Bill and Abington came to and entered a narrow, straight-walled
gorge. It had a loose, sandy bottom and every indication that ages
before it had been a watercourse with the floods of glacial rainfall
sluicing down to the valley. Presently Bill, plowing laboriously
ahead to a certain spring he remembered in a cave up this ravine,
gave a grunt and stopped short.
In the peculiar, amethystine veil of the afterglow which lay upon
the hills like a cunning stage effect of, colored lights, he pointed
a finger stiffly to a certain mark in the sand. Abington limped
forward and joined him.
“I see the gosh-awful is here ahead of us,” he said listlessly.
“Well, it will be obliged to wreck us personally this time, Bill,
since all our worldly goods are literally on our backs. We may get a
sight of it at last.”
“That all you care?” Bill stared at him. “Maybe I’d feel that way
about it, too, if I had a gun to defend myself with. You’re making a
big mistake, professor. You’ll see it before you’re through.”
“Possibly.” Abington’s tone was skeptical. “How far is it to the
spring?”
Bill did not reply. He was still staring at the strange tracks that
were too large for any sheep one could imagine, yet not shaped like
cattle tracks, nor much resembling the elk they had discussed last
night. Blurred though they were in the fine sand, they were yet
easily distinguishable to being the same hoof prints they had seen
across the valley.
The tracks did not look very fresh, and after a brief study of them
Abington took the lead, perhaps because he was armed and Bill was
not.
Presently Abington stopped and pointed to a cleft in the rocks.
“Whatever it is, it turned out of the gorge and went up there,” he
said. “Pretty good climbing, even for a sheep.”
“I’ll go ahead and show you the spring,” Bill volunteered and
Abington chuckled to himself.
Bill looked back at him with sullen eyes. “All right for you,
professor--with two guns handy,” he said resentfully. “Put you in
here with just your bare hands and maybe you wouldn’t be so damn
nervy, yourself.”
“I’d probably wait until I saw some danger before I became alarmed.”
Bill muttered something under his breath, and stepped out more
briskly. Both were thirsty, but since they had left the western side
of the valley with one canteen nearly full, the need of water had
not yet become acute. It was the tramp across the valley with packs
too heavy for them that had told on the tempers of the two men--with
Abington’s bruised foot and Bill’s nervous dread of pursuit for good
measure.
The spring proved to be well protected, in a water-worn cave that
seemed to offer excellent shelter. A tangle of nondescript oak
bushes grew near the entrance and drew moisture from the overflow
which, though slight, was yet sufficient for the scant vegetation.
The cave itself was not large, with a fine sandy floor and a lofty
arched roof of irregular blocks of the red sandstone which was the
regular formation of these hills. A lime dyke broke through here and
there in sharp peaks and ridges in a fairly continuous outcropping
roughly pointing toward the river.
Abington slipped off his pack, drank from the spring and sat down
against the wall of the cave to unlace his boot from his lame foot.
Bill began gathering dry twigs and branches and set about making
coffee and frying a little bacon. “We oughta git a sheep or
something,” he grumbled, breaking a long moody silence. “This time
of year there’s generally sheep running in through here.”
“I’ll take a hunt, when my foot has had a rest. We can manage for a
day or two,” Abington replied without looking up.
“Say, you’d be in a hell of a fix if you broke your leg,” Bill
sneered. “You’d starve to death before you’d trust me with a gun,
wouldn’t you?”
“There’s meat for to-night. To-morrow will take care of itself.”
“Yeah, maybe it will--and it’ll leave us to do the same,” Bill
retorted. “What the heck are you scared of, professor?”
“Nothing at all. Not even your gosh-awful. Will you fill that corn
can with water for me, Bill? I’ll try a cold compress on the foot.”
Bill did as he was requested and a sight of the discolored foot
stirred him to sympathy. Abington, he suddenly saw, must have
suffered cruelly all day, though he hadn’t said anything about it.
Bill remembered too that Abington had remained awake all last night
while he himself had slept. But it was not Bill’s way to apologize.
“That’s a hell of a looking foot!” he growled. “Hot water beats
cold. After supper I’ll heat a can of water--”
“After supper I’m going to sleep,” Abington rebuffed him. “Cold
water will do.”
“Have it your way--it’s your foot,” snapped Bill, and relapsed into
his morose silence.
* * * * *
It was not an agreeable supper, and neither spoke while they drank
coffee and ate bacon and fried corn from the same frying pan.
Bill was tired and full of uneasy fears and he bitterly resented
Abington’s action in regard to the guns. He was accustomed to the
feel of a gun’s weight against his hip and the thought of facing
trouble without a weapon gave him an uncomfortable feeling of
helplessness. Add mystery to the hazard, and Bill reacted with a
dread not far removed from panic.
Abington ate and drank his share, then forced himself to explore the
cave with a lamp. He chose for himself a niche in one side of the
wall near the entrance, where he would hear any intruder and would
still be fairly well concealed.
At least, that was his idea when he settled himself in the recess.
As a matter of fact not even his aching foot could keep him awake.
He dropped almost at once into the deep dreamless sleep of
exhaustion. When he opened his eyes it was to see the sunlight
slanting into the cave--a circumstance which at first convinced him
that it must be nearly noon, since the cave opening faced the south
and the cañon walls were high.
After a brief space of mental fogginess, however, his mind snapped
into alertness. He remembered that he had stooped to enter the
cavern; the sunlight bathed the high-arched roof just over his head
and brought into relief certain symbols--left there by the ancients,
he had no doubt.
For a time he lay looking up at the roof, deciphering each crude
character, his eyes tracing the lines which even in that sheltered
place showed the erosion of many centuries. Some of the lines were
dimmed; none retained the sharp outlines left by the engravers.
Now he knew that the cave had a high opening through which the sun
was shining; a common occurrence in that old formation that had
suffered the buffetings of wind and water for millions of years, and
moreover had been rocked and twisted by many a primeval earthquake.
He thought no more of the opening, but insensibly slipped under the
spell of those ancient records, his imagination thrilling to each
new sign as it caught his eye.
The story of a journey was depicted there, a journey of death, he
judged from certain priestly emblems and the sign of burial. Perhaps
they had attempted to depict the journey of the soul, though he
could only guess at that, his speculations revolving around a figure
of a dog or wolf, very similar to the jackal which in the belief of
ancient Egypt was supposed to carry souls across the desert to
paradise. He wondered, searching farther along the roof for further
inscriptions.
Like an old rangeman riding up to a herd of strange cattle,
unconsciously reading the brands and mentally identifying the
owners, Abington could not seem to pull his mind away from that
roof. Beyond the sunlit patch the carvings extended into obscurity
so deep that, stare as he would, he could not distinguish the lines.
A sense of bafflement nagged at him. Just as the cattleman will
follow a range animal for half a mile, seeking the vague
satisfaction of seeing what brand had been burned into its hide,
Abington sat up and put on his boots, and picked up the can of
carbide and miner’s lamp which he used in preference to candles when
exploring dark caverns. He started climbing up a tilted shelf of
rock that offered a precarious footing for a man tall enough to
bridge certain places where the shelf had dropped completely away
and left gaps in what may once have been a steep narrow trail.
From the floor of the cave it looked impossible for anything save a
fly or a lizard to climb to the roof. When he started, Abington had
not expected to do more than reach a point from where he could view
the shadowed writing at closer range. He kept going, however, while
the lame foot protested with twinges of pain that gradually ceased
as the muscles limbered. Presently he stood on a low irregular
balcony, the writings just over his head.
This was something he had not suspected even while lying on his back
studying the roof. He made his way along the ledge, forced to stoop
so that he was soon walking like a gorilla with his hands sometimes
touching the balcony floor. He became suddenly aware of an odd
variation in the rough sandstone. The sharp, granular formation was
worn down to a dull smoothness in the center of the ledge where he
walked. It was a pathway polished by many shuffling feet--nothing
else.
He turned a corner and peered into blackness; an ancient water
channel was there, no doubt. Abington lighted a match, saw that the
hieroglyphics continued along the wall. Waiting only long enough to
light the carbide lamp, he set off along the narrow passage, pausing
now and then to study the inscriptions as he went.
Broad chambers receded into blackness beyond the white light of his
lamp and these he hastily explored before going on. Labyrinthine
passageways were revealed as he turned the light this way and that,
each opening inscribed with strange symbols carved in the rock at
the sides.
“A gold mine of records!” Abington exclaimed to himself in the
whisper that was his habit when alone. “The ancient people who lived
here seem to have had a Scribblers’ Club of very active members! An
ancient catacomb, or I’m mistaken. That, or else these symbols were
carved with the express purpose of misleading one. H’m! An attempt
to confuse the devil and thwart him in his search for the souls of
the dead! Now here’s a pretty problem for an archaeologist. Let’s
see if I am smarter than the devil!”