THE HOLLOW ALTAR.
"Magnificent indeed!"
The words, falling from the professor's lips, echoed hollowly against
the walls of the lofty, vaulted chamber in which the adventurers found
themselves, after traversing a narrow passage leading inward from the
causeway.
The walls of this chamber, which must have been fully thirty feet in
height at its greatest altitude, were formed of the soft rock, out of
which it had been excavated apparently uncounted ages before. They
were daubed with grotesque figures in faded, but still discernible,
colors. Most of these figures had to do with scenes of violence, and
in almost all of them the figure of what appeared to be an enormous
rattlesnake, with human head and arms, predominated.
Among the mural decorations were some that puzzled the professor
considerably. They were crude drawings of men in what appeared to be
intended for boats. The professor found these inexplicable. The very
idea of boats in that arid spot seemed absurdly out of place. Why,
then, should the mesa-dwellers have depicted them?
Light was furnished to the chamber by an irregularly shaped hole in the
roof above. Although there was plenty of illumination, it had yet been
some moments before the adventurers, coming out of the brilliant
sunlight outside, grew used enough to the gloom to make out their
surroundings. When they did so, the first words uttered were those of
the professor recorded above.
Like some queer, long-legged bird, the man of science, with a giant
magnifying glass held up to his eye, sped hither and thither on his
long, angular limbs, inspecting minutely the drawings and crude
attempts at decoration. Already he had out his tape-measure and
sketch-book, making observations and recording measurements.
Presently, however, he recalled himself from the first heat of his
enthusiasm.
"After all," he said, "we shall have plenty of time in which to explore
this chamber, which seems to have been used as a council hall. Let us
examine the remainder of this remarkable place."
"You may well call it that, perfusser," grunted Pete. "It's remarkable
fer the dust thet's in it, if nothing else. But what I'd like to
know," he added to himself, "is jes' whar the owners of them footsteps
vanished themselves to."
Which brings us to a remarkable discovery, made a few moments before
our party had entered the "Council Hall," as the professor called it.
As you may imagine, they had traced the footsteps with some care,
hoping to come upon a solution of the mystery of their origin. Picture
their astonishment, then, when you are told that the footsteps abruptly
vanished at the summit of the zig-zag trail. Although dust lay thick
on the chambers within the mesa, not a solitary foot-mark marred its
soft gray surface. With the exception of the numerous footsteps on the
trail to the summit, there was no other sign of human visitors.
Like most old plainsmen and all wild animals, Pete was suspicious of
anything he couldn't understand, and it certainly did seem inexplicable
that a party of men should have visited the mesa and contented
themselves with running or walking up and down the causeway outside, or
promenading the summit. Such, however, appeared to be the only
explanation, and as such they were forced to accept it.
But such speculations as these were far from monopolizing the minds of
the professor and the boys. They eagerly traversed chamber after
chamber, finding these latter to be small "apartments," so to speak,
giving upon a common passage just beyond the "Council Hall." The
professor told them that each of these small chambers was formerly the
home of an aboriginal family. In the floor of the passage he pointed
to numerous bowl-like holes, which, according to him, had been used for
the sharpening of spears and arrow heads.
In some of the small chambers specimens of rude pottery were found, all
ornamented with the same figure of the human-headed rattlesnake.
Evidently the form represented must have been a deity of the tribe.
Each of the small chambers was lighted by one of the holes cut in the
face of the cliff, which they had noticed from below. The boys darted
in and out of the various rock chambers, like ferrets in a rabbit
warren, followed at a more leisurely pace by the professor and Coyote
Pete.
"Maybe we'll find some treasure," suggested Ralph Stetson, as, with
flushed faces, plentifully begrimed with dust, they paused in the last
of the rocky chambers.
"Say, you've got treasure on the brain, ever since we found that chest
of Jim Hicks' in the passage-way under the old mission, and started our
bank accounts," laughed Jack. "You must be forgetting that this mesa
has been visited frequently by cattlemen and wandering prospectors."
"Well, I should hardly call it frequently, Jack," put in Professor
Wintergreen, who was now standing with Coyote Pete at his elbow, in the
narrow entrance to the rocky chamber.
"Nope," added Coyote Pete; "you can bet your boots we didn't come here
except when we had to. In the past, though, it made a mighty good
watering-place for the cattlemen driving from one section of this
country to another. Sence they cut up that land over to the westward
inter farms, though, the big cattle drives have stopped, and I don't
suppose any one's bin around here for a long time, 'cepting those
varmints whose feet-marks we seen."
"How do you know they are varmints?" laughed Walt Phelps.
"Don't see what business they'd hev here otherwise, and----" began
Pete, but a perfect tempest of laughter at his expense drowned the rest
of his speech.
"Well, now that we seem to have pretty well explored the habitation
part of the mesa, let us make our way to the summit," suggested the
professor.
With a whoop and yell, the excited boys followed the suggestion at
once, and a dash up the narrow causeway followed at imminent risk of
one of another losing his footing.
"Hey, hold on thar!" yelled Pete, as they dashed upward, "we don't want
no funerals here, an' it's er drop of more'n a hundred feet to ther
ground."
This rather checked the boys' enthusiasm, and they went more slowly
thereafter.
The summit of the mesa was found to consist of a small plateau, about a
quarter of an acre in extent, perfectly bare, and shaped like a saucer.
Near the center was the hole which gave illumination to the council
hall below them, while in a spot almost exactly in the middle of the
queer elevation, was a rough, square erection of sun-baked brick. This
was about twelve feet in length, five feet in height, and six feet or
so through. Apparently it had once been a kind of an altar. The
professor thought this assumption tenable, as it was known that the
aborigines who had once inhabited the mesa had been sun-worshipers.
"Ugh!" shuddered Jack, as he gazed at the altar. "And they used to
offer human sacrifices here."
"I think it altogether likely," said the professor calmly; "probably
that altar has witnessed the immolation of more than a hundred victims
at a single tribal ceremony."
Ralph Stetson was clambering up on the altar as the professor spoke,
but at hearing these words he hastily descended again.
"I guess I'll defer examining it till some other time," he said
decidedly.
From the summit of the mesa a wonderful view could be obtained. At
that altitude the rocky, desolate range of sierras to the south could
be seen clearly, although a mile or so distant.
"Thar's the border yonder," said Pete, pointing.
"And over across there is father, I guess," said Jack. "I hope he
found everything at the Esmeralda all right."
"Sure he did," said Pete confidently. "I tell you, these greaser
uprisings don't amount to a busted gourd. Mister Diaz's tin soldiers
come along, and 'pop-bang! Adios!' It's all over."
"But I have heard that in this case the insurrectionists of Northern
Chihuahua are exceptionally well provided with arms and ammunition,"
objected the professor. "The American government can't make out from
whence they are supplied with guns and munitions of war."
"Huh, where'd they git 'em from, I'd like to know?" snorted Pete. "The
border is well guarded at any point where they would be likely to ship
'em across, and----"
"How about the _unlikely_ points?" inquired the professor amiably.
"Um--ah--well," began Pete, somewhat stumped by this last, "I don't see
what that's got to do with it."
"But I do. Mexicans, my friend, are, as you should know, a cunning
race. Moreover, those of them who dwell along it know the border far
better than any white could ever hope to. By the admission of our own
secret agents, it has hitherto been impossible to find how the arms,
which the Chihuahua rebels are receiving, can reach them. It is
obvious, however, that there must be some way in which they do,
hence----"
"Waal, perfusser, hev it your own way," grunted Pete, rather red and
angry. The professor's logic did indeed seem unassailable. The rebels
of Northern Chihuahua were getting arms--but how? The cow-puncher and
the boys recalled now a visit made to Mr. Merrill's ranch some weeks
before by a party of United States secret agents.
The men were puzzled and angry over their failure to locate the "leak."
Somehow arms were being shipped across the border into Chihuahua from
American soil, but just how had hitherto baffled all the efforts of
their ingenuity to discover.
"There, there, don't be so easily offended," counseled the professor,
perceiving Pete's palpable irritation. "After all, the matter has
nothing to do with us. We are here to measure the mesa for scientific
purposes, not to get into arguments over how a band of insurrectos are
getting their arms. Come, boys, to work. Let us begin at the top, by
measuring the altar. Suppose, Jack, you lay the tape on it, while I
make a rough field sketch of the structure."
The boys, now over their first repulsion to having anything to do with
the altar, about which such grisly memories clustered, eagerly began to
carry out these orders, while Coyote Pete seated himself on the side of
the summit overlooking the travelers' camp below, and amused himself by
throwing small bits of detached rock down at the unoffending One Spot,
Two Spot and Three Spot.
The base of the altar being duly measured and recorded, Jack, tape in
hand, followed by the others, clambered up its rough sides, which
afforded an easy foothold, for the purpose of ascertaining the
dimensions of the top. To the lad's astonishment, however, there was
no summit. That is to say, the altar was hollow.
The professor exhibited considerable scientific excitement on hearing
this. The man of science had been greatly puzzled over the total
absence of any traces of the human sacrifices he knew must have taken
place there. He now hailed Jack eagerly.
"Are there not some bones or traces of sacrifices inside it, my boy?"
he inquired excitedly.
"Nary a bone," shouted Walter cheerfully.
"Hold on, though," cried Jack. "There are some queer-looking things
down in one corner."
Lowering himself inside the altar, he made for one corner of the
erection, in which he had spied a heap of fragile-looking bones of some
kind.
"Skeletons of snakes!" he cried, holding up one of these for the
inspection of the professor, who had by this time hoisted his bony
frame over the top of the altar and now stood beside them.
"That's right, my boy; they are serpents' skeletons. Doubtless in
their sacrificial ceremonies these people also offered up rattlesnakes,
which seem to have been a sort of sacred reptile among them; much as,
in a sense, the cat was sacred to the ancient Egyptians, and the python
is worshiped in certain parts of India."
"But, professor," protested Jack, "if, as you say, numerous human
sacrifices were offered here in the past, why do we not find any human
remains here?"
"Who can say, my boy? Many of the habits of these pre-historic peoples
are veiled in mystery. We can only surmise and reconstruct. They may
have burned them or disposed of them in some other way."
"Say!" exclaimed Ralph suddenly. "This floor sounds to me as if it was
hollow; maybe there's a chamber or something underneath."
The boy, who had been stamping about with a vague sense of making some
such discovery, hailed them with excited looks.
"Hollow, you say?" asked the professor, with every appearance of deep
interest.
"Yes, listen!"
Again Ralph stamped about. There was no question about it--the
stone-paving, of which the floor of the altar was formed, gave out an
unmistakably hollow sound.
The professor was down on his hands and knees instantly, searching
about, like a hound on the scent. In the meantime the others stamped
about in other parts of the interior, but only where Ralph's feet had
given out the hollow sound did the floor appear anything but solid.
"Queer!" exclaimed the professor, as, after a considerable search, he
rose to his feet covered with dust and streaming with perspiration,
"there should be some sort of trap-door here, to judge by the sounds,
but so far as I can see, the joints between the pavement are perfectly
tight, and I can find no ring or lever which might open such an
aperture."
"Perhaps----" began Ralph, but he was interrupted by a sudden wild yell
from Pete.
"Wow! Yee-ow! Come here quick, everybody!"