WHAT WAS FOUND UNDERGROUND.
While Fremont was clambering down the eastern slope, studying the
renegade Englishman whenever opportunity offered, and puzzling over the
source of the fellow's information concerning the Cameron building and
the Tolford estate papers, Ned Nestor and his companions were preparing
to visit the interior of the strange shelter-place in which they found
themselves.
The outer chamber, which, for convenience they marked "Chamber A" on
the rough map they afterward made, was 30x40 feet in size, with the
eastern side running parallel with the almost perpendicular face of
rock which shot upward from the shelf which has before been alluded to.
The opening faced directly east, and from it one could look miles over
the desert of sand lying between the foot of the range and the Rio
Grande del Norte, something like a hundred miles away.
To the north and south of this main chamber the boys found niches in
the rock, evidently hewn there by man hundreds of years before. The
rock was very hard here, and it seemed that work had ceased for that
reason.
On the west side of the chamber there were two openings, perhaps four
feet by six, each leading into a chamber 20x30 feet in size. Before
entering these rooms, which held an odor of dampness and decay, the
recently arrived Black Bears produced electric flashlights.
"We looked up Old Mexico," Harry Stevens said, turning on the flame,
"and knew we'd be nosing around in caves and tunnels before we got back
to God's country, so we brought our glims along with us."
"Well, don't burn them all at once," advised Nestor. "We shall need
them for several days, probably, and there are no shops in the next
block where dry batteries can be bought. Leave one out and put the
rest away."
"We have a few extra batteries," said Harry. "We looked out for that."
"We shall doubtless need all you have, no matter how economically they
are used," Nestor said. "Let me take the one you have, and I'll go on
an exploring expedition into the south chamber."
"Me for the exploring expedition too!" cried Harry. "I want to see how
it seems to go into a room ten thousand years old."
"Nixt ten thousand years!" observed Jimmie.
Harry nudged Peter Fenton and pointed to the west wall of the chamber,
across which he threw the brilliant circle of the flashlight.
"There is the record," he said.
"Nix ten thousand years old!" insisted Jimmie.
"No one knows how old," Fenton said. "No one has ever been able to
translate the picture talk of the very early inhabitants. The man who
carved those lines might have existed when the sandy desert out there
was under water."
"Speaking of water, let's go on and see where they got their
drinkings," put in Frank Shaw. "I'm nearly choked, and I'll bet
there's a spring about here somewhere."
"Any old time you don't want something to eat or drink!" laughed Harry.
"Well," he added, handing the flashlight to Nestor, "we may as well go
in and see if there is a water system here."
"There surely is," Fenton said. "The people who dug this shelter out
did not work where there was no water. If Nature did not supply it,
they built aqueducts to convey it to locations where it was wanted.
But Professor Agassiz says they lived ten thousand years ago, so, if
they did put in a water system here, it may be out of commission now."
"How does he know how long ago they lived?" asked Jack.
"By their bones," was the reply. "Near New Orleans, under four
successive forests, one on top of the other, and each showing traces of
having been occupied by man, explorers recently discovered a human
skeleton estimated to be fifty thousand years old. That fellow must
have lived just after the last glacial epoch."
"I don't believe they know anything about how long ago he lived,"
observed Jimmie. "How can any one tell how long ago the last glacial
epoch closed?"
"Figure out how far the melting line traveled from south to north,"
said Fenton, "then figure that the glaciers receded at the rate of only
twelve feet every hundred years, and you'll know something about it."
"Come on!" cried Frank, "let's get in there and find their Croton
system. I'm so thirsty my throat sizzles. Come on!"
Nestor, closely followed by the others, led the way into the south
chamber, called, for convenience, "Chamber B" on the rough map made
later on. The place was damp and cold, and a current of air came from
the southwest corner, indicating an opening there.
After clearing away a heap of rocks and loose sand, which might once
have been rock, the boys found an opening which had been, apparently,
closed for a long period of time. When finally cleared, after an hour
of hard work, the opening from which the current of air had come was
discovered to be a door like arch in the west wall of the main chamber.
The electric flashlight, however, when introduced into the opening,
showed a narrow passage beyond the opening instead of a square room.
This tunnel-like passage was not far from six feet in width and about
that in height. The walls showed that it had been cut through solid
rock.
The boys listened for some indication of life or motion in the tunnel,
but all was silent. Not even a bird or creeping thing disturbed the
stillness of the place.
"Shall we go in now?" asked Nestor.
"Sure!" replied Shaw. "We may find a well in there!"
"Or a soda fountain, or a modern filter," grinned Jimmie. "How would
they ever get a well down through this mountain?"
"Water in wells comes from elevations before it gravitates to the
bottom of the holes from which we pump it," Shaw declared, in defense
of his suggestion. "There may be a reservoir here somewhere."
"How far is this cavern floor from the surface above it?" asked Harry
Stevens, with a judicial air.
"About four hundred feet," was the reply. "We must be about that
distance from the highest point here."
"Then there is no reason why there should not be a reservoir above us,"
said Harry. "Water would filter through these rocks, all right."
The boys passed on in a southwesterly direction to the end of the
tunnel, which was about fifty feet from the opening. Here they found a
chamber about 10x16 feet in size. At the south side of this chamber
was a trough-shaped place cut in the rock, and through this a small
rivulet of water ran.
"I knew the people who built this shop wouldn't put in their time where
no water could be procured," declared Fenton. "Why, this is simply
fort, a mountain residence, where valley people came in time of war and
secreted themselves. If we could read the hieroglyphics on the walls,
we would be able to write a history of their troubles."
"Were they the real thing in cave-dwellers?" asked Jack, who was not
noted for his studious habits, and who depended on his companions for a
knowledge of the countries he visited as a member of the Black Bear
Patrol.
"Earlier than some of the cave-men," replied Harry. "I wonder if this
water is any good to drink?" he added, looking longingly at the crystal
stream flowing under the round circle of the flashlight. "Who wants to
try it?"
Frank Shaw did not wait to make many tests. Tormented with thirst, he
felt of the water by rubbing it between his thumb and fingers, smelled
of it, put it cautiously to his lips, and then, experiencing no bad
effects from this contact, took a few drops into his mouth.
"It is fine!" he shouted, then. "Cold as ice and sweet as sugar! This
beats a soda fountain, Jimmie!"
"Now, was this tunnel constructed on purpose to reach this spring?"
asked Harry.
The lads examined the walls minutely, but there was no opening from the
chamber, save the one by which they had entered.
"This must have been the milk house," laughed Frank, always ready to
turn any subject under discussion into a joke. "I wonder if they kept
their cows on the top of the peak? If they had tied their tails
together and put one over each side, they never could have run away."
On their way back to Chamber B the boys discovered an opening in the
north wall of the tunnel. This led to another tunnel, running in a
northwesterly direction for about one hundred feet and ending in a
chamber larger than any of the others. Nestor caught sight of a
sparkle on the walls as he swung the flashlight about and pointed
glittering sections out to the boys.
"Gold!" cried Frank.
"I'll bet a cooky we've found the hidden mine!" cried Jimmie.
"It is gold, all right," Harry Stevens said, "but there's no knowing
whether it is here in quantities sufficient to pay the expense of
mining and crushing the ore."
"Huh!" cried Jimmie, in a tone of reproach. "Don't you know that rock
that will produce a dollar a tone is worth working? Well, then, look
at this! There's ten dollars worth in the spot I cover with my hand!
We've found somethin', boys!"
"So it wasn't to escape their enemies that the old chaps sequestered
themselves here," said Fenton. "It was to dig out gold!"
"I never heard that there was gold in this part of Mexico," observed
Jack. "I reckon we'll wake up when we get out into the sunlight."
"If you'll read up," Fenton replied, "you'll find that the state of
Chihuahua abounds in niter and other salts, and is rich in mines of
gold and silver. Do you really think we have come upon the deserted
mine Jimmie talks about so much?" he added, turning to Nestor.
The latter took a folded paper from his pocket and examined it under
the light of the electric torch.
"It seems that we have," was the reply. "I was not thinking much about
the mine as I ascended the mountain, but now it strikes me that I
unconsciously followed the directions given in this paper."
"That big lobster of an Englishman was looking for the mine," Jimmie
said, "and so it was natural that he should lead you to it. I can't
see how it belongs to any old estate, though," he added. "Looks like
everybody's property to me."
"Perhaps it was the knowledge of the whereabouts of the mine that had
value," suggested Nestor, "and not the fact of ownership. Anyway, we've
found it."
The walls of the cavern appeared to blaze with gold, in flakes and in
small nuggets. Here and there were empty pockets which appeared to
have been stripped of their rich holdings. Upon inspection the floor
of the chamber was found to be covered, in places, with crushed rock,
where blocks cut from the walls had been broken up.
"There is no knowing how many million dollars worth of gold have been
taken from here," Nestor said, "and there is no way of estimating, at
this time, how far this rich rock extends into the mountain. The fact
that the mine was abandoned may indicate that the ore became less
valuable as the workers cut out from the center."
"It is rich enough now to pay for working, all right! cried Jimmie.
"There appears to be millions in sight," Nestor said, putting away his
paper.