The Essential Writings of James Willard Schultz. James Willard Schultz
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in again, I heard the Supervisor order out the various patrols to fight the fires, and tell them that he would again get a sheriff’s posse to try to help them locate the fire-setters. All this made me feel very blue. I could not understand why some men were so mean!
When I went down to the cabin, at noon, there was Hannah, and old Mr. Ames, who had brought her up on his way to his summer cattle range down on Blue River. He had lunch with us, and got very angry when I told him about the new forest fires. “I’ll tell you what is what,” he said. ‘‘Our forefathers fought and bled for this great country, and now we are fighting for it again. And sooner or later, we here at home have just got to get together and wipe out the I.W.W., and other Hun helpers!’’
Hannah and I helped him get his pack-horses onto the trail, and he turned back down the mountain, still talking about the firebugs. We then went up to the lookout, taking with us a candle and a rope, and on the way I cut a number of two-foot lengths of stout spruce boughs, and a pole of about six feet. During the afternoon I made a rope ladder of these, first cutting the long rope in its center, and tying the lengths to the pole, about a foot apart. Then came, at last, five o’clock — by sun time four o’clock, and taking a last look over the forest for fires, and glad that we had none to report, we hurried down along the summit to the cave.
I had planned just how we were to get down into the cave hole, and back up. I let the ladder down until it touched the projecting ledge, and had about six feet of it to spare, the end tied to the pole. This I laid upon the slope straight back from the edge, and weighted with slab after slab of rock from the half-circle pile, most of the weight resting upon the end pole. Not even our combined weight, I well knew, could pull the ladder end from under the pile. Hannah went down first, and I was soon beside her upon the rock ledge. Right at our feet, and for the whole length of the ledge, gaped the cleft, running straight down into dense blackness, down, perhaps, into the very heart of the great mountain, and in places covered over with rock slabs that had either fallen from above or—as appeared more likely — been laid upon it by the old-time people with the intent to conceal it. At our right, at the end of the ledge, the hole running on into the mountain was much larger than it had appeared to be from above; large enough to admit us, one at a time, upon hands and knees. Before going to it, we dropped several pieces of good-sized rock into the cleft; each one of them clattered down into the darkness for a considerable time, proving that the cleft was of great depth. Had any one ever gone down there, and lived to get safely back up into the light? We wondered.
I led along the ledge to the cave hole, Hannah closely following, and got down upon hands and knees, lit the candle, and looked in. The passage sloped downward at an angle of about twenty degrees. The floor was strewn with earth and rock bits; the walls were smooth-edged layers of rock of varying thickness up to about eight inches; the roof was uneven.
'‘Can’t you go in?” Hannah asked, behind me.
"Yes, we can crawl into the hole, as far as I can see,” I answered.
"Well, lead on, then! I just can’t wait to see what is down there!” she exclaimed.
We crept down in for about ten feet, and found our way blocked by a large, three-cornered slab of roof rock that, in falling, had wedged between the walls. I took hold of it, shook it, gave the candle to Hannah, and with both hands and all my strength failed to free it. 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