim White worked his agonizing way toward
the tunnel’s mouth. The distance seemed multiplied by thousands of
footsteps since he had traversed the distance ... when was it? Hours? Or
days ago?
[Illustration: _This Massive Growth has been forming for Centuries
unknown and is one of the most Majestic Formations known_]
Never was there so gratifying a sight as the shaft of sunlight filtering
down through the entrance. Fumbling, eager hands fastened onto the rope
ladder and Jim White hungrily climbed over the rocky ledge to the warmth
and cheer of the New Mexico sunshine.
“I waited a minute till my bones thawed out. Then I turned and stared
back into the cave. It had beaten me—driven me out. I stared at it the
way I’d stare at a stubborn bronco, telling myself that someday I would
conquer it!”
Riding back to camp, busy with thoughts of the adventure and pondering
about the possible extent of the cave, Jim White felt an increasing
desire to see it all. He must see it, he felt, but wondered if it
wouldn’t be better to get someone to go back with him. Somehow the
mammoth, buried fairyland wouldn’t seem so overwhelming if someone else
were along to relieve the silent, dark loneliness. The boys at camp,
however, refused to take seriously Jim’s account of the bats and the
glittering under-ground palace. The more he talked of it, the more they
howled their disbelief.
“When they found out I was serious, they decided I had just naturally
gone ‘plumb loco’, or else I’d set out to be the world’s champion
cow-punchin’ liar! Try as I would, I couldn’t find a single cowboy who
would agree to go with me. They just weren’t the least bit interested!”