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 three. 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.”