When Abington came to himself he was in darkness, the lamp having
fallen on its side and gone out. Whether he had fainted, slept or
merely lost consciousness for a moment he could not tell, nor did he
ponder it much. The fact that his toes hung over the edge set him
crawling forward on his hands and knees, obeying the primal instinct
of self-preservation.
He wanted no more of that particular abysm. Until he had put several
yards between himself and what seemed to him now a black, bottomless
void, he did not think of the lamp.
When he finally forced himself to stop and light it he discovered
that he was in a fairly level passage, the walls covered with
carvings wherein the same chain of evil predominated. These
hieroglyphics won only a cursory glance, however, as he got
painfully upon his feet and started forward, steadying himself
against the wall as he went.
A cool breath of air in his face was his first intimation that he
was nearing the outdoor world. In spite of a stiffness in his joints
and muscles he found himself moving almost at a run and the
consciousness of his nervous haste brought a faint grin of amusement
to his face. John Abington was more anxious to see daylight than he
ever had been in his life--and the first man to laugh over the
experience would be John Abington himself.
Nevertheless he did not slacken his pace until he arrived at a sharp
turning where a gray light dimmed the white flame of his lamp.
He stopped before a crack twice the width of his palm, through which
the dawn wind came blowing gratefully in his face. Directly across
from him, but fifty feet lower and separated by a hundred-foot
chasm, a broad ridge extended out into the valley; and as he looked
two bighorn sheep came trotting up a faint trail and disappeared
among the higher crags.
“That’s where the shooting took place,” Abington told himself.
“Wonder if Bill’s been hunting? Took my rifle. Have to give it back.
Well--at least I can see daylight!”
The lazy clouds above the valley blossomed suddenly into radiant
hues. The gaunt hills blushed and the cañons all seemed bathed in
crimson and yellow flames. As through the narrow window of a belfry
tower, Abington gazed down on a world of magnificent peaks and crags
flaunting their bold reds and yellow beneath a redder sunrise.
For the moment the scene held him, then he turned back to the
problem of finding a way out; for although a glimpse of the outside
world was heartening, he could not squeeze through an eight-inch
split in the rock. There must be some other exit. He turned away
from the window and went on.
The passage took another twist and he entered a roughly outlined
room into which the daylight seeped through several fissures between
the shattered blocks of sandstone; high overhead most of them were,
although two or three were low enough to serve as narrow windows.
A square boulder, the top hollowed in the shape of a rounded trough,
stood in the center of the chamber. Otherwise the room was empty,
unless the intricate mass of carved symbols might be classed as
furnishings, for the walls were covered with them.
Abington’s spirits rose, though he paid little attention to the
writings. To him they proved, as did the boulder which he recognized
as a sacrificial altar, that this was a chamber much used by the
ancients. Since the route by which he had entered could not be
called a thoroughfare, there would be another way out, possibly
several.
Within two minutes he had found the passage, and something else.
There on the rock floor which slanted down from the chamber on the
side opposite the one by which he had entered, was a cigarette stub;
it was one of the oval kind he himself always smoked. He stooped and
picked it up, his black eyebrows lifted in surprise.
“Never reached this point yesterday--h’m! Bill not only borrowed my
gun and went hunting last night, but did a little exploring on his
own account. Looking for me, perhaps. No, Bill was scouting around
for himself. H’m! Growing surly and quarrelsome, pretending a
distrust he can’t actually feel, hoping I’d give him an excuse to
turn on me. Wonder, now, if Bill didn’t raid his own cave and hide
the stuff!
“A full burro load of grub--with gun and ammunition he could live
all winter--h’m!” He went on: “Looking now for a hideout--place
where I can’t find him! Bill, my lad, you should pay more attention
to details; one little oversight--such as a cigarette stub--has
hanged a man before now. A good inch and a half of tobacco wasted
here. You’ll be wanting a cigarette very badly, Bill, before you get
another supply, remember.”
He laid the stub down where he had found it and went on, haggard
eyes peering this way and that, seeking further signs of the
traitor’s presence. If Bill had been looking for his partner, then
it was an odd twist of circumstance that had sent them both
wandering around in the same labyrinth of caves and complicated
katabothra without once permitting them to meet. If, on the other
hand, Bill had been hunting a hiding place which Abington would
never find--and the archaeologist was certain this was the case--he
had a surprise in store.
Just now Abington wanted most of all to get out of there and find
his way back to their camp, where there should be food. If
not--well, he had his automatic; he had seen game; and he was a
fairly accurate shot. He would not starve.
The passage sharply descended, as so many others had done. Abington
went cautiously, lighting both walls and watching for obscure
openings which for all he knew might be the one he should take. This
whole country seemed to have been the playground of Vulcan, who rent
mountains asunder, twisted whole ranges of hills and broke them into
fragments and flung them aside when fresh land appeared above the
great Sonora Sea and caught his sportive fancy.
Just here the shattered formation of the old volcanic fissure lay in
blocks that had been roughly hewn into the crude semblance of steps,
down which Abington went slowly, choosing his footing with the
deliberation of excessive weariness. His thirty-six-hour fast and
that terrific climb up from the Pool of Evil Death--from the
writings he had so named the place--had taken more out of him than
he realized, until he began to negotiate this rather difficult
descent. But he kept going, that cigarette stub serving now to urge
him forward.
* * * * *
Stumbling from hunger and weariness, Abington emerged into another
cavern of considerable extent and showing unmistakable signs of
human occupancy in bygone ages. Crude pots--most of them
broken--stood against the walls. Stone implements of various kinds,
all thickly covered with dust, lay scattered about; and on the
dust-strewn floor were the plain imprints of hiking boots. Bill,
then, had visited this cavern, which proved that so far Abington had
kept to the right trail.
Tilting the lamp so that the light shone on the floor, he went
forward, following the boot tracks in the dust. Through winding
passages they led him--Abington might have become lost again had not
those footprints pointed the way--and so into a chamber where was
piled a little heap of things which Abington recognized as a part of
his own outfit and the things Bill had declared were stolen from his
cave across the valley.
The treachery of the act stabbed through Abington’s weary
consciousness and merged into a malicious satisfaction. At any rate
the spot had been well chosen, for here was water trickling down a
rift in the wall, tinkling into a tiny basin hewn out of the rock by
some other hands than Bill’s.
Abington sank to his knees and drank thirstily, then clawed at the
pile of stuff, found a tin of corned beef and cut it open with his
knife. It was not what he would have chosen for a meal, but it would
serve. There was plenty of water at hand. He ate all of the corned
beef, drank again and withdrew to a sandy niche where he felt fairly
sure of hearing Bill if he returned; laid himself down under a
shelving projection of rock, put out his lamp and went thankfully to
sleep.