we came — did Uncle John and I overlook it — is it down home?”
“No. Of course it is n’t there. I packed it in your outfit myself. You have n’t lost it ?”
“Worse than that! It has been stolen! Taken right out of the cabin! These are bad times up here. I wish you had n’t come. I was going to send you right home, but now you can’t go: your horses are halfway home by this time!”
“Ha! As though I would go back before seeing your cave!” she cried.
“The cave! There’s no time for it now!” I said, and went on to tell her all about the sneaking man I had seen, and all that the Supervisor had just told me. That sobered her. “And what is more,” I added, “old Double Killer is prowling about here, too. I saw him this morning. I can show you his tracks in the trail to the summit.”
“It does look bad,” she said. “But here I am and here I stay. I guess I can stand it if you can. And you know that I can shoot! ” She tapped the holster at her side, in which was thrust her 38 Colt automatic pistol.
“Yes, you will have to stay until I can get word to Uncle John to come after you,” I said. I did n’t tell her how much I admired her courage.
“Now, George, promise that you will not telephone them about this! Mind, if mother hears about this ham stealing, and about old Double Killer being up here, she will have you back home in a hurry, as well as me,” she begged.
I had n’t thought of that, and I knew that she was right. Mother would have us out from here, too quick.'And what shame then, for me. It would be said that I was afraid to stay and face the dangers. And me a Boy Scout!
“Well, we’ll see about it,” I answered. “But come. I must return to the lookout. Let’s sling this stuff into the cabin and be upon our way.”
We got the outfit inside, took some crackers and cheese for a lunch, and a canteen of water, and at twenty minutes to one were entering the lookout. The telephone was ringing for me. I answered.
‘‘Glad to know that you are back up there. No sign of fire the sawmill way, is there?’’ the Supervisor said.
“No, nor elsewhere.”
“Good. Well, keep your eyes peeled,” he answered, and rang off.
“You see how it is: I have to be here every minute of the day from sunrise to sunset. There’s no use talking about me exploring the cave,” I told Hannah.
“Nonsense!” she exclaimed. “You can go into it while I stand watch in here. But first, I want to see the hole: show me where it is.”
She was right. With her help I could have all the time that I wanted to go into it. But we had not brought up the rope and candles, and I did not like to leave the summit to go after them. I pointed the way to the cave. Down past a bend in the west slope, it was not in sight from the lookout, but I explained that she could find it by the half-circle of rock slabs piled below the entrance, and she hurried off down along the summit. I watched her until she turned from it and went out of sight, and, taking up the field-glasses, discovered a sudden upburst of smoke away south in the Blue Range. I sighted it with the chart level, went to the telephone and reported: ‘‘Fire on 182, away down in the Blue.”
A few minutes later, I heard Honeymoon Meadows and Saddle Mountain lookouts giving their degree sightings of the fire; and then the Supervisor ordering to it the patrols in that section of the forest.
I took the glasses again, and stared down into Black River Canyon and the little grass park in it. No smoke was there nor any living, moving thing. I turned to the north: smoke was curling up from the forest due west of the sawmill. Yes, and also from a point a mile or more farther west: the I.W.W. firebugs had begun their destructive work. I sighted the two fires and quickly reported them, and kept the receiver to my ear. Green’s Peak reported them; the Supervisor ordered his C. C. Ranch and Cienega Flat patrols to a fire at Sheep Springs, and another a mile west of the Springs. He then conferred with the patrols at the sawmill, started them to the fires, and then Mr. Hammond, the mill-owner, said that he would send his men with them, and himself and wife guard their property, How I hoped that the I.W.W. men would be found and killed before they could do further damage to our forest! It was bad enough to see the great trees burning from a fire started by lightning or by some careless traveler; but to see them destroyed— deliberately destroyed—by enemies of our country was unbearable. I took up my rifle and said to it: ‘‘ Partner, how I would like to empty you into those two Hun helpers down there! ”
I was very uneasy; too worried to search for more beads. I went outside and walked around and around the lookout, stared now and then at the Sheep Springs fires, saw that the smoke from them was increasing instead of diminishing in volume. Well, the patrols had not had time to arrive there and begin fighting them. It was going to be a big fight, for a strong west wind was blowing. Hannah now came in sight, up on top from the cave hole, and ran toward me, stopping now and then to wave her hands to me and point to the fires, until, at last, she was near enough to hear me shout: “Yes. I see them. I have reported them!”
She came up into the lookout, out of breath and almost crying: “Those awful I.W.W. men! They set those fires! ” she gasped.
“Sure they did! And will set more if the patrols don’t kill them,” I answered, and proceeded to tell her what was going on down there.
“I can’t understand how men can be so bad!” she exclaimed.
An hour passed. Two hours, and we saw that the smoke of the two fires was dying out. The patrols had them under control, would soon extinguish them. Anxiously we waited to listen in at the telephone, and learn if the two firebugs had been given what was due them.
We began talking of other things. Of the cave, of course. Hannah thought that it was a wonderful find I had made; that we might find some very wonderful things in it left there by the ancient people. A prospector who had once stopped a few days with us had told us about caves in Old Mexico in which had been found gold idols and dishes, along with pieces of beautiful pottery. Here, too, was pottery. Might we not also find gold with it in our cave? The very thought of it was exciting. We knew a little, a very little, about those old pottery-makers. Five miles down the Little Colorado from our home we had seen the tumbled-down rock walls of their ancient homes, with great quantities of broken pottery scattered about. There, too, could be traced the courses of their irrigating ditches; and upon the faces of some near-by rocks we had seen pictures that they had cut in. Pictures of men, animals, and of things which none of the settlers could understand. Some said that they were not Indians who had lived there, and evidently raised some kind of crops which they irrigated; that they must have been one of the lost tribes of Israel, gone long before the Indians came. Well, we talked and talked about all that we had heard, and wondered if any of it was true, and planned just how we would go down into my cave and explore it. And so the afternoon wore on, and at five o’clock I informed the Supervisor that I could see no more smoke from the Sheep Springs fires, nor any fresh fires starting.
‘‘Good. But you just stay where you are until nine o’clock. Remember, a whole lot depends upon you and Green’s Peak lookout. I don’t believe that the patrols have caught those firebugs, else they would have been ’phoning about it.”
He was right. Not fifteen minutes after he hung up, we heard one of the patrols telephoning him that they had the fires completely out, but had been unable to find the men who had set them. We learned, too, that there was to be an all-night guarding of the mill, and that the deputy sheriff had started with a posse of men from Springerville in search of the two fire-setters.
