Tom Outland’s Story
rim rock met the floor of the cavern, exactly like
the sloping roof of an attic. There was perpetual
twilight back there, cool, shadowy, very grateful
after the blazing sun in the front court-yard.
When we entered it we heard a soft trickling sound, and we came upon a spring that welled out of the rock into a stone basin and then ran off
through a cobble-lined gutter and dripped down the
cliffs. I’ve never anywhere tasted water like it; as cold as ice, and so pure. Long afterward Father
Duchene came out to spend a week with us on the
mesa; he always carried a small drinking-glass with him, and he used to fill it at the spring and take it out into the sunlight. The water looked like liquid crystal, absolutely colourless, without the slight brownish or greenish tint that water nearly always has. It threw off the sunlight like a diamond.
Beside this spring stood some of the most beautifully shaped water jars we ever found—I gave Mrs. St. Peter one of them—standing there just as if they’d been left yesterday. In the back court we found a great many things besides jars and bowls: a row of grinding-stones, and several clay ovens, very much like those the Mexicans use to day. There were charred bones and charcoal, and the roof was thick with soot all the way along. It was evidently a kind of common kitchen, where they roasted and baked and probably gossiped. There were corncobs everywhere, and ears of corn with
—209—
