DART left their encampment in the lava pit as soon as there was light enough for him to pick his way amongst the pitted jumble of rocks. He told Amanda not to worry if he were delayed in returning. It was imperative that he find some clue to their proper direction before starting out with a partially crippled burro. Not to speak of Hugh, who was still snoring, huddled in his blankets.
“If he comes to, try to get some water down him,” added Dart grimly, “but for God’s sake don’t waste any.”
She nodded, too dispirited at his leaving her alone, for speech. She watched his tall form merge into the dead volcanic grayness. She sipped a little water from her canteen, ate a dry, crumbling piece of pilot biscuit, lit a cigarette and settled down to wait.
Dart climbed steadily, skirting glazed crevasses and fireblackened ridges where the lava had buckled and cooled eons ago. He headed for the granite barrier to the east. Here from this close view the peaks could no longer be seen as separated, they reared up, one unbroken and apparently impenetrable stone expanse, into the sky. And yet somewhere along this expanse he hoped to find the crevice or portal which led into the lost valley.
After an hour of scrambling he reached the edge of the lava flow and was relieved to see a fringe of grama grass struggling up from a seam between the black glass-like obsidian and the sharp granite wall. Here at least would be browse for the burro, but Dart could see no sign of water.
A tumbled mass of pinkish diorite jutted out from the rest of the granite, and Dart clambered to the top of it. On this vantage point he shaded his eyes with his hand and took a quiet, concentrated survey. Far off to the northeast there jutted up an abrupt purple shelf rising a thousand feet above the tops of the pines in the plain below. That was the Mogollon Rim. To the west, perhaps only twenty miles by air, though three times that on foot, he caught thin blue glimpses of the Verde’s convolutions as it meandered southward to merge eventually with the chain of man-made lakes on the Salt River.
He turned and scanned the granite wall behind as far as his eye could reach. Then he laid his compass and the official contour map and the Mimbreño’s copper disk on the sliced surface of the diorite rock beside him and squinted at each in turn, checking his calculations. There was no doubt as to their general location, and if indeed the valley existed at all, it must be in there behind the granite. But where? In which direction? The rough cliffs stretched for many miles. He gazed again at the Mimbreño’s map, at the arrow which pointed towards the tilted peaks which were no longer visible, at the jumbled crosshatchings which he had assumed to represent the malpais. There were other faint symbols scratched apparently at random on the copper; wavy lines and dots and a tiny round object with outstretched legs like a beetle, and for these he had no interpretation at all.
Doubt came to him then, and a wash of black discouragement. What rational basis had he after all for belief in this fantastic project? Nothing but Indian legends, Spanish legends, and an emotional desire for escape as immature in essence as the motives he had once derided in Hugh and Amanda.
He looked back across the malpais in the direction of the lava pit where he had left them waiting, and he shook his head. He scrambled down from the diorite and retraced his steps around the crevasses and ridges, shouting out as he drew nearer until Amanda’s clear answering hail guided him to the hollow. It was now full morning, and the lava waste had grown blazing hot.
“I’m so glad you’re back,” Amanda cried, running to meet him. “I was getting worried.—Dart, did you find anything?”
He shook his head. “I’m beginning to wonder if there’s anything to find.” He looked at Hugh who sat hunched over, his head in his hands, and had not moved as Dart approached. He looked at the lame burro which was leaning against a rock, its ears drooping. “I think we’d better try to turn back,” Dart said, smiling a little.
Amanda swallowed, staring at him with round unbelieving eyes. “Dart! You can’t mean that! Not when we’re so near. We couldn’t turn back now.”
She stood there on the edge of the hollow; slender and valiant in her frayed levis and her dirty cotton shirt, with her little head held high, her ruffled curls glinting in the pitiless sunlight. The unconscious gallantry of her carriage and the limpid honesty of her sea-blue eyes reminded him of that moment on the boat when he had first really seen her.
“It would be wiser to turn back, Andy,” he said slowly. “I don’t want to risk—risk serious trouble for you—and Hugh. Not for a mirage.”
“It isn’t a mirage,” she cried. “I know it, I feel it. We’re very near. It isn’t like you to give up.”
Dart bent his head, looking deep into her eyes. “You still believe I can get you there, to this place you want so much?”
“Oh, yes!” she cried, surprised that he should ask this or feel doubt of her trust in him regardless of what other doubts she might have.
“For Christ’s sake you two—why don’t you get moving?” snarled Hugh, raising his head from his hands. “You haven’t even loaded the donkey yet!” He opened his medical kit with shaking fingers, and pouring three white pills from a vial, he swallowed them with water from the canteen.
“Okay,” said Dart suddenly. “We’ll go on. Only, the burro can’t carry his usual load, and no matter how you feel you’ll have to do some toting yourself. And you’re not going to like what’s ahead, either of you.”
The moment of reluctance and indecision had passed. He was in fact ashamed of it, especially as he did not quite understand it. The reluctance had been partly born of disbelief in their mission, of course, partly of genuine concern for the safety of his charges, but there was another ingredient which he did not wish to examine.
After they finally got going across the malpais again there were hours of sweating and straining, each one of them carrying some of the provisions to lighten the pack on the disabled burro, and even so they had had to leave a pile of heavy cans behind in the lava pit. Hugh stumbled and fell often, and the sweat poured from his body, until the effects of the alcohol passed off, but he endured grimly, and when they reached the granite barrier and the strip of grama grass he flung himself headlong, and closed his eyes.
The little burro brayed with excitement when he saw the grama, and began to crop it voraciously, but it was fairly dry browse, and soon even a burro would need water. The canteens were still full but the emergency can contained scarcely a gallon. Dart searched the sky anxiously—there were thunderheads far to the north near the Mogollon Rim, but above their heads only a cloudless greenish sky fading into dusk. Except for the burro’s forage they were no better off than they had been the night before. There was still nothing with which to make a fire. He opened a can of tomatoes for himself and Amanda, and they sucked the semi-liquid fruit down thirstily. Hugh would not stir.
Amanda, needing privacy, wandered off a little way from the two men. Suddenly Dart heard her voice calling out in wild excitement. “Dart! Come here! Dart!”
He grabbed his gun and ran around the rocks towards her.
“Look!” she cried. “What’s that?”
He cocked his gun, peering, expecting a rattler.
“No, higher—on the rock itself—something’s drawn there!”
He followed her pointing finger, gave a smothered exclamation, and pulled out his flashlight. The yellow beam illumined a round object with feelers like a beetle, and an arrow to the left of it.
“Yes, it seems to be an Indian pictograph,” he said after a moment. He took out the Mimbreño’s copper disk and compared the two symbols, while Amanda craned over his arm breathing hard. “They’re the same!” she cried. “We are on the right track. I knew we were!”
He played the flashlight beam again on the rock. The figures had been incised, probably with an obsidian chip, deep into the surface of the granite, and there were faint traces of black pigment at the bottom of the grooves. It was clear enough now that the beetle-like object was really a sun with rays, the ancient symbol for a goodly place, a land with water and game. And the arrow next to it pointed north. “Yes, we’re on the right track,” Dart said. And in that moment it seemed to him that a chill wind blew across his neck, and the hieroglyph above his head stared down at him malevolently, neither beetle nor sun but an unwinking, baleful eye. He recognized then the other factor in his earlier desire to turn back.
Am I after all a coward? he thought. Could it be that for all his education and practical Yankee intelligence, and despite his repudiation of the other racial strain, that superstition and taboo could still overpower him with the dark magic of fear!
He stood there by the pictograph, denying this fear, and disgusted to find that it did not lessen, that, instead, it seeped and spread like oily black water and mingled with another type of fear. He wheeled around suddenly, turning the flashlight on the slope below them, playing it from side to side along the granite wall.
“What is it?” said Amanda. “Why do you do that?”
He snapped off the flashlight. “Oh, it’s nothing. Come on, let’s get back to Hugh and tell him the news.” That sensation of being watched by eyes in the night was a common one in the wilderness. I’m turning jittery as an old woman, he thought, more than ever annoyed with himself, and into the rousing of Hugh and the narration of their discovery he put by way of compensation an uncharacteristic amount of enthusiasm.
And this Hugh, whose head was clearer now, did not fail to note.
“So all you needed after all, my dear Dart, was a tiny bit of confirmation to get as gold-bit as the rest of us,” he said disagreeably. “I’ve never seen you so gushing.”
“But, Hugh!” cried Amanda half laughing, “it’s so thrilling. It’s the first real certainty we’ve had.”
“I’m quite aware of that.” There was such venom in his tone that Amanda was silenced. She thought with some dismay that Hugh’s extreme ill temper had not faded with his drunkenness as it usually did, and she wondered if he remembered anything of what he had said last night—the ramblings about Viola.
Hugh did know, the tiny watcher that never quite slept in him had known, and he hated the Dartlands for having listened.
During the night while they slept Hugh got up and made his way down behind the rocks to see the pictograph for himself, but he could not find it in the darkness, not knowing just where to look, and as he clambered amongst the rocks his foot slipped and his ankle suffered a nasty wrench. Tears came to his eyes from the sudden pain, and from rage at his impotence. He limped back to camp, sat down on his bedroll and examined his ankle. Nothing broken, anyway. He bound it up savagely with the ace bandage he had brought for emergencies. Just like that goddam burro, he thought, both of us crippled. He stared through the darkness at the sleeping Dartlands.
His body ached for a drink, as the pain in his ankle screamed for anodyne. He glared towards Dart again. God damn him to hell. He rummaged in the medical kit, and brought out a hypodermic syringe and a little bottle of clear liquid. He sterilized the needle in a match flame, and punctured his arm. Not too much, just enough to dull the edge of pain and increase clarity of thought. He had no intention of again dimming his faculties.
All the next day they hunted along the base of the granite cliffs in the direction of the arrow, and Hugh limped along with them, refusing any help from either Dart or Amanda. By four o’clock it seemed that they must give up and struggle back to the strip of grama grass where they had left the burro and their dwindling supplies.
The sun had beat down all day from a flaming copper sky onto their sweating backs, and both Hugh and Amanda, heedless of Dart’s objections, had before noon finished the last drops of water in their canteens. During the afternoon hours Amanda learned the first terrifying forerunners of the tortures of thirst. Her tongue grew thick, and her lips, already dried from days of exposure, cracked in two places. She moistened her mouth with water from Dart’s canteen, ashamed that she should have to accept it from him, and sucked as he directed on a dried raisin which he gave her. And none of them mentioned the scanty quart of water which was all that was left in the can back with the burro.
So this is what it’s like, Amanda thought, this is what I’ve read about a hundred times. And yet she felt little fear. That was because of Dart. As long as he was with her she felt safe. That’s a funny thing, she thought, becoming a little lightheaded, I must tell him he’s safe and cool as water, a still, safe lake the wind can’t ruffle, deep and never changing, I must tell him. But she could not tell him, she could not see him anywhere, nor call him, for her thickened tongue clogged in her mouth. She sat down on a stone and leaned her head against the granite.
“Andy!”
She opened her eyes to Dart’s urgent voice. He held her head back and poured the rest of the water from his canteen into her mouth. “I’ve found it!—Come!”
She jumped to her feet, instantly revived, and Hugh came shuffling after them sullenly. They went only a little way farther, to an enormous diorite boulder that seemed to be part of the great cliff barrier and was not, for it was possible to squeeze behind it and up a slide rock slope to a crevice in the granite. A crevice wide enough for a man to pass through with outstretched arms.
It seemed to be a tunnel leading into blackness, but as they came up flush with the entrance they saw a glimpse of slanting light twenty feet ahead.
“The ‘portal’—” whispered Amanda, and she clutched Dart’s arm. He stopped as she did, staring into the narrow rocky passage to the oblong of light at the far end.
Hugh came up to them, panting; it had taken him longer to climb up the slope behind the diorite boulder. He muttered something as he saw the two hesitate before the passage. He shoved roughly by them and limped through the darkness ahead. And they followed.
This crack in the igneous rock had been made a million years ago when the volcano still poured its lava down the mountain side, but the crack had been widened in places by the hand of man. There were the marks of flint axes alone: the walls.
The passage twisted and then widened. The three stepped out upon a ledge into the daylight.
“Ah—” whispered Amanda. Her knees weakened and her hands grew as cold as the rock she sank down on.
The forbidden valley lay below them, green and dark like jasper in the shadow of the overhanging cliffs. It was a tiny grassy park fringed with pines, stunted junipers, and golden aspens. At the far northern end a silver-white veil dropped down the canyon side, splashing crystal sparks into the shimmering air. Across the little canyon on the eastern wall, so near it seemed that she might reach across and touch it, a cavern yawned like a great mouth, enclosing a little city of stone. The slanting sun rays touched the square-piled buildings with rose and violet shadows. The buildings floated in a mist of enchantment infinitely still and awesome, breathing the solemnity of a past which still endures, frozen into sleep, yet ever awaiting the enchanter’s wand.
During the time that they all stood silent on the ledge, the impact of the lost canyon engulfed them each in emotion. For Amanda it was the magic of the fairy tale, of nostalgic beauty yearned for and found, at the end of the rainbow—and she knew a moment of pure esthetic joy.
Dart felt no joy, except fleeting relief that here was water at last. He gazed across the canyon at the frozen city of the Ancient Ones, and he thought, Then it is here, and if it is really here, it is also forbidden, as Tanosay told me. And he was wearied of the conflict in his heart, he who had never before known conflict.
Hugh examined the valley and the pueblo in one quick, gleaming glance, and he jerked his head and smiled for the first time since they had left Lodestone. “Well, there’s the cliff dwellings sure enough. How the hell do we get off this ledge and down to water? I never thought I’d think of water before gold!” And he laughed, a loud jubilant note.
Both Dartlands started and turned towards him. Dart gave himself an interior shake. His brooding eyes lightened.
“Yes, of course,” he said briskly. “Here, I think this must be the old trail.”
He picked a path down amongst the great boulders, fallen from the cliffs, until they reached the sparse fringe of ponderosa pines, and a few junipers and aspens. Beyond the trees lay a clearing in which grew grasses and mountain flowers; the scarlet phlox still blooming in patches like flame, and in the moistest spots near the creek bed the pale orchid of iris waved.
The fertile canyon, not half a mile long, was watered throughout most of its length, until the creek, fed by a spring above the waterfall, disappeared underground to trickle into some subterranean flow beneath the mountain.
Amanda and Dart and Hugh made for the nearest point on the creek. They threw themselves down on the bank and snuffled up the water like animals until they were satisfied, then Dart lit a cigarette and said with decision, “I’m going back to get that wretched burro, we need the bedding and grub, too. I should be able to do it in a couple of hours now I know the way. You two make a fire and wait here.”
“Good God,” cried Hugh, “you’re nuts if you think I’m going to sit on my can, with the gold so near. I’m going up there—- ” he jerked his chin down the canyon towards the cliff dwelling.
“With that ankle?” asked Dart quietly. Hugh had unbound his leg and was bathing it in the stream. The foot and ankle were bright purple and swollen to twice normal size. “You give it a rest until tomorrow, Hugh, the gold won’t run away. It’s been there quite a while. Besides, there’s apt to be plenty rattlers in a place like that. You don’t want to explore in the dark.”
Hugh knew that Dart was right. He muttered angrily, but he subsided, nursing his ankle and staring up towards the cliff dwelling four hundred feet above and straight up a precipitous slope of slide rock.
“I’ll find some firewood,” said Amanda, at once uneasy when Dart had left them. “It’ll be nice to have a fire again.” She walked quickly up and down the banks of the creek, picking up pieces of dried juniper and twigs. As the shadows fell heavier on the valley and the warm colors lent by the sun disappeared, she lost the sensation of magical beauty. The cliff dwelling became a jumble of grotesque square teeth on the lower jaw of the cavernous black maw. She avoided looking at it. She gathered wood enough and started a fire beside Hugh, but she could not settle down to enjoy the warmth. She chewed dried raisins and jerky and ate two of the Hershey bars from her knapsack, drank more water, and still the gnawing discomfort did not cease.
She wandered further up the canyon in nervous search for more firewood and saw ahead near a clump of buckbrush what seemed to be a cluster of white sticks and a round white stone, glimmering in the half light. She came nearer, staring curiously, and bent over to pull up one of the smooth sticks. It was attached to its fellows, and as she pulled, all the other curving sticks moved with it, and the round stone rolled off a little distance on the grass.
Then Amanda saw what she held in her hand, and she jumped back giving a sharp cry. It was the bleached rib cage of a skeleton at which she had been tugging, and the round stone was the skull.
She rubbed her hand violently back and forth against her levis, still feeling the chalky rough surface she had touched. Panic waves washed over her, and receded.
Stupid to be so frightened. The bleached skeleton must have been there a long, long time. She crept back presently to stare down at the bones in fascinated horror. She saw a small, dark object wedged between two of the ribs near the crumbling spine. She hesitated, then snapped on her little flashlight and bent nearer. The dark object was a flint arrowhead, and near it on the ground beneath the rib cage she saw a dull gleam and a flash of shiny black.
She reached down, careful not to touch the bones, and drew up the second object. It was a heavy onyx crucifix, with the figure of the Christ carved in elaborate, tarnished silver.
She put the crucifix in her pocket and walked slowly back to camp. Her legs were trembling. She sat down by the fire, gazing into the bright flames. “I didn’t really believe it before—” she whispered to herself.
“What are you mumbling about?” Hugh snapped, closing the medical kit. He had just given himself another hypodermic.
She raised her hand in an almost helpless gesture, then let it drop on her knee. “I’ve just found the skeleton of Padre Rodriguez,” she said, “the one who was slain by an arrow from the skies. It did happen like that. It all happened....”
“Well bully for us! What the hell do you think we’re doing here anyway unless we believed the story, you little dope? I’ve always believed it and so most certainly did you.” He snapped a match and lit himself another cigarette.
“I don’t know—” she said, still gazing into the fire. “I believed in a dream, I was in love with the bright beckoning flower—it’s a strange thing when a dream comes true, I don’t think they’re meant to—at least not here—not like this.”
She shivered, and glanced quickly towards the black cave high on the cliff side, and she thought of the words in Professor Dartlands quotation from the Spanish, “...seems to have inspired both men with a great and strange fear...‘like an enchantment.’”
“I never heard such a bunch of crap,” said Hugh almost amiably. The hypo was beginning to work, and a clear, thrilling euphoria ran along his veins. “If all your metaphysical hashings mean you’re no longer interested in your share of the gold mine, I assure you I couldn’t be more charmed.”
She did not answer. She scarcely heard him.
The canyon walls pushed close around her. The valley grew murmurous with unquiet shadows, and she was afraid. Even when Dart came back, leading the stumbling burro and carrying the pack himself, she could not rouse herself from the numbing weight. She followed the familiar routine of making a proper camp at last, helping Dart boil water for the coffee, frying bacon, laying out the bedrolls on pine boughs beneath the pine shelter which he cut, and none of the homely chores seemed real. It was as though she performed them under water, struggling through dense resistance.
She showed Dart the crucifix and told him of her discovery, and wondered that he could take it so lightly, brushing it off, barely answering her or glancing at the crucifix. He needed no confirmatory evidence, not after the moment he had stood on the ledge and seen the lost pueblo of his ancestors. He was withdrawn from her, now as brusque as Hugh, the tentative closeness which had lately returned to them had gone again.
She tried to sleep that night, but she could not. The soughing of the great pines and the rippling of the little creek brought no comfort, for underneath their gentle music she heard a deeper note of warning, and of doom.
Turning and tossing in her blankets, she tried to reason with herself, tried to recapture the first mystic joy she had felt as she stood upon the ledge, telling herself that of course physical exhaustion gave one morbid fancies, that the valley was beautiful, and the little stone city. But she dared not open her eyes for fear of seeing the little city in the cavern. Earlier, before they went to bed, she had looked at it and seen it gleaming like a pearl against the black mountainside. There was no moon, and yet the cave glowed with an unearthly luminescence. She had finally pointed this out to the two men, and felt Dart stiffen beside her. Then he had laughed and said gruffly, “Phosphorescence from the old rotting beams. Nothing but foxfire!”
And Hugh had laughed, too. “Andy’s positively oozing psychic whimsies tonight. Here, take this.” And he’d given her a sedative. But still she couldn’t sleep.
Nor did Dart sleep, though he lay quiet. His gun lay cocked and near to his right hand. His senses all alert, he lay thinking. Downstream where he had led the exhausted burro, there was a narrow strip of sand. He had noted the flashing of a tiny puddle of wetness in that sand. The mark of some kind of footprint. It could have been made by mountain lion or bear, yet how could there be big game in this tiny rock-girdled valley? It could have been made by the ball of a man’s foot.
Hugh did sleep, at least his body did, but his mind projected him into dreams as sharp and vivid as surrealist paintings. He saw Viola’s face bent down to his in adoring welcome. He saw the separate hairs in her auburn curls as they sprang up from her white forehead. He saw the shining texture of her blood-red mouth, the down on her cheeks, the black mole beneath her left eye. He felt her warm breath on his face, and smelt her carnation perfume. She wore a crown of golden bay leaves, and as he kneeled before her she reached up to take the crown from her own head and place it on his.
“I knew you’d come, Hughie—” she said, bending closer, “because you’re famous now—” And as she said this to him, her face changed, it grew sharp and sly as a fox, her lips drew back in a sneering grin. Her skin darkened and her eyes became muddy and full of hate—Maria’s eyes, and Maria’s voice burst into a mocking cackle of laughter....
He held a dagger in his hand and he plunged the dagger into the sneering, cackling mouth, but it met no resistance. The dagger fell impotently into space and faded away.—And yet someone was dead. He stood at the edge of a great chamber and watched a figure laid out on a bier, draped with black velvet. He could not see who the corpse was. But he heard the far-off sound of sobbing, and he knew that he, too, should mourn for the unknown dead upon the bier.
Daylight brought calm to the three who had spent the night in the lost valley, a tacit return to normal. The sun was shining, there was breakfast, and even water to bathe in. Dart and Amanda separately went up the canyon and refreshed themselves under the icy waterfall. On the way back from his trip to the fall Dart, hearing a fluttering amongst the bushes, had the luck to shoot a wild turkey, and bore it triumphantly back to camp. Fresh meat at last.
“We’ll cook him for dinner when we get back from up there,” said Dart, nodding towards the cliff dwelling.
Amanda laughed. “When we get back from up there we’ll all be rich, I guess.” Her fears and tremors of the night before seemed very silly in the sunlight.
“How much gold ore do you figure we can carry back on this trip?” asked Hugh. “Thank God that damn burro’s leg seems better.” They all looked at Tonto, who was frisking clumsily on the grass. Hugh went on, “Of course, there’ll be free gold, too, the account said so. We can get a hell of a lot of that in our knapsacks, and pack the rest on the burro.”
Dart glanced at him. Hugh’s voice was faster than usual, louder and more clipped, the pupils of his eyes were contracted to black specks in a blinding green; but his ankle was certainly better, and excitement was natural under the circumstances. Dart turned his mind to practical considerations. He had not bothered to pan the gravel in the creek bed, for there seemed to be no sign of the black sand which meant gold; nor had he seen any evidence of float anywhere in the canyon. Still that did not prove much, and he could see that the cave which contained the cliff city was made of quartzite, which sometimes accompanied gold. He had no more doubt than the others that they were about to make a very lucky strike, and for the first time Dart allowed himself to wonder what he would do with his share. The logical thing would be to put it right back here to develop this mine into a going concern. The expenses of development in so remote a place would be enormous. Still, man had surmounted worse difficulties than this—why, even at Lodestone——His mouth tightened.
He hooked to his belt the carbide miner’s lamp he had brought in the burro’s pack, slung his pick over his shoulder and turned to the others. “All set?” He hesitated, then made the final practical decision. “We won’t bother with the guns, Hugh. Nothing to shoot except maybe snakes, and you’ve got your Colt.”
Hugh nodded. Dart glanced at him keenly again. Hugh’s face glistened with fine sweat, and he was lighting one cigarette from off the last. A circle of still smoking butts lay on the grass around him.
Dart walked over and stamped the butts out with his heel. “You’ll cut your wind and we’ll soon run out of cigarettes, too, if you smoke like that,” he observed mildly.
“You mind your own goddam business!” The green eyes were hard and blank as jade, the tremor of the freckled hands grew more pronounced.
I hope to God he doesn’t crack up, thought Dart, this thing means too much to him, poor guy.... And did it mean so much to Andy, too? He usually avoided looking at the girl, but he did now.
She stood on the bank of the creek, breasting the gentle wind like a young Nike, waiting for him to give the signal to start. Her eyes were fastened on the cliff dwelling and he could not see their expression, but her cheeks were pink and her lips parted. She seemed very young and very eager. She’ll have her chance, Dart thought. Chance to get away from me and all the things she hates.
It took them over an hour to zigzag through the talus of coarse, broken rock and up the tiny trail that clung to the edge of the cliff. A trail hewn eight hundred years ago from the living rock and worn by generations of patient feet plodding down to tire valley floor for water, and to cultivate the corn and pumpkin patches which had once fringed the creek.
Several times Dart and Amanda had to pause and wait for Hugh to get his breath. Dart offered to pull him up the steepest places, but Hugh stubbornly refused, as he shrugged off Amanda’s concern about the ankle. He wanted no patronizing sympathy which might be held against him later. They might say he had np right to the gold, might say they’d dragged him along on sufferance, might try to cut his share. Though there was the document they’d drawn up with their signatures. Make that stick in a law court. But you need all your wits about you. Got to watch out.
The cliff city grew larger as they approached it. There were some fifty dwellings and squat towers all flung inside the giant cave like a tumbled pile of children’s blocks. They were built of flat stones and mortared with adobe, and in full sunlight the soft, tawny hues alternated with black shadows.
It was the hush that Amanda felt as they pulled up the last stone steps and stood on the brink of the cavern before many low doorways. Not the quiet of the wilderness or the mountains, but an expectant hush, as though voices had but that minute stopped.
She moved off quietly from the two men, and walking to one of the doorways she stooped and gazed into a low room, raftered with round cedar beams. A ray of sunlight slanted down through one tiny window and illumined the age-old dust on the earthen floor. The center fire pit still held the remnants of charred embers, and a rough brown corrugated cooking pot stood upright beside the dead fire. Next to the cooking pot a smaller, finer pot lay fallen on its side. The pot was a brilliant buff polychrome in tiny red and black geometric figures under high glaze, and from its gently flaring mouth a stream of spilled corn still trailed out on the ground.
Amanda stepped over the high sill and stood just within the quiet room. She saw a stone metate with the mano resting in it, like those she herself had used in the rancheria on the morning of Saba’s death. In the corner beneath the window there had been a bed, with a woven turkey-feather blanket, rumpled a little—as though someone had lately lain there. Beside the bed on the ground there was a string of rough turquoises half buried in the dust, and near to them two little yucca straw sandals, shredded and crumbling, but waiting there as they had throughout the centuries for their owner to come back.
Pueblo Encantado, she thought. And her eyes filled with sudden tears.
She heard Dart’s voice calling to her, and she stepped back over the sill into the bright light of the open cave.
He saw the tears in her eyes, and his brows raised in surprise. She gestured towards the room, “They must have gone so quickly—everything just as they left it—waiting for them—the woman’s pots—her jewelry—the child’s sandals....”
His astonishment grew and he stuck his head through the door. He straightened up slowly. “Yes, the Anasazi fled in fear, the legend says.” He spoke in a repressive, curt tone, but then he added as though against his will, “You didn’t touch anything...?”
“Oh, no,” she said smiling a little, “they wouldn’t like it.”
He bent down to her, looking into her face, questioning, “Andy...?”
The hush deepened around them. It was shattered by Hugh’s shout from the top of a watch tower just above where they stood. “What the hell are you two doing? I’ve been crawling through this labyrinth, but I haven’t found anything promising. Where in the name of God would they put their inner cave?”
Amanda and Dart moved apart. The softness left his eyes, and he answered Hugh dryly. “Well, they certainly wouldn’t put it up there by the roof. Come down and we’ll hunt.”
They joined forces again. Led by Dart they stooped and crawled through the high-silled doorways, up and down levels amongst the many still rooms, penetrating ever back and south into the cavern. Some of the chambers had served as middens, or granaries—desiccated corncobs and the tiny bones of small game lay shin-deep on the floor. In others where the Anasazi had lived, there were the same evidences of panic flight as in the first room Amanda had entered. Stone knives and hatchets lay strewn pell-mell amongst shreds of yucca-fiber clothing, feather blankets, and many exquisitely painted pots and bowls and dishes.
“I suppose all this trash’d make a field day for an archeologist,” said Hugh viciously, “but we’re not getting anywhere.”
“Yes we are,” said Dart. “I’ve been looking for the great kiva, and I’m sure this is it.” He stopped at the edge of a circular pit at the southeastern corner of the cavern. This he recognized as probably the main ceremonial chamber of the Ancient Ones, a place of secret rites, for in the center of the pit floor six feet below there was a sipapu, the hole made for quick passage of the spirits between the underworld and Earth, and at the back of the kiva, interrupting the stone bench which encircled it, there was an opening into a cave behind, as Dart had expected.
He jumped down into the kiva, and Hugh and Amanda followed. He turned on his carbide lamp and said, “Flashlights!” to the others. They snapped them on. But they had not far to go. The cave behind the kiva opened into a great rock chamber so vast that margins were lost in shadowy ledges and boulders. The circles of their lights showed them many dim forms lying at measured intervals, some on the ground, some raised a little on piles of rubble. They saw the gleam of polished brown skulls shining through the feather and yucca shrouds which once had covered them. They all lay, the quiet dead, drawn up in the fetal position as they had once been born, and around each grave clustered jewelry and weapons and their most beautiful utensils for comfort on the journey.
Dart stopped, the beam of his lamp wavered.
But Hugh pushed forward. “They’re nothing but a bunch of mummies—corpses are no treat to me—my God, look!” His shrill voice echoed through the cavern.
Hugh ran forward, stumbling over one of the mummies. He kicked it savagely out of his way, and it disintegrated into bones and dust. Dart set his teeth and followed, staring as Amanda did at the face of the rock beyond the graves. From the floor to the low roof in a strip four feet wide the rock sparkled and glinted in the lights.
Dart picked his way carefully between the mummies, and Amanda followed shrinking, hypnotized. “Oh, don’t,” she murmured, “don’t—” but she did not know that she spoke. They passed beyond the places of burial and came up to Hugh. He was digging into the wall with his knife, picking with his fingernails, his breath came in sobbing gasps.
Dart stood rooted behind him, staring at the glittering rock. He put his hand on Hugh’s shoulder. “That’s pyrites, Hugh,” he said very quietly. “That isn’t gold. You know that. You know enough about mining for that.”
Hugh swung around, he stared down at the flakes of brassy mineral in his hands. “But there’s got to be gold—” he said in a hoarse, shaking voice, “they said there was gold....” “There is,” said Dart more quietly yet. “Here.” He moved his light again from the wall of glittering pyrites to a recess to the left. Here the light showed a rounded mass of white quartz streaked with the unmistakable dull richness of free gold stains and specks.
“Thank God—that’s it!” cried Hugh, his voice breaking. “We’ve got it, then—”
Dart put the carbide lamp on a rock and by its light examined the quartz, while Hugh’s breath rasped through the cavern.
“It’s only a small pocket, Hugh,” said Dart at last. He swung his pick along the margins. “It’s high grade all right, but there’s mighty little of it, a few hundred dollars maybe, that’s all.”
Hugh reached his hand forward, clutching the rough speckled quartz, and twisted his head over his shoulder. “You’re crazy,” he whispered. “There’s a mine here. This is a vein. It’s bonanza....”
“No.” Dart shook his head. “I’m sorry, old boy, but you’ll have to face it. I can tell by the country rock, by the formation, there’s nothing here but what you see—a small pocket.”
“You lie, you bastard, you lie....” Hugh backed against the lump of quartz, throwing his arms out as though he protected it. “You lie”—he hissed again—“you want it all for yourself. I knew it. I knew this would happen—” The green eyes glaring up at Dart were like eyes under sea water, submerging, drowning.
“Hugh”—pleaded Dart on a long breath—“you know I’m not lying, it’s...” He stopped, standing there tall and helpless in the bright light of Hugh’s torch while Hugh with one clumsy, fumbling motion drew out his revolver and fired.
Amanda screamed, and in the echo of her scream a second shot detonated from the shadows in the back of the cave. Hugh gave a bubbling gasp and fell prone beside the glittering wall of pyrites.
In the confusion of blinding smoke and terror, Amanda ran to Dart, who had fallen to his knees, his head hanging forward on his chest. He was struggling to get up, and a stream of blood spurted from a hole in his leather jacket and ran down onto the ground.
“Darling—my darling,” she sobbed, kneeling beside him and holding him frantically against her breast as though to staunch that spurting blood with her own body. “Dart—my God—what happened——?”
“Hugh shot me—” murmured Dart in a vague dreaming voice. “But I didn’t shoot him.... How could I—unarmed—?” He struggled once more to get up, the blood spurted again, and he slumped against her into her arms. “Be careful, Andy—” he whispered, and his eyes shut.
She did not understand him. She laid him down on the ground and wadded her sweater under his head, she pushed back his jacket and looked at the hole in the cotton shirt, high up, thank God, near his armpit. Tourniquet, she thought—no, too high. She took her bandanna and stuffed it over the hole, pressing down hard.
There was a soft thud of leaping footballs behind her in the darkness of the cave, she heard them but she was beyond all fear, concentrated on the pressure she was applying, and praying underneath steadily, “Dear God, don’t let Dart die, don’t ... don’t...”
She saw a shadow approach from the darkness, the figure of a man who came and stood over them. She looked up and saw who it was, uncomprehending but without surprise. In this cave of nightmare and death there was no place for surprise. “John Whitman”—she cried on a low pleading note—“oh, thank God, you’re here—Dart’s hurt—help me.”
The Apache stiffened, behind his unwavering black eyes there flickered a strange expression. He rested the stock of his gun on the ground, staring down at Dart’s white face, ignoring the woman.
Dart opened his eyes, and looked at his boyhood friend. “So it was you—” The words drifted from his mouth like dry leaves on the wind.
“Eheu—Ishkinazi—” answered the Indian in Apache, bowing his head. “You have betrayed. I’ve followed many days, and watched. The secret of this valley was known to me also and better than to you. Did you in your white arrogance not think of that?”
Beneath the pressure of her hands on the wound Amanda felt Dart’s big body strain and gather itself together, the muscles tensing. She cried out in protest, but he stumbled to his feet and stood swaying leaning on her a little. The Indian’s hand tightened on his gun barrel, but he made no move.
“I’m weak as a child,” said Dart. “I cannot fight you. You will shoot if you like. Finish what the other started, but I beg you by all the friendship we once had, by the same blood that flows in both our veins—do not hurt her.”
The Indian was silent. He turned his head and looked at the shattered mummy. He glided to the pyrite wall and he kicked Hugh’s body over with his foot. “This pig is dead,” he said. “I killed him to avenge the desecrated spirit of our ancestors. Let him lie by the shining wall he slobbered over with such greed.”
He picked up his gun, cradling it in his arm. He glanced at Amanda and saw horrified comprehension dawning in her face. He spat on the floor and continued in English. “As for you, Ishkinazi, and your woman——” His narrowed eyes glinted. “You bleed fast, it may be that your wound will kill you. I do not know. But I leave you to the Mountain Spirits whose hiding place you betrayed. I leave you to Usen, who is the Giver of Life and Death.”
And he was gone, sliding swift as a panther between the graves and out of the cave.
Dart’s body slumped, falling against Amanda so hard that she staggered. “No,” he said through his teeth, straightening himself painfully, “we’ve got to get out of here.” He put his good arm around her shoulders.
He felt his wound. “Is there blood in back too—?”
“Yes...” she whispered, “not so much.”
“I think the bullet went right through, missed the lung. Bleeding’s the main—press here, Andy.” He guided her fingers to the hollow of his neck. The spurts lessened and thinned to an ooze.
They staggered slowly forward together, she supporting half his weight on her shoulders and pressing on the artery. They stumbled out of the burial cave and up through the kiva and the dozen deserted rooms in the silent city they had traversed with Hugh an hour ago.
When they stood again on the terraced ledge by the brink of the great cavern, she cried, “Darling—lie down here, don’t try to go further. I’ll get food and water up here from the camp.”
His lips were gray, and cold sweat dripped down his forehead, but he said, “No. Not here. We’ve disturbed them enough.”
They made their slow agonizing way together down the trail, and back across the creek to their little camp. Then he collapsed on his blankets beneath the brush shelter. Under weighted lids his gray eyes were full of light, and he smiled faintly.
“My poor Andy—” he said, as she bent lower to hear, “I’m in your hands—I’m not going to be much use to you for a while ... no good at all. This isn’t the way it was supposed to turn out, is it—?” His lids fluttered and fell.