Across the valley the moon peered over a jagged pinnacle, looking as
if broken teeth had bitten deep into its lower rim. That effect was
soon brushed away as the pale disk swung higher, and the blood-red
sandstone peaks stood fantastically revealed in the swimming
radiance. The valley straightway became enchanted ground wherein
fairy folk might dance on the smooth sand strips or play laughing
games of hide and seek among the strange pillars and jutting crags.
Beside the dying fire Bill Jonathan dozed, head bent with now and
then an involuntary drop forward, whereupon he would rouse and
glance sharply to left and right--the habit of a man who knows
himself hunted, a man whose safety lies in unsleeping vigilance.
“Lie down on the tent, Bill,” Abington advised him, after his third
startled awakening. “Lie down and make yourself comfortable.
To-morrow you can watch while I sleep.”
“Aw, I can keep awake, professor. All that climbing around to-day
made me kinda tired, is all. If I know you’re asleep, I’ll keep my
eyes open wide enough.”
“But I don’t want to sleep, Bill. This little mystery must be solved
before we go any farther with our chief business. Couldn’t sleep if
I wanted to.”
“You’ll stay awake a darn long while, professor, if you wait to put
salt on the tail of the thing that haunts this valley,” Bill opined.
Abington calmly knocked the dottle from his pipe and began to refill
it, ready for another long, meditative smoke. “For every problem in
the universe there is a correct answer,” he said quietly. “It is
only our ignorance that makes mysteries of things simple enough in
themselves. A peculiar arrangement of details has given this
‘gosh-awful’ animal of yours an air of mystery, but the explanation
is simple enough, I’ll guarantee.”
“Yeah, but how are you going to find this explanation--that you
think is so darned simple?” Bill stifled a yawn.
“Just as I find the meaning of the hieroglyphics; by studying the
symbols already familiar to me, and from them arriving at the
natural relation of the unknown characters. This thing left tracks,
and it managed to accomplish a certain amount of destruction in a
given time. To-morrow morning I’ll take a look at your cave, and the
answer to the puzzle will not be so hard to find as you imagine.”
Bill mumbled a half-finished sentence and lay down on the torn tent,
and presently the rhythmic sound of snoring hushed the strident
chorus of stone crickets on the ledge.
Until the moon had swum its purple sea and reached shore on the
western rim of the valley, Abington lounged beside the cliff, so
quiet that any observer might have thought him asleep. For a time
his pipe sent up a thin column of aromatic smoke, then went cold;
and after that only the moonlight shining on his wide-open eyes
betrayed the fact that Abington was very much awake.
An owl hooted monotonously in the cañon at his right, probably near
the spring. A coyote yammered on the steep hillside across the cañon
mouth, and a little later Abington heard the frightened, squealing
cry of a rabbit caught unawares by that coyote or another.
On a cliff just over his head, shadowed now as the moon slipped
behind the hill, the ancient people he was tracing had carved
intricate tribal records. These had endured far beyond the last
vague legend of those whose valor had thus been blazoned before
their little world, a world that had seemed so vast and
imperishable, no doubt, to heroes and historians alike.
It seemed to him that here was a land well fitted to hold the full
story of these forgotten lives. Could he but find it, and read it
aright, might not his own name be blazoned before his own people--to
be forgotten perchance in ages to come, as these were forgotten now?
* * * * *
The cave that held fast the bones of these ancients lay somewhere in
the bewildering maze of cañons across the valley. Bill Jonathan
would recognize the spot, so he had declared whenever Abington
questioned him. A certain rock on the cañon’s northern rim, shaped
like the head of a huge rhinoceros with two tusks on his snout--Bill
was positive he could not miss it, once he got inside the cañon. The
opening to the cave was directly under the first tusklike rock
spire. A matter of ten miles perhaps, Bill had guessed as he stood
on the ledge and gazed across.
Here on this side were caves and even with the hope of finding the
fossil skeletons Bill had described, Abington had wanted to explore
these before going on. He still wanted to do so, if he and Bill
could manage to hunt down the unknown pillager of camps, or at least
guard their supplies against further depredations. If the raid on
Bill’s cave had been as complete as on his own camp, he would be
compelled to postpone all research work while he plodded with the
burros to the nearest town for fresh supplies. Bill could not go,
that was certain.
At daybreak Abington was planning drowsily to send Bill up the cañon
after the burros, load on what was left of the outfit and cross
immediately to the other side of the valley, where they would
endeavor to find the skeletons first of all and be sure of them
before he went out for supplies. He would then be able to take out
specimens to send on to his museum, thus saving a bothersome trip
later on.
His hand reached out to shake Bill’s leg and rouse him to the day’s
work, when a great clattering sounded in the cañon mouth near by.
Bill needed no shaking to bring him to his feet. As the two
automatically faced toward the noise, there came the three burros in
a panicky gallop out of the cañon and into the open.
In one great leap Bill left the ledge and ran yelling and flailing
his arms to head them off before they stampeded down the valley. The
leading burro, a staid, mouse-colored little beast, swerved from
him, wheeled toward the hills opposite, stumbled and fell in a heap.
The second kept straight on down the valley, the third burro at its
heels. Bill let them go while he ran to the fallen leader.
Though it took but a minute to cover the short distance, the burro’s
eyes were already glazing when Bill arrived. As he stopped and bent
over it a shuddering convulsion seized its legs and immediately it
stiffened. It was dead.
Bill stood dumfounded, eying it stupidly for a moment before he
turned to call Abington. But the shout died in his throat, for his
glance had fallen upon a fresh disaster. The two other burros were
down and kicking convulsively, just as the first had done. They were
dead before he could reach them.
Abington was not in sight when Bill, walking heavily under the
burden of this new tragedy, returned to the ledge; but presently he
came limping out of the cañon and into camp.
“I thought I could discover what had stampeded the burros,” Abington
said, coming up with an indefinable air of surprise that Bill should
be standing there passive with that blank look on his face. “Too
late, again. If it was the gosh-awful, he’d disappeared before I
could get up there. Did you head off the burros? I want to move camp
this morning.”
“Yeah--but you’ll have to git along without ’em this morning. The
damn things is dead.”
Abington looked at him, looked past him to where Bill pointed an
unsteady finger. He got off the ledge and limped over to the nearest
carcass, looked it over carefully, walked to the others and examined
them, and returned thoughtfully to camp.
Bill had kindled a fire and was starting off to the spring with an
empty bucket when Abington stopped him.
“Hey, come back here! Don’t use any water from that spring.”
“Yeah? Where will I use water from, then?”
“From a canteen. I filled two yesterday. The burros were at the
spring this morning and stampeded from there. I can’t be certain
yet, of course, but I think the water is poisoned.”
Bill stared, his jaw sagging. Abington was looking out across the
valley, his eyes narrowed and blacker than Bill had ever seen them.
“I may be wrong, Bill, but we can’t afford to take a chance. One
burro might suddenly pass out with heart failure, but when three of
them turn up their toes in the same way and at the same moment, the
coincidence will bear investigation, I think!”
“How could that sheep thing poison a spring?” Bill’s tone implied
violent incredulity.
“I don’t know. I’m merely stating what appears to be a fact. Three
burros drank at that spring and afterward stampeded out of the cañon
and dropped dead in the open. I’m assuming that the water in the
spring, or at least in the little pool below it, was poisoned. They
must have been scared away, else they would have died right there
near the spring. Yes, I think it will bear investigation!”
“Yeah, but in the meantime we’ve got to have water,” Bill said
gloomily, shaking a canteen gently before he poured a little into
his makeshift coffeepot. “I don’t aim to stick around till my tongue
swells up, doing fancy thinkin’ about a poisoned spring. Suit
yourself, professor, but I’m going to hunt water, soon as we go
through the motions of eating.”
“I suppose in time the spring will clear itself and run pure,”
Abington reassured him with a twitching of his bearded lips. “If we
were to stay here, we could divert the trickle from the rocks and
soon have another pool. But we could never be sure that it was not
poisoned again. No, Bill, we’ll have to get our belongings together
and move across the valley.”
“A darn hard job,” muttered Bill, “packing everything on our backs.”
And he added: “That sheep thing can travel, too; don’t overlook that
fact, professor.”