SOME QUEER TRACKS.
The hour, the surroundings, and the utter mystery of the whole affair
combined to make the sudden appearance and vanishment of the great
shadowy shapes the more inexplicable, not to say alarming. Small
wonder was it that the inquiring faces that turned toward each other
were a trifle whiter than usual.
"What do you make of it, Pete?" asked Jack.
"Stumped, by the big horn spoon!" was the expressive response.
"No doubt, some natural phenomena, with a simple explanation," came
from the professor. It was noted, though, that his angular form seemed
to be somewhat shivery as he spoke, and that his teeth chattered like
dice rattling in a box.
"Natural phe-nothings!" burst out Pete. "The things, whatever they
was, were as solid as you or me."
"How was it they didn't make any noise, then?" inquired Ralph,
practically.
"Waal, son, you jes' take a run on the bunchgrass, and you'll see that
you won't make no racket, nuther."
Ralph did as he was directed, and it was really wonderful how silently
he sped over the springy vegetation.
"Maybe it was somebody putting up a scare on us," suggested Walt,
rather lamely.
"They couldn't rig up anything as big as that," said Jack decisively,
"besides, there's another thing--I didn't tell you because I thought I
might have been mistaken, but I saw those same things this afternoon."
"What?" went up in a perfect roar of incredulity.
"Say, is this some kind of a josh?" asked Coyote Pete suspiciously.
"Never more serious in my life," Jack assured him, and then went on to
relate the strange experience that had befallen him when he had poked
his head out from under the saddle in the sand-storm.
"If they weren't so enormous, I should say they was horses," said Pete;
"but the biggest horses that ever growed never even approached them
critters--spooks, er whatever they are."
"There are giants among men," suggested Walt, "why shouldn't there be
giants among spooks, too?"
"You get to Halifax with that spook talk," said Coyote Pete scornfully.
"I'll bet my Sunday sombrero that whatever them things is, there's some
sore of human mischief back uv it. But what is it? Who put it up?"
"Yes, and what for, and why?" laughed Jack. "I tell you, fellows," he
went on, "it's no use of our racking our brains to-night over this.
The best thing we can do is to set a watch. Then, if they come again,
we can try a shot at them. If not, why then in the morning we'll make
an investigation; eh?"
"Durn good advice," grunted Coyote Pete. "Now, I'd suggest that ther
perfusser takes ther fust watch, and----"
"No, no, my dear sir; really, I--I have a cold already. A-hem--ach-oo!"
The man of science, it seemed, had really developed serious bronchial
trouble in record time.
"Why, professor," said Jack mischievously, "haven't I heard you say
that you'd like a chance to investigate such a phenomenon as this?"
"Hum, yes--yes, my young friend. I may have said so, yes. And any
other time I should be only too pleased to--Good Land! what's that?"
With the agility of a grasshopper, the professor had jumped fully three
feet, as one of the pack-burros, nosing about behind him, accidentally
butted him in the small of his back. The others burst into a roar of
laughter, which they could not check. The professor, however, adjusted
his spectacles solemnly and looked about him with much dignity.
"I thought I saw a book I had dropped, almost in the fire," he
explained glibly, "so I jumped to get it before a hot ember fell on it."
"I had no idea you could jump like that, professor," laughed Jack.
"You should have gone in for athletics at Stonefell."
It was finally decided that Walt and Ralph should stand the first
watch, and Coyote Pete and Jack the last part of the night. The
professor, after carefully drawing tight the curtain of his tent, "to
keep the cold out," as he explained, retired. Soon after, Jack and the
cow-puncher also went to bed till the watch should summon them to go on
duty in their turn.
But the night passed without any reappearance of the strange shapes
which had so upset the tranquility of the little camp, and, viewed in
the fresh light of a new and glorious day, somehow the affair did not
seem nearly so ominous and awe-inspiring as it had the night before.
Breakfast, as you may imagine, was speedily disposed of, and, having
seen to the stock, the party started out to explore the mesa itself.
As has been said, the side upon which they had camped the night before
was nothing but a sheer cliff. Under the guidance of Coyote Pete, they
now set out to encircle the strange precipitous formation. Their
hearts beat high, and their eyes shone with an aroused sense of
adventure as they strode along.
The professor carried with him a small volume containing a partial
translation of the symbols and sign language of the ancient tribe whose
domains they were about to invade. Jack had a coil of stout, half-inch
manila rope, about two hundred feet in length. Walt Phelps' burden was
a shovel, while Ralph Stetson carried an axe. All bore with them their
revolvers, and Coyote Pete carried, in addition, a rifle.
"Are you afraid of anything?" the professor had asked him, as he
noticed the sun-bronzed plainsman pick up this latter weapon.
"Waal," Pete had rejoined, with a portentous wink at the boys, "you
never kin tell in this wale of tears what you're a-goin' up
aginst--queer shapes, fer instance."
As they strode along, naturally the subject of the shadowy forms which
had alarmed them the night before arose. Jack would have liked to
investigate them right then and there, but, after all, he decided with
the rest of the party, that an exploration of the mesa was the first
thing of importance to be accomplished. And an interesting sight the
great abandoned aboriginal beehive, was, as they rounded the
inaccessible side and emerged upon the portion which faced toward the
northwest.
Pete's recollection had not played him false. There was a rough
pathway constructed up its face upon this side, and at the top were
three tiers of holes bored in the rock face. These were evidently
intended for windows, as a larger aperture was just as evidently meant
for a door. The path, which zig-zagged up the face of the mesa was
about eight inches in width, not more, at its base, and varied--so far
as they could see from below--from that breadth to a foot, as it grew
higher.
From the base to the summit the mesa was probably about one hundred and
fifty feet in height, the windows not commencing till within twenty
feet of the top. Its length at the base was, roughly, three hundred
feet, and its thickness varied from three hundred feet or more at the
center, to a few feet at each end. Roughly, then, its basic outline
was that of an irregular parallelogram, while its profile was that of a
flat-topped cone. For some moments the little group stood in silence
as they gazed up at the yellowish-gray walls of the once-active mound.
Finally, recovering from their reverie, they set out after Coyote Pete
to scale the narrow pathway leading to the summit. But, as the
cow-puncher set his feet on the lowermost part of the path, he gave an
exclamation of astonishment and pointed downward.
There in the dust was a footprint,--several of them, in fact.
It was a startling discovery in that isolated part of the desert to
come upon the traces of human occupancy. Robinson Crusoe on his desert
island could not have looked any more astonished at the imprint of the
savage's sole, than did Coyote Pete. He stood looking down
speechlessly at his discovery, while the others crowded about him,
asking a dozen questions at once.
"If the sand-storm had hit this section, we'd been able to form some
idee of how long ago them hoofs was planted there," said Pete; "but as
it is, ther feller who wondered how ther apple got in ther dumpling
didn't hev a harder problem than the nut we've got to crack."
"There must have been several of them," said Jack, who had been gazing
in the dust, which lay thick on the pathway to the summit of the mesa.
"A dozen at least," nodded Pete. He tipped back his sombrero and
scratched his ruffled hair, fairly at a standstill to account for what
they had encountered.
"Mightn't it have been prospectors?" asked Ralph.
"Might hev bin, yes," agreed Pete; "but, fer one thing, my son,
prospectors don't usually travel in dozens."
"Hum--that's so," assented Jack, who at first had greeted Ralph's
suggestion eagerly.
"Look here!" cried Ralph suddenly, holding up a glittering object which
he had just discerned in the bunch-grass at the base of the mesa.
"What is it, my boy?" inquired the professor.
Ralph extended the object for their inspection.
"A strange coin," cried Walt.
"Not so blamed strange, either," said Pete, picking it off the boy's
palm and examining it. "It's a Mexican peso."
"Then the men who were here were Mexicans?" cried Jack.
"Not so fast, my boy," admonished Pete. "Might as well say that every
feller who finds a Canadian dime in his pocket is a Kanuck. Say," he
suggested suddenly, "suppose you boys jes' see if you can find any
tracks around the base of the mesa."
They scattered and looked carefully about them, but the bunch-grass
grew in quite a broad belt all about, and no footmarks could be
discerned. Nor did a careful examination of the grass show any broken
or trampled blades, as would have been the case had ponies been there
recently.
"That decides it," announced Pete, after this last fact had been
ascertained, "whoever made those foot-marks wasn't here recent, that's
a fact. But who could they have been, and what brought them here?"
"Maybe Indians," suggested Ralph sagely.
"Yep, if Indians wore boots, which they don't," grinned Pete, while
poor Ralph colored to the roots of his hair over the general laugh that
arose at his expense.
"I think," announced the professor finally, "that it would be our best
plan to go ahead exploring the mesa. After all, there is nothing here
that can hurt us. Those ruffians of Black Ramon's have been driven out
of the country, and, anyway, they would not be likely to come here. As
for Indians, their reservation is many miles to the north-east.
Whoever was here, was either on a scientific quest, like ourselves, or
else unfortunately lost in the desert."
"Jes' ther same," grunted Pete, in a low voice that nobody overheard,
"I'd like ter know what all this means: Big, shadowy shapes flitting
around in ther night, and footsteps here in ther mornin'. It don't
look right."
He took a swift glance all about him. In every direction lay the
desert--glittering, far-reaching, lonely as the open sea. The only
break in the monotony came to the south--on the border--where stretched
the rocky, desolate ridge.
"No one wouldn't come here without an object," reasoned Pete to
himself, as they began the ascent of the narrow, tortuous trail, "now,
what in thunder could that objec' hev bin?"