In falling, it had cut into projections of both walls, and there it would stick until I could get a crowbar and pry and batter it loose. Hannah all but cried when I told her that. I took the candle from her, and held it in over the top of the slab, and saw that, only a few feet ahead, the passage ran into a large chamber. I could see something like ten feet of its floor; beyond was black darkness. Upon the floor was a dim, dust-covered object that had the outline of a large, bottle-neck olla. Yes, I made out that it was an olla. I told Hannah what I saw and we sure were excited. Doubtless there were a number of ollas in the chamber, we said. And other things, too. Gold, maybe. Weapons and implements of the old-time people. In withdrawing the candle I glanced up at the roof and saw the three-cornered place from which the slab had fallen. It was white, almost, compared with the rest of the dark, time-stained roof. The slab had but recently fallen. What was recent, in this underground place? I wondered. Perhaps that bright place would not become the color of the rest of the roof in a thousand years!
Chapter V.
The People-of-Peace
Again I handed Hannah the candle, and shook the rock slab; lay down and kicked it, and could not budge it. ‘‘Lead out. We can never move it without a crowbar,” I said.
We were about halfway back to the entrance of the passage when Hannah paused, sat up, and from a projection of the wall close up under the roof secured a handful of sticks averaging about six inches in length and a half-inch in diameter, and we saw at once, by the dim light of the candle, that they were not just sticks, the pilings of a rat nest: all were notched in at one end, and several had carved ends, and to the head of one of them a few downy, tiny feathers adhered, as though stuck on with glue. We found a few more of the sticks at the back of the little shelf—eighteen in all, and then noticed that the floor was covered with the dust of similar sticks that had rotted, except here and there an end, and they crumbled into gray powder between our fingers. We went on with our finds, out upon the ledge, and up the ladder. We then saw that the sticks had been banded with paint, some with three colors: white at the top or carved end, blue in the center, and then black. Others had bands of one color; still others just a band of black at the lower end. We sat there upon the rocks a long time, examining them, wondering for what purpose they had been made. At last Hannah insisted that they had been children’s toys; dolls, or pieces for some kind of a game. Somehow I did not think that explained them. The sun was now near setting. We put our rock ladder weights back on the pile below, and took ladder and sticks down to the cabin. No trace was left, there on top, of our descent into the cave hole. Days would elapse before we could get a crowbar up from home, and in the meantime we did not intend to give chance visitors a lead to our find. Every summer tourists came up on the mountain for a view of the great forest and the desert stretching north from it. It was time for some to be coming, so we hid the ladder and the queer sticks under Hannah’s bunk. That would save us answering questions about them.
The night passed without incident. I awoke at dawn, as usual, and looked up and down the clearing, stared into the spruce thickets; saw nothing but a couple of blue jays fighting a squirrel away from the tree in which they had their nests. I laughed at myself: I had gone to bed determined to watch a long time for the grizzly whose tracks I had seen, to watch for him on and off all through the night, and I had fallen asleep not five minutes after getting under the covers, and had not once awakened. I got up and dressed, called Hannah, and went to the spring. Sister objected to getting up so early, and I had to threaten her with a bucket of the icy water. I was anxious to go up on top and see if more fires had been started during the night.
We were in the lookout before seven o’clock, and how glad we were when we failed to see smoke in any direction. I made my report to the office a few minutes before nine, and then, listening in, learned that the fires west of Green’s Peak had been put out. The patrol told the Supervisor, however, that he was sure they had been started by firebugs, for each one was in very thick timber where it would have done great damage if a strong wind had come up. The patrols were worn out by their all-day and all-night work, and the Supervisor told them to sleep; that he would not call them until he had to, for the sheriff’s men and the Indian police were all out searching for the firebugs. He then called me, and said that I could leave the lookout at five o’clock, but wanted me to return to it for a few minutes, just before sunset, and make a last report.
We put in most of the day looking for beads and collected nearly two hundred — and a few arrow-points — all close around the lookout. We had doubtless scraped out several hundred more that, in the mixture of dark earth and fine gravel, had escaped our eyes. It was as if they had been poured upon the little butte, thousands and thousands of them in the long ago, for undoubtedly the terrific winds and the beating rains and the melting snows had carried immense numbers down the mountain-sides, and still plenty were to be found on top. Why, why had they been deposited there by the ancient people? we kept asking, until our minds were all in a whirl.
Said Hannah, along in the afternoon: “I've just got to quit the search or I shall go blind. Oh, well, just this one short crevice, and then no more for to-day.”
A moment later she cried out: “Come here! Quick! See what I have found!”
It was a find: inlaid, upon an oval, whitish substance about three inches long, were pieces of turquoise, close en-joined, in the form of a frog, and held in place with something that looked like black gum. Close above the head of the frog was a hole in the white substance, evidently for the purpose of attaching the piece to a necklace. It was a fine piece of workmanship.
‘Ht was a woman’s jewel, and how proud she must have been of it!’’ Hannah exclaimed. “Any woman would be glad to wear it. I shall wear it, myself, as soon as I can get a necklace for it!”
‘‘Yes, it is beautiful,” I said. “And if those old-time jewelers could do that fine work, they did it in gold, too. When we get into our cave we sure shall make some wonderful finds! ”
At five o’clock I reported “No fires,” and we went down to the cabin, put our finds in a little box — already half full of beads and arrow-points, and then had a good supper. After washing the dishes and getting in some stove wood for the evening and morning, we again went on top. Again I reported no smoke anywhere in sight.
“Look again; especially Green’s Peak way,” said the Supervisor.
“No smoke that way, nor in any other direction,” I told him, after another careful sweep of the forest with my glasses, and he told me that I could go.
It was just getting dusk when we entered the cabin, shut the door, lighted the lamp, and settled down for an hour of reading. Then, presently, there came a gentle knock upon the door, and we stared at one another, wild-eyed, for we had heard not the slightest sound of approaching footsteps; the porch boards had not creaked. Hannah motioned me not to go to the door. But again, and a little louder, came the knocking. I got up, tiptoed over to the door with my rifle, swung it suddenly open, and Hannah gave a little cry of fright: for there, plain in the light of our lamp, stood an Indian. A young Indian. No Apache. His hair was cut as short as mine. He wore leggins, shirt, blanket of a bluish-black material, and upon his feet a pair of plain, buckskin moccasins. He was not so tall as I, quite slender, and his face was good. And while we stared at him, he smiled, bowed, and in good English said: ‘‘How do you do! May I come in?”
That did stagger me — a blanket Indian speaking good English! I am afraid that I just stared at him, open-mouthed. And I might have kept staring had not Hannah answered for me: “Yes. Come in. Have a seat.”
He entered, seated himself upon the food chest, glanced around, and said: “You have a nice little
