Unexplored!

  CHAPTER VII

  THE CAVE

  Electing the turn to the left, Radcliffe led the way with his carbidelamp. Ace and Ted followed with their candles.

  This time their choice was quickly verified by the discovery of theburros, standing patiently with their packs before the pool. (Thataccounted for the muddy footprints.) Skirting this on the shelving ledgeas had Pedro and the Mexicans, they traversed the winding passageway thatled to the grotto of brown cauliflower-like encrustations. But here, whenthey found that the left-hand passageway meant going on hands and knees,they chose the other turn. (They came that near to catching up with thefugitives!)

  With the suddenness of events in a dream, they came into a vast chamberthat at first glimpse, lighted as it was by the carbide lamp, gave theimpression of a baronial ruin. The boys whistled simultaneously undertheir breath. At the far end stood a huge stone elephant,--or so itappeared at the first startled glance,--and beside him a gnome andseveral weird beasts vaguely reminiscent of the monsters of prehistorictimes.

  When Ted could speak, he whispered, "What are they? Fossils?"

  Ace laughed. "I should say not. They're nothing but dripstone, can't yousee?--They'd be 'some fossils'! Why, if we could find just one fossil asbig as that, our fortunes would be made--absolutely."

  "Gee! Then I'm sure going to keep my eyes peeled."

  "I thought," put in Radcliffe, "that fossils were little stone worms.I've found those aplenty."

  "Fossils," explained Ace, (fresh from first-year geology), "are anyremains of plants or animals that lived, either on land or in the sea, inancient times. A lot of those we find to-day were shell-fish and othermarine life."

  "Gee!" grinned Ted, "doesn't he talk like a professor? I'm going to callyou professor after this, old Scout!"

  "Go on," the Ranger urged, ignoring this sally, "I'm interested."

  "So am I, honestly," amended Ted contritely.

  "There were land animals, too, that got buried in the accumulatingsediments and fossilized. Times when the ocean over-ran the land, theygot drifted into it, and sank, and got buried under the sands that madeour sandstones----"

  "This floor is sandstone!" interpolated Ted.

  "Yes. Or they got buried in the ground-up shells that made ourlimestone,--like the walls of the cave,--or some of them were buried inmud."

  "I suppose," offered Ted facetiously, "that the mud made mudstones," andhe laughed till his voice echoed and reechoed startlingly.

  "Ha, ha! You're right!" Ace turned the laugh on him. "Go to the head ofthe class. I'll show you mudstone when we come to it."

  "Why, then," ventured the Ranger, "this must be a topping place to findfossils."

  "Provided," Ace admitted, "the cave is not of too recent formation. Butas I was about to say," (seeing their undoubted interest), "geologistscan just about piece together the history of the earth from the fossilsthat have been found, but no one locality gives it all. They havefound part of the story in America and part in Africa, and partsin Europe and Asia. And from that series of fossils--and some otherevidence--scientists have about agreed that since the earth was formed,about twenty whole mountain ranges, one after another, must have beenformed and worn away almost to sea level."

  "How do they make that out?" Ted looked skeptical.

  "That's another long story. I'm no professor. But----"

  "You can't prove it."

  "Neither can you disprove it, any more than you can the conclusions onwhich astronomy, higher mathematics, any of the sciences--are based."

  "I suppose so! Gee, I'd like to study those things for myself!" sighedTed, seating himself beside the others on a dry ledge while they atetheir sandwiches.

  "Find a valuable fossil and you've earned a college education," Acechallenged him. "And you know, fossils are not necessarily fish orinsects or skeletons or tree trunks that have been turned to stone."

  "To stone?"

  "By the removal of their own tissues and replacement by mineral matter. Afossil may be merely the print of a leaf of some prehistoric plant onsandstone, or the footprint of some antediluvian reptile. In the NationalMuseum they have a cast of a prehistoric shad that shows the imprint ofevery bone and fin ray."

  "How on earth could that have been formed?" marveled Ted.

  "Why, it was simply buried in fine mud, which first protects it from theair, (and consequent immediate decay), then gradually fills every pore ofevery bone, till by the time the mud has turned to stone, the bones areossified. Of course the animal matter has all dissolved away by thistime. Now if this mud that filled the pores happened to be silica, (asandy formation), it is possible to eat the surrounding limestone awaywith acids and uncover the silica formation, see, old kid?"

  "Aw, that stuff makes my head ache," protested Tim. "If I see anyossified bones lying around, or even a footprint or leaf print in thestone, I'll know I've found a fossil. But I thought we were chasingfire-bugs."

  "The impatience of youth!" Ace playfully squelched him, from the vantagepoint of his slight seniority.

  "What does the Bible say," laughed the Ranger, "about truth from themouths of babes?" And he arose a bit stiffly,--for he had had a strenuoustime of it the past few days, and the cave damp had set his tired limbsto aching.

  For upwards of an hour they followed dark and winding passageways, (ratsand lizards and occasional colonies of bats fleeing before them),naturally without the slightest sign of the fugitives, when they came toanother grotto, the loveliest they had yet seen. It might have been afairy cavern, aglitter with pure crystal. The carved prisms shonedazzlingly in the light of the carbide lamp, and the boys stuffed theirpockets with some of the jewel-like bits that had fallen to the floor.

  From this they presently entered into what seemed like a Gothiccathedral, with a dome whose highest point must have been several hundredfeet above. The boys were fairly awed by its beauty, while the Ranger'seyes gleamed appreciatively. On the walls were what might have beencarvings of flowers and lacework, creamy to smoke color, gypsum, Ace toldthem.

  "Are these fossils?" demanded Ted excitedly.

  "I should say not, you poor fish!--You ichthyosaurus," laughed Aceteasingly.

  "You what?" asked the Ranger.

  "That means ancient fish."

  "All right," grinned Ted. "If I'm an ich----"

  "Ich-thy-o-saur-us?" Radcliffe came to his rescue.

  "Then you're a dinosaur," grinned Ted.

  "Here, here, stop calling each other names!" commanded Radcliffe. "Andperhaps Ace will tell us about this gypsum formation."

  "Thunder! Wish Norris was here! I tell you I'm no professor. But ifyou're after fossils, don't you remember what he told us, that day justbefore we lost the pack burro?--That in this part of California we haverock from the Cambrian era a mile thick, and I'll bet it's full offossils of the fish age!"

  "Well," Radcliffe briskly interposed, as they came to another turn,"we'll never find those Mexicans unless we separate and hunt faster thanwe've been doing. Are you fellows game for taking one way while I go backto that last turn and try the left hand passageway? Of course the instantyou get wind of them, report back to me." They signified their gamenessby picking a precarious footing, (Ted first), along the slippery floor,their candles thrust in their hat bands.

  Above they came to another but a smaller forest of alabaster stalactites,shining like icicles or mosses, some white as snow, some yellow as gold,and some so like maple sugar in appearance that Ace actually tasted it.In one place there was a bit of what Ace said was needle gypsum, thathung as fine as fur.

  Radcliffe, retracing his steps, (with the aid of the twine ball), till hecame to the cross roads, as it were, turned to the left and forged aheadwith his carbide lamp, treading softly as a cougar, with revolver cockedin his right hand. Ever and anon he stopped breath-still to listen.

  Passing through the same alabaster cavern that had so impressed theSpanish boy, his eye caught the bandanna Pedro had dropped in theleft-hand passageway. With an in
ward exclamation, he hurried on till hehad reached the end of the blind. Stooping with his lamp, he could seethe fresh scratches their feet had made. Darting back to the turn of thetunnel, where he had picked up the bandanna, he took the only choice leftto him, the right hand way, with all the satisfaction of a hound on thescent. More scratches on the sandstone floor assured him that they hadreally gone this way, instead of turning back the way they had come, andpresently he too was standing in the gallery of the sloping floor andyellowed pillars, at whose far end the dripstone cataract hung, turned tosoundless stone. But of the three Mexicans and Pedro there was no trace.

  "I say, when do we eat?" Ace was just beginning, when the floor suddenlygave way beneath him, and he fell down a ten foot well, landing on allfours, in Stygian blackness. And no sooner had his bulk padded the stonebeneath than Ted came, plunk! almost on top of him.

  At the moment both were slightly stunned. Their candle flames had ofcourse been flicked out. Then Ted reached mechanically for his matches,by whose flare he found his hat, and still firmly stuffed into the band,his candles. The light disclosed a cavern with muddy walls dripping abovethem, and to their right, an inky pool of water. The air was all aflutterwith the bats they had startled from their pendant slumbers, lizardsscuttled away in all directions, and a fish flopped in the pool, with asplash that sounded out of all proportion to its exciting cause. Tedgrinned as he saw Ace first pinch himself to see if he were dreaming,then slowly feel his joints to make sure none were seriously damaged.

  The fall had rather jolted his nerves, but otherwise he was unhurt, aswas his chum. But how to return the way they had come they could not see,for the walls were too slippery to climb, there was not a spear ofanything movable in sight on which they might gain a foothold, and whenTed tried it from Ace's shoulders, the rim of the well was too slipperywith mud for him to gain a hand-hold.

  The bats, blind from their lightless lives, bumped against them and addedthe final touch of weirdness by their gnome-like faces.

  With the uncanny feeling that they ought to whisper, the shaking boysstarted to explore the cavern, which they found led off in threedirections. It must be on the same level they had left when they saidgood-by to Radcliffe, but in their panic they were completely turnedaround, and they had not explored for ten minutes before they were soconfused that they could not even have found their way back to the cavernof the pool.

  Now Ted had been lost before. He knew the panic feeling, the sudden senseof utter and helpless isolation, the absurd fearfulness, almost thetemporary insanity of it. His scalp prickled,--as did Ace's,--and for alittle while his wits seemed befogged. Then he remembered that bed-rockadvice Long Lester had once given him. When you don't know which way togo, sit down and don't move one step for half an hour. And try to thinkout the way you got there, or some plan of campaign for finding yourselfagain.

  Ted had once been lost in the chaparral,--a thorny tangle of low growthsthat reached higher than his head. When he first discovered he was offthe trail, he wandered about as in a mystic maze, till a shred of his owngingham shirt, (caught on a stub of manzanita), told him he had circled.

  He had had to spend the night there, but in the end he had stumbled uponthe trail again, not ten feet from where he lost it.

  As Long Lester afterwards pointed out, had he but blazed his trail fromthe very first step, he could at least have back-tracked. Or better, ifhe had with his jack-knife made a blaze sufficiently high on some stuntedtree to have seen it and come back to it, he might have circled, and inever widening circles would surely, in time, have found the trail.

  Or, again, he might have--had he known--at least hacked a straight courseby the stars, (always provided that he knew in which direction lay theway out).

  "Ace," he managed to steady his voice when they had been seated on a dryledge for some little time, "your knowledge of cave formations might helpus to find the way out of here. Gee! If this was only in the woods, oreven on some mountain side above the clouds! But it's up to you now."

  "Well," Ace began, "the map of the typical cave, say like Mammoth,wiggles around a little like a river with its tributaries, though nothinglike so regularly, with here and there a wider place, and----"

  "Here and there," contributed his chum, "a well to a lower level."

  "Yes. You see, the water that wears a cave out of the softer layers ofrock seeps in along the fissures of the surface rock, and at first theymake subterranean rivers. Where you find these big springs in thehillsides, they may be the outlets of these underground waterways."

  "I get that, all right," said Ted.

  "Well, then, sometimes these Stygian streams----"

  "Keep it up, Professor!" Ted clapped him on the shoulder.

  "Huh!--These rivers wear away the soft limestone layer,--if it is thiskind of a cave,--'till they come to the harder sandstone. Then the firstchance they find to get through the sandstone,--perhaps through a crackmade by an earthquake or something,--they go down and wear away a deeperlevel. Mammoth Cave is on five levels. That leaves the upper galleriesdry. Now the one we were on was dry except for the moisture that isalways seeping into a cave, but I suspect now we're on a level with theriver, it's so muddy, and we'll find it somewhere."

  "Then we'll find it somewhere!" brightened Ted. "And we can follow it.That's the plan of action!" and he jumped to his feet.

  "We'll follow it if we can. Thunder! I wish we had a boat."

  "So long as you're wishing, why don't you wish for a fat steak withonions?"

  "It has been some time since we ate." Ace tightened his belt. "Must begetting late in the day! Let's run!" And run they did, till they beganslipping on a muddy slope.

  They had to place each foot with care now, and their progress was slow.At the same time their candles were nearly gone. "Now let's put out allbut one," suggested Ted. "Just burn one at a time. What _would_ we dowithout any light?" But Ace did not know the answer.

  What of Pedro, meantime? At that particular instant he had just tried tomake his get-away, with the result that three drawn daggers were beingflourished threateningly and most unhealthily near his heart. He hadoverheard enough evidence to convict all three of the Mexicans, thanks tohis knowledge of the parent language, but as the desperadoes pushedfarther and farther into the labyrinth, he gathered that they would comeout a good safe distance from where they had entered,--probably on theother side of the ridge. Had he known the Ranger's whereabouts at thatprecise moment, he would have felt very differently.

  Radcliffe, meantime, was staring into the dark recess of the cavern, butall he could see was the two shining eyes of whatever occupant was there.Was it bear or cougar? For both, he knew, took refuge in caves. Thelargeness of the eyes inclined him to the belief that it was a Californiamountain lion, and such it was part of his work to exterminate,--thoughthe state also hires an official lion hunter.

  That the great cats are cowards he well knew. But this one was cornered,and might prove no mean antagonist. With revolver cocked in his righthand, his lamp in the other, he advanced toward those two shining fires.A faint scratching along the rocky floor warned him that the animal wasgathering for a spring. He was still rather far for a revolver shot, buthe aimed straight between the eyes. His shot reverberated with athousand echoes. The sounds, ear-splitting in the smoke-filledgloom,--thundered like a thousand siege guns, it seemed to Radcliffe,stalactites tumbled about his ears like crockery, and more appalling thanall the rest was the weird, almost human scream of the wounded animal,which likewise reechoed for several minutes. The unwitting cause of allthis turmoil was in a cold perspiration when things finally quieted down.But the puma, (for such it proved to be), lay dead at his feet.

  The three Mexicans likewise heard the racket, for they, as it happened,were not far away. The Ranger had very nearly trailed them. With rollingeyes and hands that mechanically traced the sign of the cross, theylistened, while the thunders died away.

  Pedro, though his nerves were more than a little shaken, was quick toseize
his opportunity. Slipping like an eel through a narrow openingbetween two columns, where the dripstone had all but closed the way intoanother chamber, he would have escaped observation entirely had it notbeen for his betraying torch-light.

  Sanchez darted after him. But remember, Sanchez was at least a hundredpounds heavier than even well-fed Pedro. The result might have beenexpected. He stuck mid-way! And there he dangled his fat legs in anendeavor to free himself, while Pedro doubled with laughter and the otherMexicans stared, too amazed to move.

  "Pull, can't you, pull!" was Pedro's expurgated version of Sanchez'sreiterated discourse with his followers. And when no one came to hisrescue, he nearly burst a blood vessel in his helpless wrath.

  Pedro, feeling safe from pursuit, with such a plug in the only approachto his sanctuary, now for the first time disclosed his knowledge ofMexican. Sanchez's astonishment was as huge as his attitude wasundignified, and if words could have seared, Pedro would have been wellscorched. But the boy only told him of an item he had read in the paper,where a fat man got stuck in a cave and had to fast for three days beforehis girth had diminished sufficiently that he could be extricated.

  With that, Pedro bade them a fond farewell, and departed along alabyrinthian way they could not follow. That some one was on their trailhe suspected from the revolver shot, and the fire bugs would be nicelytrapped.

  Now the Ranger reasoned that the lion's den would not be far from theouter world, and in that he was right, as he proved by following it toits end. The last lap of the way he had to wriggle along on hands andknees, but he could see the glow of the setting sun in a circle of lightat the end, and in a very few minutes he had poked his head and shouldersbeneath an overhanging bowlder on a rock ledge. It was the Southern slopeof the spur, and after a little reconnoitering he discovered that it wasthe self-same spur on which fire-fighting headquarters had beenestablished. The cave, then, pierced clear through the ridge, and he hadbeen exactly all day in following its windings.

  Hiking wearily up the slope to the ridge, he could see the glow of thecook-fire perhaps a mile away, while down in the canyon on the other sidethe fire still glowed in red embers where it continued to devour theblackened tree trunks, though it was under far better control than it hadbeen the day before.

  Rosa's solicitude at his haggard face and tattered, mud stained clothingrestored him wonderfully. (After all, there were compensations in thescheme of things.)

  "We were just about to start a search party in there," said Norris. "Iwould have before, if it hadn't been for the fire. But where are theboys?" He paled in alarm.

  "I don't know," Radcliffe dragged from white lips.

  "Oh!" gasped Rosa, her eyes filling with tears which she promptly hid byturning her back.

  Without a word Long Lester gathered up the paraphernalia the Ranger nowsaw he had stacked and ready on the ground, and fitted it into aback-pack. There was food, rope, and candles, another tube of carbide forRadcliffe's lamp, a box of matches in a tight lidded tin, and even ashort length of rustic ladder made for the occasion.

  Norris shouldered part of it as by previous agreement.

  Radcliffe explained the diagram he tore from his note-book, marking ablack cross at the point where he had left the boys.

  "I dunno," said the old prospector, "but what we might as well go in oneway as another. I reckon we can folly this yere map backwards as well asforrud, and we'll just hike down and go in the way you kem out."

  "That's a go," agreed Norris, striding after him.

  "Oh," yelled the Ranger after them. "Come back! I'll deputize you both.Here, Norris," and he gave the younger man his revolver and cartridgebelt, with his official pronouncement.

  "I swan!" said Long Lester. "Here I were a-thinkin' so much about themboys I clean forgot the Mexicans," and he slung his rifle atop his pack.