Tom Outland's Story
good order. We cleared up any litter we’d made
in digging things out, stored all the specimens, even
the mummies, in our cabin, and padlocked the doors
and windows before we left it. I had written up
my day-book carefully to the very end, had even
written out some of Father Duchene’s deductions.
This book I left in concealment on the mesa. I
climbed up to the Eagle’s Nest in which we had
found the mummy of the murdered woman we called
Mother Eve, where I had noticed a particularly neat
little cupboard in the wall. I put my book in this
niche and sealed it up with cement. Mother Eve had
greatly interested Father Duchene, by the way. He
laughed and said she was well named. He didn’t
believe her death could throw any light on the destruction of her people. “I seem to smell,” he said slyly, “a personal tragedy. Perhaps when the tribe went down to the summer camp, our lady was sick and would not go. Perhaps her husband thought
it worth while to return unannounced from the farms some night, and found her in improper company. The young man may have escaped. In primitive society the husband is allowed to punish an unfaithful wife with death.”
When the first snow began to fly, we said goodbye to our mesa and rode into Tarpin. It took several days to outfit me for my journey to Washington. We bought a trunk (I’d never owned one in my life), and a supply of white shirts, an overcoat
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