THE ADAM CHASER

By B. M. Bower
Author of “Black Thunder,” “The Meadowlark Name,” Etc.

Transcriber’s Note: This story appeared in the September 7, 1925 issue of The Popular Magazine.

Treasures of the storied past, records of prehistoric settlements of the American Indian, lure a young archaeologist, Professor Abington, to the Sonora caves of Arizona where fate plays him a grim trick, and makes him arbiter of the destinies of living men.

CHAPTER I
A BAD HOMBRE

Halfway up a long cañon that cut a six-mile gash through rugged mountains thinly pock-marked with prospect holes, the radiator cap of John Abington’s car blew off with a pop like amateur home-brew.

For a matter of a minute, perhaps, that particular brand of automobile developed a lively hot-water geyser. Followed a brief period of steaming, and after that it stalled definitely and set square in the trail which ran through deep sandy gravel and rock rubble—a hot car and a sulky one, if you know what I mean.

Abington harried the starter with vicious jabs of his heel, then crawled reluctantly out into the blistering wind which felt as if it were driving down the sunlight with sharp needle points of heat that stung and smarted the skin where they struck.

The canteens were buried deep under much camp paraphernalia, a circumstance which gave occasion for a few minutes of eloquent monologue. Curiously, the driver’s vituperation was directed neither at the car nor the wind nor the heat, but at an absent individual whom he called “Shorty”—and at another named Pete.

Considerable luggage was shifted before the canteens were finally excavated from the floor of the tonneau; both canteens, because the first one was so completely empty that it made no sound when Abington impatiently shook it.

He was standing beside the car, mechanically sloshing a pint or so of water in the second grimy, flat-bottomed canteen, when a dust-covered roadster came coasting down the four-per-cent grade of the cañon half a mile or so away. He glanced at the approaching car, set the canteen in the sand and helped himself to a cigarette from a silver-trimmed leather case. Abington was leaning against the rear fender in the narrow bit of shade when the roadster came down upon him, slowed with a squealing of dry brakes and stopped perforce. In the rocks and deep sand that bordered the road a caterpillar truck could scarcely have driven around the stalled car.

“In trouble?” A perspiring tanned face leaned out, squinting ahead into the sun through desert-wrinkled eyelids.

“None whatever,” Abington calmly replied, smiling to make the words cheerful. “I’m waiting here for the car to cool off a bit. I hope you’re not in a hurry?”

The driver of the roadster slanted a quick glance at his companion, who slumped sidewise in the seat with his hat pulled low over his eyes.

“Kinda. Got plenty of water?” This in a hopeful tone, which his next sentence explained. “I’m kinda short, myself, but I’ll hit Mina before long, so I ain’t worrying. How much you going to need? Half a canteen do you any good?”

The stalled driver walked forward with a loose, negligent stride which nevertheless covered the ground with amazing ease. From under straight, black brows his eyes looked forth with apparent negligence, though they saw a great deal with a flicking glance or two.

“It might take me back to where I can fill my canteens, sheriff. I don’t suppose there’s a quart of water in the radiator, and everything’s empty. My fault. I discharged a couple of men I had with me, and I should have been on my guard against some such trick as this. As it was, I failed to stand over them while they unloaded their plunder from the car. At any rate, here I am for the present.”

“Tough luck. I’ll let you have what water I’ve got, but it ain’t much. She kept heating on me, climbing the summit. How far you going?”

“Back to Mina. I want to find those two fellows I let off there.” Abington’s questing black eyes rested on the roadster’s other occupant, shifted to the driver’s hard yet not unkindly face, and he waved the cigarette significantly.

“Better give this fellow a drink, before I empty the canteen.” He nodded toward the slack figure. “And if you’ll pardon the suggestion, sheriff, I’d turn him loose for a bit. Pretty rough riding, even when you’ve got all your hands and feet to hang on by.”

The other gave a short, apologetic laugh.

“Say, this feller’s plumb mean—that’s why I got him shackled that way. Car broke down, the other side of Tonopah, and I’m taking him through alone. He’s a slippery cuss. Had us chasin’ him off and on for two years. I can’t take any chances.”

“You’re not.” If the tone was ironic the eyes were friendly enough. “But the man looks sick. A drink of water and a smoke won’t make him any more dangerous, I imagine.”

“Yeah, I know he acts sick, and he looks sick. But it might be a stall, at that,” The officer turned and eyed his prisoner doubtfully. “I don’t want to be hard on anybody—and I don’t want to be bashed over the bean and throwed out on the desert to die, neither! She’s a lonely road—I’ll tell anybody.”

For all that, he got out, unlocked the tool box on the running board, took out a smaller box of screws, bolts, nuts and cotter pins, fumbled within it with thumb and finger and finally produced a small flat key.

“Never pays to be in a hurry to git a pair of handcuffs open,” he muttered to Abington. “This way’s safe as I can make it. He’s a bad hombre.”

Abington nodded understanding and stood back while the deputy sheriff walked around the car and freed his passenger from the handcuffs which were fastened behind his back.

For an appreciable space the fellow drooped indifferently where he was, not even taking the trouble to rub his chafed wrists, though they must have pained him considerably, swollen and discolored as they were with the snug steel bands and the awkward position forced upon him.

“Have a drink of water,” Abington suggested, not too kindly. More as if he were speaking to a man who was free to go where he pleased.

The fellow looked up at him, nodded and lifted a hand shaking from cramp. Abington unscrewed the cap and steadied the canteen to the man’s mouth. He drank thirstily, pushed the canteen away with the back of his hand, lifted his hat and drew a palm across his flushed forehead where the veins stood out like heavy cords drawn just under the skin.

“Thanks!” He gave Abington another glance, a gleam in his eyes as of throttled speech.

“Have a smoke. Here, keep the case while we’re getting the car started.” Abington glanced at the officer. “You’ve no objection, I suppose?”

“Hell, no! What do you take me for? Just because I use some precautions against being brained while I’m busy driving don’t mean I’m hard boiled.” He sent a measuring glance toward either side of the straight-walled cañon. Within half a mile there was no cover for a man, and the cliffs rose sheer. “You can get out if you want to, Bill,” he said to the prisoner. “Guess you won’t go far with them leg irons.”

“Thanks.” The prisoner’s voice was perfunctory, and he seemed in no great hurry to avail himself of the privilege. While the others walked to the stalled car—the deputy watching over his shoulder—the prisoner sat where he was, smoking a cigarette from Abington’s leather-and-silver case.

The stalled car refused to start. That mechanical condition, which is called freezing, held the cylinders locked fast until such time as the expansion subsided, and in the fierce heat of that cañon the motor cooled very slowly. Abington suggested coasting backward to the first place where a turnout had been provided.

“There’s a turnout, back here a couple of hundred yards or such a matter. If you can give me a push over this little hump, I think the car will roll down the road easily enough,” he explained. “I’ll have to keep it in the road, sheriff, or I could manage alone.”

The deputy rather liked being called sheriff, and he was anxious to reach Carson City that evening with his prisoner. Until Abington’s car moved out of the way, he himself was stalled, since he could not move forward more than the hundred feet which separated the two cars. There was no other road down that cañon.

“If Bill Jonathan wasn’t feeling so tough, I’d take off the hobbles and make him get out and help,” he grumbled, looking back at the roadster. “But I guess he’s sick, all right. He ain’t left the car yet. Well, you get in and hold ’er in the ruts, Mister”

“My name is Abington. I’m an archaeologist—”

“That right? My name’s Park. I’m sure glad to meet you, Doctor Abington. Heard a lot about you and them petrified animals and things you’ve been digging up. Got the brake off? All right—”

But the best he could do, just at first, was to rock the car a few inches each way. Between shoves he looked over his shoulder. The prisoner apparently preferred the shade of the car to the heat of the sun, and Park soon ceased to worry about him. Midway between Tonopah and Mina would be a poor spot to choose for a walk away, even if the man were free to walk, he reflected.

However desperate he might be, Bill Jonathan was no fool. He knew well enough that Park would shoot at the first hint of trouble. The deputy grunted and turned his attention to the work at hand.

Abington got out and helped claw the hot loose sand away from behind the rear wheels, got in again and steered while Park braced himself and heaved against the front fender. The car moved backward nearly a foot, and the two grinned triumphantly at one another.

“Next time—I’ll get her—Doctor Abington!” the deputy puffed, glancing over his shoulder as he mopped trickles of sweat from face and neck. A thin wreath of cigarette smoke waved out from the prisoner’s side of the roadster, and Park grinned at Abington behind the wheel.

“Hope you’re well fixed for cigarettes!” He chuckled good-humoredly. “Bill’s trying to smoke enough to last till he gets outa the pen, looks like.”

“He’s welcome,” Abington returned, a smile hidden under his pointed black beard. “I’ve plenty more.”

“Just as you say. All right, let’s give her another shove. Gosh, it’s hot!”

Grunting and straining, Park moved the car three feet backward to where a nest of small stones halted it again. Encouraged by the small progress, the two knelt again behind the rear wheels and began to paw a clear path in the gravel. The “hump,” one of those small ridges which characterized desert roads, would be passed within the next six feet.

At the precise moment when Park was kneeling with his back half turned from his own car, he heard his starter whir with an instant roar of the motor just under a full feed of gas.

The roadster shot backward up the trail, guided evidently by guess and a helpful divinity, since Bill Jonathan’s head never once appeared outside the car to watch the trail behind him. Park jumped up, pulled his old-fashioned range-model Colt and fixed six shots in rapid succession, evidently realizing that he must get them all in before the car was out of range. With the sixth shot the glass was seen to fly from a headlight, then the hammer clicked futilely against an empty shell.

Park swore as he started running up the trail after the car, the driver’s head now plainly in sight as he leaned out and watched the road. A good fifteen miles an hour he was making in reverse; and unless a car came down the cañon and stopped him as Park had been halted, for the simple reason that he could not turn out, Bill Jonathan seemed in a fair way of making his escape.

“The damn fool! He can’t get far with them leg irons on!” Park grunted, coming to a stop where the roadster had stood. “That’s what I get for being so damn soft hearted! I told you he was a bad hombre, Doctor Abington!”

CHAPTER II
SYMBOLS OF MYSTERY

Abington walked forward a few steps, stooped and picked up his cigarette case from the hot sand of the trail.

“Spencer founded his whole philosophy on the premise that there is a soul of goodness even in things evil,” he observed with the little hidden smile tucked into the corners of his black-bearded lips. “Your man has made off with your car, but he very thoughtfully returned my cigarette case—not altogether empty, either. Not knowing I have a full carton in the car, he has left us a cigarette apiece; which proves the soul of goodness within the evil. Will you have a smoke, sheriff?”

“Might as well, I guess,” Park grumbled, his eyes on the departing car. “This is a hell of a note! Doctor Abington, what we’ve got to do is make it in to Mina and get word out to the different towns before Bill can make Tonopah or Goldfield.

“Thunder! Who’d ever think he’d try to pull off a stunt like that? I was going to take the irons off his legs, but I kinda had a hunch not to. Never dreamed he’d pull out with the car while his legs was shackled; did you?”

“I’m afraid my mind was quite taken up with my own problem.” Abington confessed in a slightly apologetic tone. “I’m not accustomed to chasing live men, you know. It’s the dead ones I’m interested in, and the longer they’ve been dead the better.

“Nevertheless, sheriff, I realize your predicament. If there’s a long-distance telephone in Mina you can intercept the fellow at Tonopah, I should think.” He was thoughtfully turning the cigarette case over in his fingers as if his habit was to admire its glossy brown leather and the silver filigree. Now he slipped it into his pocket and turned to retrace his steps.

“I suppose we ought to get the old boat headed down the trail, sheriff. Your prisoner went off with your canteen, you know, so we’ll have to pet my motor along as best we can. But she’ll roll down the cañon in neutral, and then we’ll drive it as far as we can—which may not be far.

“At the turnout, down the road here, I’ll get the car headed in the other direction, and it wouldn’t surprise me if we beat your man in, after all. Will he have gas enough to take him to Tonopah?”

“Lord, yes! I filled the tank plumb full, and it’s one of them old thirty-gallon tanks. But somebody’ll maybe run across him trying to fill the radiator or something, and see the leg irons and take him in. Tires ain’t none too good—maybe he’ll have tire trouble. I sure hope so,” he added unnecessarily.

Abington, leaning to push at the side of the car while he kept one hand on the steering wheel, did not answer. Park added his weight at the front fender, straining until his gloomy countenance went purple. The car rolled over the hump, and Abington hopped nimbly to the running board, watched his chance and straddled in behind the wheel.

Some time was lost in negotiating the turn. After that, coasting down the road with a dead engine cooled the cylinders considerably. By skillful management Abington was able to start the motor and use what power was needed to drive the car up over certain small knolls near the foot of the cañon.

At the edge of the long valley, a hill gave them momentum sufficient to carry them well down toward a white, leprous expanse, called Soda Lake, with a tiny settlement a few miles beyond. Here, in the chuck holes of the soda-incrusted lake bed, the car refused to go any farther without power, and power in that grilling heat required a full radiator.

Even so, the two made fair time walking, and at the settlement Abington was able to hire a man to haul water out to the car. Also, Park was successful in getting wires through to the sheriff’s office at Tonopah, and also at Goldfield, the only points he believed Bill Jonathan would attempt to reach.

“If you like, sheriff, we can follow up your man at once,” Abington suggested when Park came out of the telegraph office looking less worried. “I’m willing to postpone the pleasure of chastising Shorty and Pete, and drive you straight through to Tonopah. Water is the only thing I needed for the trip, and the man is waiting out here with a full supply, ready to drive us back to my car. At the most we will be only three hours behind the fugitive and, as you say, he can’t do much with leg irons on.

“He’ll need to have a remarkable run of luck if he reaches there ahead of us. For instance, your motor had been heating, and you had only half a canteen of water. As I remember the road, there’s a long, hard climb for several miles beyond that cañon. He’ll be compelled to fill up with water at that spring just over the summit; one stop, at least, where he will have enough awkward walking to hold him there twice as long as a man with his legs free. So—”

“Say, Doctor Abington, you sure can figure things out!” Park grinned while he bit the end off a forlorn-looking cigar he had just bought at the little store. “You ought to be a detective.”

“I am. I’ve been trying to detect the origin of the human race, for years now,” Abington smiled. “It’s the same kind of figuring brought down to modern conditions. If you’re ready, sheriff, we’ll get underway.”

So back they went, roaring up the long rough trail to the cañon and on to Tonopah. They did not meet a soul on the way, nor did they overtake Bill Jonathan and the roadster. Neither did they glimpse anywhere a sign of his turning aside from the main highway, though Park’s eyes watered from watching intently the trail.

Abington proved to be a scientifically reckless driver and a silent one withal. Within an incredibly short time he landed a grateful deputy at the sheriff’s office in Tonopah, bade him an unperturbed adieu, drove his car into a garage and established himself comfortably in the best hotel the town afforded—all with the brisk, purposeful air of one who is clearing away small matters so that he may take up the business which really engrosses his mind.

In his room at the hotel John Abington dragged the most comfortable chair directly under the two-globe chandelier, lighted a cigarette from the pasteboard box which he took from his pocket, and pulled out the leather cigarette case as if this was what he had been all along preparing to do.

“Got a tack from the upholstery, no doubt, for a stylus,” he mused. “Old car—binding probably loose on the door pocket—that’s where it gives first. H’m! That’s what he waited for. Knew he meant to escape, of course—saw it in his eyes. H’m! Let’s see, now.”

Abington blew a cloud of smoke and thoughtfully examined the case as he turned it over slowly in his hand, just as he had done when he picked it up in the cañon road.

As he studied it his lips moved in that silent musing speech which was his habit —the black beard offering perfect concealment for his soundless whisperings.

“H’m! Clever of him—hieroglyphics adapted to code work. Let’s see. The old Babylonian ‘chain of evil’—three links, meaning ‘not so bad.’ Following that, a man. Humph! That’s Bill himself, no doubt.

“Nest—h’m!—that’s Egyptian; the old Egyptian symbol denoting the number of days in a journey, but with the Babylonian and Manchurian moon month at the end. Probably meant a month’s journey, and didn’t know the sign for it. Bill, my lad, you show intelligence above the average layman, at least.

“Now, what’s all this? Water sign, mountains, stopping place— Bill descended to picture writing there, I see! That’s the mountain across from my camp where I took Bill in and fed him—gave him my best hiking boots, too, by Jove! My camp by the river— Bill, you are ingenious!

“Without a doubt you wish me to understand that within a month you will be at my old camp by the river—counting on more food and more boots, perhaps! H’m! I don’t just know about that.

“Don’t see how you are going to make it. Handicap too heavy. Doubt whether I myself could overcome the obstacles—leg irons, officers on the watch, posses on the trail, three hundred miles to go— Bill, old fellow, if you make it you’ll prove yourself a man worth helping! You won’t get half the distance—but if you do, you may have my next-best boots and welcome!”

Abington turned the case over, held it closer to the light, frowned and gave a faint whistle at what he saw. He had supposed that the message had been repeated here as a precaution against his failure to notice the barely discernible markings in the leather on the other side.

But as he peered sharply at the fine indentations his eyes brightened with interest. For although the river and the stopping-place symbols were repeated, and the string of tiny circles which signified the number of days’ journeying, the plural sign was there just below them. At the end of the journey, mountains—but they were indicated by the conventional, premodified Manchurian symbol and, close by, the sign of a mummy.

“What the deuce!” breathed Abington, pulling black eyebrows together. “He’s blundered there—maybe means he’ll leave my camp only in custody. No, by Jove! That can’t be it, either.”

For a long time he sat motionless except when he turned the cigarette case for a renewed scrutiny of the other side. The message that had seemed so simple presented an unexpected little twist of mystery.

Bill Jonathan, pursued by the chain of evil, meant to journey for perhaps a month and arrive at John Abington’s camp in the mountains that bordered the river. That much seemed fairly plain, and one would logically expect no further information at present.

But there was more to it, apparently. Bill had not sat in that roadster idly scratching hieroglyphics on the cigarette case of an archaeologist just to pass the time away. Meaning to escape in the car, uncertain too of the number of minutes at his disposal, he must have grudged every second of delay while he worked out his message.

Abington permitted his cigarette to go out while he brooded over those crude lines. His thoughts harked back to the time, four months before, when Bill Jonathan had come limping into camp, crippled with stone bruises from traveling the rough granite hills in thin-soled shoes worn to tattered leather. He had been hungry, too, by the manner in which he wolfed his first meal whenever he thought Abington was not looking his way.

He had not told his name, and Abington had taken the hint and asked no questions. Bill had called himself a prospector, said he had an outfit back in the hills and had come down to Abington’s camp to see if he could rustle a pair of boots and a little tobacco. A likable fellow, Abington had found him; one of those rare individuals who can display an intelligent interest in the other fellow’s subject.

Abington at that time had been searching out and recording with a camera all the ancient rock carvings along the river. While Bill’s feet were healing he had wanted to know all about the various symbols and their meanings. He had told Abington of two or three cañons where writings could be found, and he had discussed with Abington the possibility of finding petrified human remains—

“By Jove!” Abington ejaculated, straightening suddenly in his chair. “I wonder if that is not what he means! That we’ll both journey to a spot in the mountains where I can find my fossilized man!”

The idea once implanted in his mind, Abington could not seem to get rid of it. Without a doubt, that was the meaning Bill had meant to convey; that he had found the fossil man which would mean more to Abington than a gold mine—for such is the peculiar point of view held by scientists of a certain school.

“Told him that mummy symbol indicated a burial—remember we discussed it. He recognized the sign from having seen one on a rock. I told him it undoubtedly meant that some one had been buried there. H’m! Nothing else he could mean. Wasn’t sitting in that car drawing marks for fun. Couldn’t write a message. Afraid Park might pick up the case, no doubt. Too bad—handicapped too heavily. Never will make it.”

Nevertheless Abington loitered for four days in Tonopah, though he had no business to hold him there. He heard nothing of an escaped convict being captured in that part of the country, so finally went his way.

He had meant to hire more men and carry his explorations over into Utah, but the sporting instinct for once prevailed over scientific zeal. He still believed that Bill would never make it—that the “chain of evil” was too strong. But being an archaeologist, he had learned the sublime lesson of a patient, plodding persistence that simply ignores failure. Abington returned alone to a field already pretty thoroughly covered, and rëestablished his old camp by the river. There he sat himself down to wait, with a brooding patience not unlike the eternal hills that hemmed him in.

CHAPTER III
ON THE JUMP

Into the firelight Bill Jonathan came walking one evening, barely within the month he had given himself in the symbolic message. Face drawn and sallow, eyes staring out from under his hat brim with a glassy dullness born of hunger, fever and fatigue mingled, perhaps, with that never-sleeping fear which dogs the soul of the hunted. But none of this showed in his manner, nor in his greeting which gave the arrival a casual note.

“Hello, professor! Got my message, I see. Well, I had one merry heck of a trip, but here I am.” He dropped down where he could lean against Abington’s favorite camp boulder—lean there at ease or crawl swiftly out of sight behind the broken ledge, Abington observed with that negligent, flicking glance of his. Another glance dropped briefly to Bill’s ankles, and Bill laughed wryly.

“Didn’t think I meant to wear them things permanent, did you, professor? Hell, I ain’t no Aztec princess, going around with anklets on that’d sink a whale. No, I was up at the old Honey Boy Mine, in the blacksmith shop, setting on a bench with one foot in a vise, filing faster than a buzz saw when I heard you folks go past, down in the gulch. At least, I s’pose it was you folks, because it was a cinch nobody would pass you in the cañon, and I had it doped out you’d roll down to where you could get water, and come chasing me up. Hauled my nursemaid on into Tonopah, I’ll bet!”

“I did that.” Abington smiled, tossing Bill his cigarette case before opening a can of baked beans while the coffee heated. “I really didn’t think you’d make it, though. Handicap too heavy.”

Bill accepted the cigarette case, pausing to eye with prideful interest the markings. He lighted a cigarette and relishfully inhaled three gratified mouthfuls before he spoke.

“If you mean them irons, I didn’t wear ’em long. Just till I could get the bus up to the old Honey Boy. Wonder you didn’t spot the place where I turned off—maybe you did. It was on your side the road.” He saw Abington nod, and grinned appreciatively. “Well, it rained some that night, and that helped dim the tracks. Nobody came near the mine; not while I was there, anyhow.

“Friend Park had a fair lot of grub in the back of the car, and I rustled a little more at the mine. Waited till dark and beat it back down the cañon and over to Bishop. Made Randsburg, drove the car over a cliff into a brushy cañon just before I got there, walked in with an old bed roll I’d fixed up at the Honey Boy, as good a blanket stiff as the next one! Worked there a week and blew out again, first pay day—hit it just right, as it happened.

“Hoboed to San Berdoo, doubled back to Needles—hanging tight to my blanket roll and my time check to show I’d worked not so long ago. And I’ve been hoofing it up the river since then.”

Abington nodded again and pulled the coffeepot off the coals, using a crooked stick for the purpose. It may have occurred to him that crooked sticks are sometimes more useful than straight ones, for he gave Bill Jonathan an unhurried measuring look as he extended a cup of black coffee.

“That mummy sign, Bill. Did you mean by that you had discovered more ancient writings, or did you by any chance refer to skeletal remains?”

Bill took a great swallow of coffee and set down the cup. His tired eyes brightened in the fire glow. “Maybe you’d call ’em skeletons, professor—I’d say they’re rock. All you want. Thought you’d like to take a look at ’em. So when we met up with you on the way to Carson I made up my mind I wouldn’t wait till I was turned loose. You might be to hell an’ gone by that time, or some nosey Adam chaser might run acrost ’em. I seen last spring how you’ve got your heart set on finding the granddaddy of all men, or some such thing, and I’d kinda hate to see anybody beat you to it. So I made my git-away in order to show you where they’re at.”

Having thus explained the matter to his own satisfaction, Bill forthwith began to empty the can of beans in a manner best pleasing to himself.

John Abington poked absently at the fire, gently rapping upon a burning juniper branch until it broke under the blows, spurting sparks as it fell into the coals.

“Adam chasers, as you call it, are not so numerous in this country,” he said softly. “Not nearly so numerous as—er—deputy sheriffs.”

Bill Jonathan leaned sidewise, reached the coffeepot and refilled his cup. “Yeah, I get you,” he said finally. “But this is wild country we’re going into. I ain’t taking such an awful chance, now I got this far. I was duckin’ sheriffs when I found these stone men. I’ve got to go on duckin’ sheriffs anyway—that, or else let ’em ketch me and put me in for five or ten years. It’s six one way and a half dozen the other.

“This is how I’ve got it doped out, professor. You and me throw in together. I’ll show you Adam—or his wife’s folks, anyway—and you furnish me with grub and tobacco so I don’t have to show up where I can be nabbed. I’ll draw on you for supplies and keep along close without trailing right with you. So you won’t get in bad if it’s found out I’m in the hills.” He looked across the fire at Abington. “How’s it strike you, professor?”

Over and over Abington had considered this very point during his month of waiting. It all depended on Bill himself, he had decided. Some men are so constituted that preying upon society is second nature to them. Others fall afoul of the law through no real criminal intent. There is a vast difference between the two types, Abington knew. It all depended on Bill.

“I never did function as guardian angel to escaped convicts,” Abington said with brutal directness. “Laws are better kept than broken, as you will probably agree, and it ill becomes a loyal citizen to help any man dodge the penalty for his misdeeds. On the other hand, even lawbreakers may contribute something to the general welfare of the world. Discovering the skeletal relics of a man of the Cretaceous period may not materially help to liquidate the national debt, but it would be a priceless contribution to the scientific knowledge of the human race.”

“Yeah, and I can go on and finish that argument, myself. I can’t do no more damage to society while I’m herdin’ with the coyotes, and if I can help you find what you’re lookin’ for, that’s better than loafin’ around doing time in Carson. So you won’t be doing nothing worse than taking a boarder off the hands of the State. That’s about the way you doped it out, ain’t it, professor?”

“Essentially the same, yes,” Abington admitted. “I’m glad you have so thorough an understanding of the matter. I think if your offense was not too great I could perhaps get you paroled and placed in my charge, but that would take time and— They’ve just discovered the skull of an ape man in Rhodesia, Bill! I’d give a good deal to be able to show them a Cretaceous man found in America.”

Bill leaned back with a sigh of repletion and lighted his second cigarette. “Well, I dunno how Cretaceous they are, professor, but they’re fossils all right enough. Stone, anyway, way back in a cave—you have to crawl on your belly quite a ways, where I went in. I guess maybe there’s another opening somewhere. I didn’t look for it. I had pinon knots for torches, and I lit a fresh one soon as I come into this chamber—or cave. And when the blaze showed them stone skeletons— Say, professor, I backed right out the same way I’d went in!”

“How do you know they were fossilized? They may have been modern—no more than a hundred years old! They may even have been frontiersmen trapped in there while trying to escape from hostile Indians.” Abington’s tone was crisp.

“I went back,” Bill declared calmly. “Got over my scare and wanted to see for sure whether them skeletons was twelve feet high like they looked to be, or just plain man size. So I looked good, next time in. There was four, and the biggest wasn’t over eight feet. And they was solid stone, far as I could tell.”

“I don’t suppose you could describe the geologic conditions—I shall have to determine that, of course, when I arrive at the spot.”

During five minutes Bill smoked and silently eyed the archaeologist, who sat meditatively tapping another burned stick into coals.

“One thing I better tell you, professor,” he ventured at last, vaguely stirred by the rapt look in Abington’s dark eyes. “There’s a lot more to it than just arriving ‘at the spot,’ as you say. When I went into that cave, I was scared in. There’s something up in there that got my goat. I beat it outa there—that’s how I got nabbed by the law.

“I can’t tell you what it is, professor. Some kinda animal. Makes tracks like a mountain sheep—but it ain’t a sheep; or if it is— All I can say is that us Adam chasers will have to keep our eyes peeled.”

CHAPTER IV
THE FOOTPRINT CLEW

Abington stood absolutely motionless with his head drooped forward, his narrowed eyes surveying with brief, darting glances his devastated camp. The small brown tent, lying in a tattered heap with slits crisscrossing one another in the balloon silk which was so light to carry—and so costly—received a second scrutiny. The camp supplies, which had been neatly piled just where he had unloaded them from the two burros that carried his own outfit, were strewn about in indescribable disorder, as if a drove of hogs had held carnival there for an hour or so.

Because of the view it gave of the fantastic, red-sandstone crags across the valley, Abington had pitched his camp on a smooth hard ledge a few feet above the level with a cliff at his back and a spring of good water hidden away in a tiny cleft in the cañon at his right. It was a cool, sightly spot, free from bothersome ant hills or weedy growth that might harbor rattlesnakes or other venomous creatures.

True to his word, Bill Jonathan camped apart from Abington. In this particular location he had chosen a cave half a mile up the cañon—and he had immediately set about walling up the entrance so that he must squeeze in between two rocks which he could move across the aperture at night.

“Getting close to the range of that gosh-awful thing, professor,” he had explained. “Better hunt a hole yourself and crawl into it—’specially at night. And you want to keep your eyes peeled, and don’t go prowlin’ around without your gun or a knife or something.”

Abington liked his little brown-silk tent, however, and he was not particularly impressed by the gosh-awfulness of the thing which Bill Jonathan could not even describe—he having failed to catch so much as a glimpse of it, as he had been forced to admit under Abington’s repeated questioning.

Here was the ruin left by some animal, however, and Abington found himself completely at a loss as he circled the camp, going slowly and studying the wreckage foot by foot. On the ledge itself he did not expect to see any tracks. He walked therefore to the edge of the hard-pan and examined the softer gravel at the foot of the two-foot slope.

There, cleanly outlined in a finer streak of red gravelly sand, he discovered the imprint of a pointed, cloven foot; a gigantic sheep, by the track, or possibly an elk, though elk were not known in that country.

For some minutes he stood there looking for other tracks. When he found one, he whistled under his breath. From the length of the stride indicated by that second hoofprint he judged that this particular animal must be considerably larger than a caribou. “Gosh-awful” it certainly must be!

Abington stared down the wash, for a moment tempted to follow the tracks. But with night coming on and an empty stomach clamoring to be filled, he hesitated. There was the wrecked camp to set to rights and such supplies as had not been destroyed must be gathered together and placed where this malicious-minded animal could not reach them again.

Moreover, the tracks might not be fresh, for the damage could have been done at any time during the afternoon while he and Bill were exploring a complex assortment of crooked ravines, tangled at the head of the larger one where Bill had prepared to hole up in gloomy security.

Abington was thoughtfully regarding a sack of flour that had been slashed lengthwise and dragged in wanton destructiveness half across the ledge, when Bill Jonathan’s voice sounded behind him, swearing a dismayed oath.

“Looks like it’s been here a’ready!” Bill gasped, when Abington turned and glanced at him.

“Looks as though something has been here,” Abington agreed. “Very unusual incident, in some of the details. Certain incongruities can scarcely be accounted for until I have further investigated the matter. I have had a herd of wild elephants stampede through camp, and I know the work of every marauding animal from jungle tigers to the wolverines of Canada. But I have never seen anything quite like this.

“For instance,” he went on, “the slits in that tent plainly started from the peak and extended downward, with an upward thrust near the bottom, leaving a triangular rent. Any horned animal that could rip a tent like that invariably lowers the head and gores with an upward toss. So does a hog. Certain indications would seem to point to a wild hog—or a drove of them!—but I believe the longest slits in the tent were accomplished while it was still standing.

“You will observe,” he continued, “that the rents are spaced with a regularity impossible to attain while the material lay bundled in a heap on the ground. The cloth has not been chewed, therefore it could not be the work of wild cattle. Moreover, that sack of salt was not touched. Wouldn’t you suppose, Bill, that any herbivorous animal would smell the salt and go after it first?”

“Yeah, but it don’t ever touch salt, professor. Not as far as I know. Did it leave any tracks?”

“Down here in the sand are some enormous hoofprints resembling sheep or elk tracks, Bill. From its stride the beast must be as large as a camel.”

“Yeah, and I’ve known it to leave mule tracks behind it!” Bill declared glumly. “Now, maybe you’ll want to crawl into my cave, professor!”

“I may decide to let you store what supplies are left, but I myself don’t fancy caves except for research work. By the way, did you notice any eoliths in that cave of yours, Bill?”

“I dunno. Killed a scorpion about four inches long and his tail curled up. You ain’t afraid of bugs, are you, professor?”

Abington gave him a sharp glance, but Bill was innocent and looked it.

“It doesn’t matter now,” Abington said, “since I shall probably spend a week or more exploring these ravines. There should be a good many artifacts left in the caves hereabouts. The carvings indicate that the ancient people lived here and I have an idea that their occupancy of this section of the country extended over considerable period of time. This old Cretaceous sandstone gives every—”

“Yeah, and it’ll give ’em just the same to-morrow, don’t you think, professor? I’m going to take what’s left of the flour and cache it away in my cave, and that can of coffee. Looks to me like the thing was scared off before it finished the job. All the times I’ve saw it get in its work before now, it sure was thorough! You must ’ave scared it—”

“In that case I may be able to catch it.”

Abington turned and strode again to where the tracks lay printed deep in the packed sand. He stepped down off the ledge and followed the hoofprints, scanning each one sharply as he came to it.

“Hey! You can’t trail that thing, professor!” Bill called anxiously. “I tried that—once when it was a sheep and another time when it was a mule. Tracks take to the hills and quit.

“Aw, gwan and find out for yourself, then!” he grumbled, when Abington merely flung up his hand to show he heard and continued along the wash. “Won’t be satisfied to take my word—never seen such a bullheaded cuss. But it won’t be long, old boy, till you’ll be tickled to death if you’re able to dodge it!”

Dusk deepened. Bill hurriedly salvaged what supplies were not utterly destroyed, looking frequently over his shoulder when his work would not permit him to keep his back toward the cliff. It seemed a long while before Abington returned.

Bill’s uneasiness had reached the point where he threw back his head to send a loud halloo booming out into the darkness; but at that very moment Abington came stumbling up to the ledge, leaning heavily on a dead mescal stalk while one foot dragged. Bill leaped forward and pulled him up the slope.

“Rock rolled down the hill and started a slide,” Abington explained in a flat, tired tone. “Dodged most of the rubble, but one fragment struck against my ankle. Temporarily paralyzed my foot. Be all right in a short time, Bill.” He sat down, breathing rather heavily.

“Who done it?” Bill knelt and tentatively felt the injured foot.

“No one, so far as I know. I am not sure, of course, but my impression is that the slide was purely accidental.”

“See anything of your sheep?”

“Too dark to detect any signs after it took to the rocks. Heard something—up the hill. Couldn’t exactly locate the sound. Any coffee, Bill?”

Bill had been itching to get back to his cave and make coffee there, but now he looked at Abington and hesitated. Neither Abington nor any other man could laugh at Bill and call him a coward. There had been a small pile of firewood; it was scattered around somewhere among the débris. The coffeepot, he knew, had been flattened as if an elephant had stepped on it; but he could find a can that would serve.

He groped for the wood, found it and got a fire started. A cheerful light pushed back the shadows, making them eerier than when all was gloom. He set about supper of a sort, keeping his back to the ledge with a persistence that might have amused Abington if he had not been wholly occupied with the mystery that had impinged upon an otherwise uneventful trip.

“I can’t fathom it,” he said at last, speaking half to himself. “It is not a mountain sheep, I’m certain of that. Those slits in the tent and the salt sack ignored—those two details alone place the depredations apart from the work of any such animal.”

“Yeah, there ain’t no such animal!” Bill looked up to remark. “Now you know why I wanted a gun, professor. You thought it was for killing sheriffs, maybe, but you was wrong there. I told you there was something up here we’d have to look out for. I asked you to get me a gun, because I ain’t got much hopes of killin’ this thing by throwin’ rocks at it. That’s why.”

“I’m sorry, Bill, but I really couldn’t buy you a gun,” Abington told him gravely. “And I don’t think you will need one. The beast keeps himself out of sight, it seems. It isn’t likely to attack either of us.”

“Well, I’d about as soon be attacked as scared to death,” Bill demurred. “That’s just it, professor. I wouldn’t give a cuss if I could look the thing over, once. What I hate is coming in and finding camp demolished and the grub all throwed out and nothing you can fight back at. Well, here’s your coffee. It’s about all I could find to cook, in the dark.”

They drank the coffee in silence, even the self-contained Abington pausing every minute or so to stare into the darkness, listening. It was a nerve-trying pastime which netted them nothing in the way of enlightenment.

What it cost Bill to shoulder a load of more-or-less damaged supplies and go off alone up the cañon, his way lighted only by the stars, Abington could only guess. In justice to the peace officers of the county he could not give the man a gun, and he sensed that Bill was really afraid of the unknown marauder, and with good reason, Abington was forced to admit.

Bill had been hunted from camp to camp by the thing which he had never seen. He had been robbed and his food supplies destroyed until at last he had fled the place only to fall into the hands of the watchful sheriff. Abington couldn’t blame Bill for his fears. All the same, Abington did not want to place a gun in the hands of an escaped prisoner. That, it seemed to him, would be going rather strong, even in the interests of science.

He was sitting with his back against the cliff with the dying fire before him, rubbing his numbed ankle to which sensation was returning with sharp stabs of pain, when Bill came up out of the cañon mouth with his bundle still on his shoulders and his eyes staring.

“It’s been to the cave,” he announced in a suppressed tone. “Clawed out the rocks I walled the opening up with and raised hell with my stuff. Professor, how bad do you want them stone Adamses?”

CHAPTER V
GALLOPING BURROS

Across the valley the moon peered over a jagged pinnacle, looking as if broken teeth had bitten deep into its lower rim. That effect was soon brushed away as the pale disk swung higher, and the blood-red sandstone peaks stood fantastically revealed in the swimming radiance. The valley straightway became enchanted ground wherein fairy folk might dance on the smooth sand strips or play laughing games of hide and seek among the strange pillars and jutting crags.

Beside the dying fire Bill Jonathan dozed, head bent with now and then an involuntary drop forward, whereupon he would rouse and glance sharply to left and right—the habit of a man who knows himself hunted, a man whose safety lies in unsleeping vigilance.

“Lie down on the tent, Bill,” Abington advised him, after his third startled awakening. “Lie down and make yourself comfortable. To-morrow you can watch while I sleep.”

“Aw, I can keep awake, professor. All that climbing around to-day made me kinda tired, is all. If I know you’re asleep, I’ll keep my eyes open wide enough.”

“But I don’t want to sleep, Bill. This little mystery must be solved before we go any farther with our chief business. Couldn’t sleep if I wanted to.”

“You’ll stay awake a darn long while, professor, if you wait to put salt on the tail of the thing that haunts this valley,” Bill opined.

Abington calmly knocked the dottle from his pipe and began to refill it, ready for another long, meditative smoke. “For every problem in the universe there is a correct answer,” he said quietly. “It is only our ignorance that makes mysteries of things simple enough in themselves. A peculiar arrangement of details has given this ‘gosh-awful’ animal of yours an air of mystery, but the explanation is simple enough, I’ll guarantee.”

“Yeah, but how are you going to find this explanation—that you think is so darned simple?” Bill stifled a yawn.

“Just as I find the meaning of the hieroglyphics; by studying the symbols already familiar to me, and from them arriving at the natural relation of the unknown characters. This thing left tracks, and it managed to accomplish a certain amount of destruction in a given time. To-morrow morning I’ll take a look at your cave, and the answer to the puzzle will not be so hard to find as you imagine.”

Bill mumbled a half-finished sentence and lay down on the torn tent, and presently the rhythmic sound of snoring hushed the strident chorus of stone crickets on the ledge.

Until the moon had swum its purple sea and reached shore on the western rim of the valley, Abington lounged beside the cliff, so quiet that any observer might have thought him asleep. For a time his pipe sent up a thin column of aromatic smoke, then went cold; and after that only the moonlight shining on his wide-open eyes betrayed the fact that Abington was very much awake.

An owl hooted monotonously in the cañon at his right, probably near the spring. A coyote yammered on the steep hillside across the cañon mouth, and a little later Abington heard the frightened, squealing cry of a rabbit caught unawares by that coyote or another.

On a cliff just over his head, shadowed now as the moon slipped behind the hill, the ancient people he was tracing had carved intricate tribal records. These had endured far beyond the last vague legend of those whose valor had thus been blazoned before their little world, a world that had seemed so vast and imperishable, no doubt, to heroes and historians alike.

It seemed to him that here was a land well fitted to hold the full story of these forgotten lives. Could he but find it, and read it aright, might not his own name be blazoned before his own people—to be forgotten perchance in ages to come, as these were forgotten now?

The cave that held fast the bones of these ancients lay somewhere in the bewildering maze of cañons across the valley. Bill Jonathan would recognize the spot, so he had declared whenever Abington questioned him. A certain rock on the cañon’s northern rim, shaped like the head of a huge rhinoceros with two tusks on his snout—Bill was positive he could not miss it, once he got inside the cañon. The opening to the cave was directly under the first tusklike rock spire. A matter of ten miles perhaps, Bill had guessed as he stood on the ledge and gazed across.

Here on this side were caves and even with the hope of finding the fossil skeletons Bill had described, Abington had wanted to explore these before going on. He still wanted to do so, if he and Bill could manage to hunt down the unknown pillager of camps, or at least guard their supplies against further depredations. If the raid on Bill’s cave had been as complete as on his own camp, he would be compelled to postpone all research work while he plodded with the burros to the nearest town for fresh supplies. Bill could not go, that was certain.

At daybreak Abington was planning drowsily to send Bill up the cañon after the burros, load on what was left of the outfit and cross immediately to the other side of the valley, where they would endeavor to find the skeletons first of all and be sure of them before he went out for supplies. He would then be able to take out specimens to send on to his museum, thus saving a bothersome trip later on.

His hand reached out to shake Bill’s leg and rouse him to the day’s work, when a great clattering sounded in the cañon mouth near by. Bill needed no shaking to bring him to his feet. As the two automatically faced toward the noise, there came the three burros in a panicky gallop out of the cañon and into the open.

In one great leap Bill left the ledge and ran yelling and flailing his arms to head them off before they stampeded down the valley. The leading burro, a staid, mouse-colored little beast, swerved from him, wheeled toward the hills opposite, stumbled and fell in a heap. The second kept straight on down the valley, the third burro at its heels. Bill let them go while he ran to the fallen leader.

Though it took but a minute to cover the short distance, the burro’s eyes were already glazing when Bill arrived. As he stopped and bent over it a shuddering convulsion seized its legs and immediately it stiffened. It was dead.

Bill stood dumfounded, eying it stupidly for a moment before he turned to call Abington. But the shout died in his throat, for his glance had fallen upon a fresh disaster. The two other burros were down and kicking convulsively, just as the first had done. They were dead before he could reach them.

Abington was not in sight when Bill, walking heavily under the burden of this new tragedy, returned to the ledge; but presently he came limping out of the cañon and into camp.

“I thought I could discover what had stampeded the burros,” Abington said, coming up with an indefinable air of surprise that Bill should be standing there passive with that blank look on his face. “Too late, again. If it was the gosh-awful, he’d disappeared before I could get up there. Did you head off the burros? I want to move camp this morning.”

“Yeah—but you’ll have to git along without ’em this morning. The damn things is dead.”

Abington looked at him, looked past him to where Bill pointed an unsteady finger. He got off the ledge and limped over to the nearest carcass, looked it over carefully, walked to the others and examined them, and returned thoughtfully to camp.

Bill had kindled a fire and was starting off to the spring with an empty bucket when Abington stopped him.

“Hey, come back here! Don’t use any water from that spring.”

“Yeah? Where will I use water from, then?”

“From a canteen. I filled two yesterday. The burros were at the spring this morning and stampeded from there. I can’t be certain yet, of course, but I think the water is poisoned.”

Bill stared, his jaw sagging. Abington was looking out across the valley, his eyes narrowed and blacker than Bill had ever seen them.

“I may be wrong, Bill, but we can’t afford to take a chance. One burro might suddenly pass out with heart failure, but when three of them turn up their toes in the same way and at the same moment, the coincidence will bear investigation, I think!”

“How could that sheep thing poison a spring?” Bill’s tone implied violent incredulity.

“I don’t know. I’m merely stating what appears to be a fact. Three burros drank at that spring and afterward stampeded out of the cañon and dropped dead in the open. I’m assuming that the water in the spring, or at least in the little pool below it, was poisoned. They must have been scared away, else they would have died right there near the spring. Yes, I think it will bear investigation!”

“Yeah, but in the meantime we’ve got to have water,” Bill said gloomily, shaking a canteen gently before he poured a little into his makeshift coffeepot. “I don’t aim to stick around till my tongue swells up, doing fancy thinkin’ about a poisoned spring. Suit yourself, professor, but I’m going to hunt water, soon as we go through the motions of eating.”

“I suppose in time the spring will clear itself and run pure,” Abington reassured him with a twitching of his bearded lips. “If we were to stay here, we could divert the trickle from the rocks and soon have another pool. But we could never be sure that it was not poisoned again. No, Bill, we’ll have to get our belongings together and move across the valley.”

“A darn hard job,” muttered Bill, “packing everything on our backs.” And he added: “That sheep thing can travel, too; don’t overlook that fact, professor.”

CHAPTER VI
READY FOR A BLOW

The eastern rim of the valley stood crimson where the westering sun struck it full, bringing into bold relief each cañon and crag, the smallest fold and the smoothest boulder; as if a contour map had been painstakingly modeled on a gigantic scale in red sealing wax, or as if a world aflame had been paralyzed into utter silence.

Toward that garish pile of shattered hills, Abington and Bill Jonathan plodded with the low sun at their backs, which were burdened heavily with as much of their camp supplies as they had been able to retrieve and could carry.

The start that morning had been delayed until nearly noon while they searched vainly for some clew to the mystery that had in a few hours held an orgy of wanton destructiveness in two camps and had poisoned their water supply and killed three burros. Human malevolence had been displayed in that last attack, Abington was convinced.

Yet in spite of all his skill, all the careful attention to details which his scientific training had made second nature, he had failed to discover the slightest evidence of a human agency at work against them. Not a sign, not a track, save those enormous sheep tracks leaving the vicinity of the spring and going off up a narrow ravine in great strides which made it hopeless to think of overtaking it; for without water he did not dare attempt any prolonged search. Now, with a half mile of red sand to plow through before they reached the first bold hillside, their eyes clung perforce to the seamed, broken rampart they were nearing.

A dazzling light that flashed and was gone, then came again and stood motionless for a space while one might count fifteen, showed high up on a ridge as evenly serrated as a rooster’s comb, and quite as red. Abington came to a full stop which he made a rest period by slipping the heavy pack from his shoulders. Nothing loath, Bill did likewise. The two sat down on the sand beside their bundles, mopping perspiration from faces and necks.

“Bill, when I get up and stand in front of you, look past me at the sharp peak just south of the mountain—the first one on the ridge straight before us. Tell me if you see anything that might be a reflection of the sun—from a telescope, we’ll say, or more likely a pair of field glasses. No, don’t look yet. Remember that with good glasses a man could read the expression on your face, read your lips, too, if he’s had any training.”

At the first sentence Bill’s face had hardened. “You don’t have to preach caution to a man that’s been on the dodge long as I have,” he muttered bitterly, under cover of lighting a cigarette. “Shoot. What d’you think—that it’s an officer, maybe?”

“I’m not thinking past the field glasses that I believe are focused on us,” Abington parried, rising and standing so that his back was to the ridge while he held up his watch before Bill’s face. “He may think I’m trying to hypnotize you, but it’s an excuse. Look right past this watch, to a point between the second and third little pinnacles on the ridge. See anything?”

“Something moved, in the notch just below that pinnacle. I got it against the sky for a minute. There ain’t any shine, though. Might have been a sheep.”

Abington put away his watch, stooped and shouldered his pack.

Bill slipped his arms through the rope loops and wriggled his own burden into place on his back as he got up. “Wouldn’t think they’d be lookin’ for me away down here,” he said uneasily, after a few rods of silent plodding. “Not unless you—” He sent an involuntary glance toward his companion.

“Unless I informed on you when I went after supplies, and arranged for your capture after I had benefited by your information,” Abington answered the look. “You don’t really think that, Bill.”

“I don’t know why I wouldn’t think it, if somebody’s planted up there watching for us with glasses,” Bill retorted, not more than half in earnest but yielding to the ugly mood born of nerve strain and muscle weariness.

“Of course, you can think any idiotic thing you choose,” Abington returned, in that tolerant tone which he could summon when he wished to bite into a man’s self-esteem. “Any other brilliant ideas on the subject, explaining why, if I were contemplating treachery, I should call your attention to that light on the ridge up there?”

“Yeah, I might have one or two,” Bill growled. “I was a fool to start across here in broad daylight. Now, if they come after me, I ain’t even got a gun!”

Abington sent a quick, sidelong glance toward Bill’s face. That gun question was becoming a touchy subject between them. “No, you haven’t a gun. So you are not quite so liable to a few extra years—or a chair in the gas house—if you are caught!”

“Well, I ain’t caught yet!” Bill’s upper lip lifted away from his teeth. “Not by a damn sight!”

Abington gave him another sidelong glance. The snarl was not lost upon him, though he made no reply. Like many another man who is agreeable enough in ordinary circumstances, Bill Jonathan’s good nature did not always stand up under hardship.

That blustery impatience at the physical discomforts of a long grilling walk was beginning to crop out in Bill, mostly in the form of a surly ill temper and a grumbling against conditions which neither could help. Abington had reached the point of gauging the exact degree of surliness and to set up mental defenses against his moods.

Bill had taken the initiative in this quest and he was surely receiving full value for his efforts. From a sporting admiration for Bill’s daring, and a certain liking for his whimsical shrewdness, Abington was consciously beginning to chafe at the man’s crabbed temper; he felt a growing distrust, too, which was yet formless and only vaguely realized.

He caught himself wishing now that he had asked Park what crime stood against Bill Jonathan. No use asking Bill; he would say what he pleased and the other could believe it or not.

“If you’ve got any wild idea of finding out from me where them stone skeletons is, and then turning me over to the sheriff, you better revise the notion, professor,” Bill said abruptly, having brooded over it for five minutes. “I’m nobody’s fool.”

“Then why talk like one?” Exhaustion was beginning to draw a white line beside Abington’s nostrils and his bruised ankle ached cruelly. He began to feel that he’d had enough of Bill’s grousing. “You’ve nothing to kick about, so shut up. I’m doing packer’s work rather than have men along who might go out and betray you.”

“Yeah. You knew mighty well I wouldn’t stir a foot if you brought in a bunch of mouthy roughnecks,” Bill growled back. “How do I know what you framed in town?”

Abington slipped his pack off his shoulders and swung toward Bill with a menacing glitter in his eyes. “That’s going a bit strong, even for you,” he said sharply. “If you’ve any reason for saying that, out with it! If not, I’ll thank you to keep such thoughts behind your teeth. You’re getting quite as much as you are giving, Bill Jonathan—and by that I mean to include loyalty and fair play.

“For all I know,” Abington went on, “you invented the story of fossilized human remains as a temptation that would insure my protection and the food you’d need in case you made your escape from Park. Do you suppose I was so blind I did not see that possibility from the start? A fossilized man, as you knew, was bait I’d be pretty sure to swallow. Well, I did swallow it—but not with my eyes shut, I assure you. Please give me credit for that much intelligence.

“I took you at your word,” he continued, “and I have played the game straight. I shall continue to play it square, until I find that you have lied to me.”

He waited, balanced, ready for the blow he expected. Instead, he saw the expression in Bill’s eyes change to a grudging mollification, as if the very abusiveness of the attack reassured him.

“I never said anything to put you on your ear,” Bill hedged morosely, after an uncomfortable pause. “What are you razzing me for? I said I wouldn’t be caught and I won’t be. That goes, professor.”

“Very well, let’s have no more talk about it.” Abington lifted his pack to his galled shoulders and started on, leaving Bill to his own devices; wherefore Bill presently overtook him and walked alongside.

The truce held while the clouds flamed with the sunset, a barbaric pageant that could not rival the sanguine magnificence of that wild ensemble of towering hills slashed with deep gorges whose openings were frequently hidden away behind bold, jutting pinnacles.

“Looks like the devil was practicing on these hills, trying to make a world of his own with nothing but fire for building material,” Bill observed at last, wanting to appear friendly and awed in spite of himself before the spectacle. “When God came along and told him to knock off, looks like the devil just kicked it all to thunder and dragged his feet through the mess a few times and walked off and left it like that. Don’t you think so, professor?”

“I’ve heard theories advanced that were not half so plausible,” Abington replied, his voice once more calm and slightly ironic, as if he still doubted Bill’s sincerity. “A man could spend a lifetime in this country without exhausting its archaeological possibilities.”

“Yeah—or without getting caught,” Bill added, speaking as had the other of the thing nearest his own heart.

CHAPTER VII
INTO THE BLACKNESS

Bill and Abington came to and entered a narrow, straight-walled gorge. It had a loose, sandy bottom and every indication that ages before it had been a watercourse with the floods of glacial rainfall sluicing down to the valley. Presently Bill, plowing laboriously ahead to a certain spring he remembered in a cave up this ravine, gave a grunt and stopped short.

In the peculiar, amethystine veil of the afterglow which lay upon the hills like a cunning stage effect of, colored lights, he pointed a finger stiffly to a certain mark in the sand. Abington limped forward and joined him.

“I see the gosh-awful is here ahead of us,” he said listlessly. “Well, it will be obliged to wreck us personally this time, Bill, since all our worldly goods are literally on our backs. We may get a sight of it at last.”

“That all you care?” Bill stared at him. “Maybe I’d feel that way about it, too, if I had a gun to defend myself with. You’re making a big mistake, professor. You’ll see it before you’re through.”

“Possibly.” Abington’s tone was skeptical. “How far is it to the spring?”

Bill did not reply. He was still staring at the strange tracks that were too large for any sheep one could imagine, yet not shaped like cattle tracks, nor much resembling the elk they had discussed last night. Blurred though they were in the fine sand, they were yet easily distinguishable to being the same hoof prints they had seen across the valley.

The tracks did not look very fresh, and after a brief study of them Abington took the lead, perhaps because he was armed and Bill was not.

Presently Abington stopped and pointed to a cleft in the rocks. “Whatever it is, it turned out of the gorge and went up there,” he said. “Pretty good climbing, even for a sheep.”

“I’ll go ahead and show you the spring,” Bill volunteered and Abington chuckled to himself.

Bill looked back at him with sullen eyes. “All right for you, professor—with two guns handy,” he said resentfully. “Put you in here with just your bare hands and maybe you wouldn’t be so damn nervy, yourself.”

“I’d probably wait until I saw some danger before I became alarmed.”

Bill muttered something under his breath, and stepped out more briskly. Both were thirsty, but since they had left the western side of the valley with one canteen nearly full, the need of water had not yet become acute. It was the tramp across the valley with packs too heavy for them that had told on the tempers of the two men—with Abington’s bruised foot and Bill’s nervous dread of pursuit for good measure.

The spring proved to be well protected, in a water-worn cave that seemed to offer excellent shelter. A tangle of nondescript oak bushes grew near the entrance and drew moisture from the overflow which, though slight, was yet sufficient for the scant vegetation.

The cave itself was not large, with a fine sandy floor and a lofty arched roof of irregular blocks of the red sandstone which was the regular formation of these hills. A lime dyke broke through here and there in sharp peaks and ridges in a fairly continuous outcropping roughly pointing toward the river.

Abington slipped off his pack, drank from the spring and sat down against the wall of the cave to unlace his boot from his lame foot.

Bill began gathering dry twigs and branches and set about making coffee and frying a little bacon. “We oughta git a sheep or something,” he grumbled, breaking a long moody silence. “This time of year there’s generally sheep running in through here.”

“I’ll take a hunt, when my foot has had a rest. We can manage for a day or two,” Abington replied without looking up.

“Say, you’d be in a hell of a fix if you broke your leg,” Bill sneered. “You’d starve to death before you’d trust me with a gun, wouldn’t you?”

“There’s meat for to-night. To-morrow will take care of itself.”

“Yeah, maybe it will—and it’ll leave us to do the same,” Bill retorted. “What the heck are you scared of, professor?”

“Nothing at all. Not even your gosh-awful. Will you fill that corn can with water for me, Bill? I’ll try a cold compress on the foot.”

Bill did as he was requested and a sight of the discolored foot stirred him to sympathy. Abington, he suddenly saw, must have suffered cruelly all day, though he hadn’t said anything about it. Bill remembered too that Abington had remained awake all last night while he himself had slept. But it was not Bill’s way to apologize.

“That’s a hell of a looking foot!” he growled. “Hot water beats cold. After supper I’ll heat a can of water—”

“After supper I’m going to sleep,” Abington rebuffed him. “Cold water will do.”

“Have it your way—it’s your foot,” snapped Bill, and relapsed into his morose silence.

It was not an agreeable supper, and neither spoke while they drank coffee and ate bacon and fried corn from the same frying pan.

Bill was tired and full of uneasy fears and he bitterly resented Abington’s action in regard to the guns. He was accustomed to the feel of a gun’s weight against his hip and the thought of facing trouble without a weapon gave him an uncomfortable feeling of helplessness. Add mystery to the hazard, and Bill reacted with a dread not far removed from panic.

Abington ate and drank his share, then forced himself to explore the cave with a lamp. He chose for himself a niche in one side of the wall near the entrance, where he would hear any intruder and would still be fairly well concealed.

At least, that was his idea when he settled himself in the recess. As a matter of fact not even his aching foot could keep him awake. He dropped almost at once into the deep dreamless sleep of exhaustion. When he opened his eyes it was to see the sunlight slanting into the cave—a circumstance which at first convinced him that it must be nearly noon, since the cave opening faced the south and the cañon walls were high.

After a brief space of mental fogginess, however, his mind snapped into alertness. He remembered that he had stooped to enter the cavern; the sunlight bathed the high-arched roof just over his head and brought into relief certain symbols—left there by the ancients, he had no doubt.

For a time he lay looking up at the roof, deciphering each crude character, his eyes tracing the lines which even in that sheltered place showed the erosion of many centuries. Some of the lines were dimmed; none retained the sharp outlines left by the engravers.

Now he knew that the cave had a high opening through which the sun was shining; a common occurrence in that old formation that had suffered the buffetings of wind and water for millions of years, and moreover had been rocked and twisted by many a primeval earthquake. He thought no more of the opening, but insensibly slipped under the spell of those ancient records, his imagination thrilling to each new sign as it caught his eye.

The story of a journey was depicted there, a journey of death, he judged from certain priestly emblems and the sign of burial. Perhaps they had attempted to depict the journey of the soul, though he could only guess at that, his speculations revolving around a figure of a dog or wolf, very similar to the jackal which in the belief of ancient Egypt was supposed to carry souls across the desert to paradise. He wondered, searching farther along the roof for further inscriptions.

Like an old rangeman riding up to a herd of strange cattle, unconsciously reading the brands and mentally identifying the owners, Abington could not seem to pull his mind away from that roof. Beyond the sunlit patch the carvings extended into obscurity so deep that, stare as he would, he could not distinguish the lines.

A sense of bafflement nagged at him. Just as the cattleman will follow a range animal for half a mile, seeking the vague satisfaction of seeing what brand had been burned into its hide, Abington sat up and put on his boots, and picked up the can of carbide and miner’s lamp which he used in preference to candles when exploring dark caverns. He started climbing up a tilted shelf of rock that offered a precarious footing for a man tall enough to bridge certain places where the shelf had dropped completely away and left gaps in what may once have been a steep narrow trail.

From the floor of the cave it looked impossible for anything save a fly or a lizard to climb to the roof. When he started, Abington had not expected to do more than reach a point from where he could view the shadowed writing at closer range. He kept going, however, while the lame foot protested with twinges of pain that gradually ceased as the muscles limbered. Presently he stood on a low irregular balcony, the writings just over his head.

This was something he had not suspected even while lying on his back studying the roof. He made his way along the ledge, forced to stoop so that he was soon walking like a gorilla with his hands sometimes touching the balcony floor. He became suddenly aware of an odd variation in the rough sandstone. The sharp, granular formation was worn down to a dull smoothness in the center of the ledge where he walked. It was a pathway polished by many shuffling feet—nothing else.

He turned a corner and peered into blackness; an ancient water channel was there, no doubt. Abington lighted a match, saw that the hieroglyphics continued along the wall. Waiting only long enough to light the carbide lamp, he set off along the narrow passage, pausing now and then to study the inscriptions as he went.

Broad chambers receded into blackness beyond the white light of his lamp and these he hastily explored before going on. Labyrinthine passageways were revealed as he turned the light this way and that, each opening inscribed with strange symbols carved in the rock at the sides.

“A gold mine of records!” Abington exclaimed to himself in the whisper that was his habit when alone. “The ancient people who lived here seem to have had a Scribblers’ Club of very active members! An ancient catacomb, or I’m mistaken. That, or else these symbols were carved with the express purpose of misleading one. H’m! An attempt to confuse the devil and thwart him in his search for the souls of the dead! Now here’s a pretty problem for an archaeologist. Let’s see if I am smarter than the devil!”

CHAPTER VIII
THE GREAT CHAIN OF EVIL

Ordinarily John Abington thought fairly well of himself and he felt certain that these misleading characters could not prevent him from finding the way to the actual burial place. For one thing, he discovered that many of the passages—a miner would have called them drifts—had been hacked out by hand, with stone hammers and wedges. How long and arduous a task that had been, he could only conjecture.

In several of the drifts he found implements to prove his theory. After a glance or two that identified them with the early people he had been tracing, he went on and left the implements lying there for the present, knowing that he could return at any time and get them if he wished to do so.

It cost him several fruitless trips down long, winding ways that finally ended in blank walls, before he learned to mistrust the man-made passageways, which had evidently been cunningly constructed to deceive the devil himself—and any other unwelcome intruder.

He began to study more carefully the carvings placed at the openings of these zigzag passages, but after a while he was forced to admit to himself that he could make nothing of them. So far as he could determine with a cursory examination they all looked much alike, though he knew there must be some secret differentiation. He could only avoid such corridors as seemed to him the work of human hands, and go on.

Going on was not a simple thing, however. Many times he was forced to crawl on hands and knees along an old water channel with fine red sand packed hard and smooth, and at such times he caught himself looking for human footprints. That he found nothing of the kind in any of the old water channels seemed to him a proof that the ancient ones had traversed these black passages before the time of copious rainfall, else the sand would not have been so smooth and untrodden.

Frequently he was forced to climb up through crevices where the rocks were worn glossy—always, wherever rock lay underfoot, the same smoothness prevailed —until it seemed to him that he must soon emerge upon the crest of the high-turreted ridge which formed that wall of the cañon.

After a time that to Abington had been timeless, so absorbed was he in the fascinating quest of a final destination which these signs seemed to promise, he was recalled to practical things by the dimming of his carbide lamp. He held it close to his ear and shook it, but heard no sloshing sound in the small water compartment above the carbide.