They came to a grotto that might have been brown marble, whose curious carvings he had no time to study. From this they had to crawl on hands and knees through an opening into another twisting pa.s.sageway, floored with muddy water and barely high enough for them to stand erect. Their voices echoed and reechoed. Then came arches of stalact.i.tes almost meeting the stalagmites beneath them, through which they edged their way as through a frozen forest.
This opened into a vast cavern hung as with icicles of alabaster, which their torch light warmed to onyx.
"If these fellows weren"t so free with their knives," Pedro told himself, "it would be an adventure worth having. But they certainly have too much dynamite in their dispositions to suit me,"--for the Mexicans were now quarreling among themselves. The boy and the old man were for turning back before they lost themselves,--for at every turn there were branching ways.
But Sanchez, the heavy-handed, was for going on,--and on they went, shivering in the unaccustomed chill.
Pedro wondered what the rescue party would do when they found them gone.
If only he could leave some sign of his whereabouts! Could he drop his handkerchief at one turning of the ways, his hat at another, without detection? Or was it already too late? Why had he not thought of that before?--Tucking one torch into the crook of the other elbow for a moment, he dropped his bandanna as again they took the left-hand of two turns.
But now their little flare of light revealed a blind pa.s.sageway. The water-worn rock had been hollowed out by some eddying pool, no doubt, while the main stream had flown on past. How he wished he knew more of cave formations! Should he find opportunity to escape, how would he ever find his way out again?
Retracing their steps, they took the right hand turn. Here was another high roofed vault,--he could not see how high, he could only guess from the reverberation of their voices,--whose stalact.i.tes had become great pillars that gleamed yellowly. The floor sloped toward them till they had stiff climbing. On one wall was a limestone formation like a frozen cataract. And thrust into the wall beside it he saw a torch stick. Who had left it there, and what ages ago, he wondered? In this cavern some of the stalact.i.tes hung as huge as tree trunks, and had not Sanchez bade the others keep an extra eye on him, the lad might easily have hid behind one.
Some of these huge pillars were cracked with age, and again the thought occurred to him that if only he might insert himself into one of the cracks,--a few were all of a foot in width,--he could easily escape detection in that uncertain light. But now he was under surveillance every instant. Besides, (tardy thought), was he not pledged to keep an eye on the villains? He smiled through his fears at the recollection that they, not he, were captive.
Meantime Ace and Radcliffe, (leaving Ted to sleep off his exhaustion in the cave mouth), were examining the onyx cavern and the ground outside for some sign as to what had happened, and which way Pedro and the Mexicans had gone. Radcliffe had his electric flash, and at the turn of the winding pa.s.sageway discovered scratches on the sandstone floor where the burros had left hoof marks. But had they taken the turn to the right or that to the left? There were hoof prints both going and coming, in each pa.s.sageway. Which had been made the more recently? They could not tell.
Ace hoped that the Ranger would propose each following a different direction, but instead, Radcliffe remarked that they ought to have brought a ball of twine to unwind as they went, as people had been known to get lost in unknown caves, and stay lost for days. The best alternative was to make a rough map of their turnings in his note-book.
They advanced along the right hand pa.s.sageway, whose breath seemed like that of another world from that of the parched mountain side,--cool and moist and wonderfully exhilarating. Had it not been for his uneasiness as to Pedro"s whereabouts, Ace would have enjoyed this expedition into the unexplored. His was a nature that craved the tang of adventure, even more than most. It was one of the things that had led him to take up geology, for in the U. S. Geological Survey his life would lead him, likely, to far places.
He wished, though, that Ted were with them. A good pal certainly doubles one"s enjoyments.
They had gone what seemed like miles, (though cave miles are deceptive, so completely is one cut off from s.p.a.ce and time), bearing always to the right, when Radcliffe"s light suddenly burned out, leaving them in primeval darkness. At first breath they tried to laugh at their predicament, then the utter blackness seemed to press upon them till it suffocated, and Ace suppressed a sudden desire to scream. His panic moment was dissipated by Radcliffe"s discovery of a bit of candle. Ace had, of course, that most important part of a camper"s equipment, a waterproof match-box, linked to his belt, and in it a few matches. But even then it meant going back the way they had come, for without a good light they could do nothing. Perhaps it was just as well, for they were bound on no hour"s adventure, and should have brought food as well. How Radcliffe wished he had his acetylene lamp!
To their surprise they found Norris at the cave mouth trying to arrange his coat under the sleeping Ted. And around him lay the coiled lariat he had taken from the saddle-horn of Ted"s recent mount, also three canteens, some cooked food, and a supply of hard candles from the fire crew supplies. There were also the boys" sweaters,--Radcliffe, of course, had his woolen uniform,--and to cap the climax, a ball of twine and the Ranger"s pet lamp, with its tin of carbide powder.
To their amazed query Norris explained that he had explored dozens of caves in his time, including some hundreds of miles of that honeycomb formation that underlies a portion of Kentucky, to say nothing of the caverns of the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia, the Black Hills of South Dakota, and the Ozarks. Of the caves of California, however, he as yet knew nothing.
Had he not been needed to head the fire crew, he would have loved nothing better than to have gone with them.
"I knew this was a cave region," he told them as they ate and refreshed themselves before going back into the black depths--for they had been gone several hours, it seemed. "Fissured limestone--I noticed it yesterday when we were down here trying to back-fire. Then what feeds the Kawa? Not these little flood creeks that dry up almost before the spring floods are over. Where does all that snow water go to? Some underground pa.s.sageway, of course. It seeps through the porous rock to subterranean channels. By the way, I see there are tracks of muddy feet inside here, and _your_ feet are dry! The mud must have been left by the Mexicans."
"That"s a fact!" exclaimed Radcliffe. "Ace, did you notice any mud along that pa.s.sageway? Then we surely took the wrong turn."
"Not necessarily," said Norris. "They might have _come_ from some muddy cavern, but gone back another way. However, I was going to give you a little idea of the probable layout of a cave. This one, if--as I suspect--it feeds the Kawa--likely descends to other levels, till the lowest one is very nearly on that of the river. Seeping through, here and there, the rains and melting snows probably collect into a stream."
"Wish you could go with us, old chap," said the Ranger. "But----"
"You"ll get along all right, with these things," sighed Norris, "and if you don"t show up again within a few hours, we"ll follow your twine," and he tied one end of the cord ball to a manzanita bush, handing the ball to Ace. At that moment Ted awoke and insisted that he join them. Norris reluctantly returned to the fire crew.
CHAPTER VII
THE CAVE
Electing the turn to the left, Radcliffe led the way with his carbide lamp. Ace and Ted followed with their candles.
This time their choice was quickly verified by the discovery of the burros, standing patiently with their packs before the pool. (That accounted for the muddy footprints.) Skirting this on the shelving ledge as had Pedro and the Mexicans, they traversed the winding pa.s.sageway that led to the grotto of brown cauliflower-like encrustations. But here, when they found that the left-hand pa.s.sageway meant going on hands and knees, they chose the other turn. (They came that near to catching up with the fugitives!)
With the suddenness of events in a dream, they came into a vast chamber that at first glimpse, lighted as it was by the carbide lamp, gave the impression of a baronial ruin. The boys whistled simultaneously under their breath. At the far end stood a huge stone elephant,--or so it appeared at the first startled glance,--and beside him a gnome and several weird beasts vaguely reminiscent of the monsters of prehistoric times.
When Ted could speak, he whispered, "What are they? Fossils?"
Ace laughed. "I should say not. They"re nothing but dripstone, can"t you see?--They"d be "some fossils"! Why, if we could find just one fossil as big as that, our fortunes would be made--absolutely."
"Gee! Then I"m sure going to keep my eyes peeled."
"I thought," put in Radcliffe, "that fossils were little stone worms.
I"ve found those aplenty."
"Fossils," explained Ace, (fresh from first-year geology), "are any remains of plants or animals that lived, either on land or in the sea, in ancient times. A lot of those we find to-day were sh.e.l.l-fish and other marine life."
"Gee!" grinned Ted, "doesn"t he talk like a professor? I"m going to call you professor after this, old Scout!"
"Go on," the Ranger urged, ignoring this sally, "I"m interested."
"So am I, honestly," amended Ted contritely.
"There were land animals, too, that got buried in the acc.u.mulating sediments and fossilized. Times when the ocean over-ran the land, they got drifted into it, and sank, and got buried under the sands that made our sandstones----"
"This floor is sandstone!" interpolated Ted.
"Yes. Or they got buried in the ground-up sh.e.l.ls that made our limestone,--like the walls of the cave,--or some of them were buried in mud."
"I suppose," offered Ted facetiously, "that the mud made mudstones," and he laughed till his voice echoed and reechoed startlingly.
"Ha, ha! You"re right!" Ace turned the laugh on him. "Go to the head of the cla.s.s. I"ll show you mudstone when we come to it."
"Why, then," ventured the Ranger, "this must be a topping place to find fossils."
"Provided," Ace admitted, "the cave is not of too recent formation. But as I was about to say," (seeing their undoubted interest), "geologists can just about piece together the history of the earth from the fossils that have been found, but no one locality gives it all. They have found part of the story in America and part in Africa, and parts in Europe and Asia. And from that series of fossils--and some other evidence--scientists have about agreed that since the earth was formed, about twenty whole mountain ranges, one after another, must have been formed and worn away almost to sea level."
"How do they make that out?" Ted looked skeptical.
"That"s another long story. I"m no professor. But----"
"You can"t prove it."
"Neither can you disprove it, any more than you can the conclusions on which astronomy, higher mathematics, any of the sciences--are based."
"I suppose so! Gee, I"d like to study those things for myself!" sighed Ted, seating himself beside the others on a dry ledge while they ate their sandwiches.
"Find a valuable fossil and you"ve earned a college education," Ace challenged him. "And you know, fossils are not necessarily fish or insects or skeletons or tree trunks that have been turned to stone."