Foxfire (43 page)

“Look!” she cried. “What's that?”

He cocked his gun, peering, expecting a rattler.

“No, higher—on the rock itself—something's drawn there!”

He followed her pointing finger, gave a smothered exclamation, and pulled out his flashlight. The yellow beam illumined a round object with feelers like a beetle, and an arrow to the left of it.

“Yes, it seems to be an Indian pictograph,” he said after a moment. He took out the Mimbreño's copper disk and compared the two symbols, while Amanda craned over his arm breathing hard. “They're the same!” she cried. “We
are
on the right track. I
knew
we were!”

He played the flashlight beam again on the rock. The figures had been incised, probably with an obsidian chip, deep into the surface of the granite, and there were faint traces of black pigment at the bottom of the grooves. It was clear enough now that the beetle-like object was really a sun with rays, the ancient symbol for a goodly place, a land with water and game. And the arrow next to it pointed north. “Yes, we're on the right track,” Dart said. And in that moment it seemed to him that a chill wind blew across his neck, and the hieroglyph above his head stared down at him malevolently, neither beetle nor sun but an unwinking, baleful eye. He recognized then the other factor in his earlier desire to turn back.

Am I after all a coward? he thought. Could it be that for all his education and practical Yankee intelligence, and despite his repudiation of the other racial strain, that superstition and taboo could still overpower him with the dark magic of fear!

He stood there by the pictograph, denying this fear, and disgusted to find that it did not lessen, that, instead, it seeped and spread like oily black water and mingled with another type of fear. He wheeled around suddenly, turning the flashlight on the slope below them, playing it from side to side along the granite wall.

“What is it?” said Amanda. “Why do you do that?”

He snapped off the flashlight. “Oh, it's nothing. Come on, let's get back to Hugh and tell him the news.” That sensation of being watched by eyes in the night was a common one in the wilderness. I'm turning jittery as an old woman, he thought, more than ever annoyed with himself, and into the rousing of Hugh and the narration of their discovery he put by way of compensation an uncharacteristic amount of enthusiasm.

And this Hugh, whose head was clearer now, did not fail to note.

“So all you needed after all, my dear Dart, was a tiny bit of confirmation to get as gold-bit as the rest of us,” he said disagreeably. “I've never seen you so gushing.”

“But, Hugh!” cried Amanda half laughing, “it's so thrilling. It's the first real certainty we've had.”

“I'm quite aware of that.” There was such venom in his tone that Amanda was silenced. She thought with some dismay that Hugh's extreme ill temper had not faded with his drunkenness as it usually did, and she wondered if he remembered anything of what he had said last night—the ramblings about Viola.

Hugh did know, the tiny watcher that never quite slept in him had known, and he hated the Dartlands for having listened.

During the night while they slept Hugh got up and made his way down behind the rocks to see the pictograph for himself, but he could not find it in the darkness, not knowing just where to look, and as he clambered amongst the rocks his foot slipped and his ankle suffered a nasty wrench. Tears came to his eyes from the sudden pain, and from rage at his impotence. He limped back to camp, sat down on his bedroll and examined his ankle. Nothing broken, anyway. He bound it up savagely with the ace bandage he had brought for emergencies. Just like that goddam burro, he thought, both of us crippled. He stared through the darkness at the sleeping Dartlands.

His body ached for a drink, as the pain in his ankle screamed for anodyne. He glared towards Dart again. God damn him to hell. He rummaged in the medical kit, and brought out a hypodermic syringe and a little bottle of clear liquid. He sterilized the needle in a match flame, and punctured his arm. Not too much, just enough to dull the edge of pain and increase clarity of thought. He had no intention of again dimming his faculties.

 

All the next day they hunted along the base of the granite cliffs in the direction of the arrow, and Hugh limped along with them, refusing any help from either Dart or Amanda. By four o'clock it seemed that they must give up and struggle back to the strip of grama grass where they had left the burro and their dwindling supplies.

The sun had beat down all day from a flaming copper sky onto their sweating backs, and both Hugh and Amanda, heedless of Dart's objections, had before noon finished the last drops of water in their canteens. During the afternoon hours Amanda learned the first terrifying forerunners of the tortures of thirst. Her tongue grew thick, and her lips, already dried from days of exposure, cracked in two places. She moistened her mouth with water from Dart's canteen, ashamed that she should have to accept it from him, and sucked as he directed on a dried raisin which he gave her. And none of them mentioned the scanty quart of water which was all that was left in the can back with the burro.

So this is what it's like, Amanda thought, this is what I've read about a hundred times. And yet she felt little fear. That was because of Dart. As long as he was with her she felt safe. That's a funny thing, she thought, becoming a little lightheaded, I must tell him he's safe and cool as water, a still, safe lake the wind can't ruffle, deep and never changing, I must tell him. But she could not tell him, she could not see him anywhere, nor call him, for her thickened tongue clogged in her mouth. She sat down on a stone and leaned her head against the granite.

“Andy!”

She opened her eyes to Dart's urgent voice. He held her head back and poured the rest of the water from his canteen into her mouth. “I've found it!—Come!”

She jumped to her feet, instantly revived, and Hugh came shuffling after them sullenly. They went only a little way farther, to an enormous diorite boulder that seemed to be part of the great cliff barrier and was not, for it was possible to squeeze behind it and up a slide rock slope to a crevice in the granite. A crevice wide enough for a man to pass through with outstretched arms.

It seemed to be a tunnel leading into blackness, but as they came up flush with the entrance they saw a glimpse of slanting light twenty feet ahead.

“The ‘portal'—” whispered Amanda, and she clutched Dart's arm. He stopped as she did, staring into the narrow rocky passage to the oblong of light at the far end.

Hugh came up to them, panting; it had taken him longer to climb up the slope behind the diorite boulder. He muttered something as he saw the two hesitate before the passage. He shoved roughly by them and limped through the darkness ahead. And they followed.

This crack in the igneous rock had been made a million years ago when the volcano still poured its lava down the mountain side, but the crack had been widened in places by the hand of man. There were the marks of flint axes alone: the walls.

The passage twisted and then widened. The three stepped out upon a ledge into the daylight.

“Ah—” whispered Amanda. Her knees weakened and her hands grew as cold as the rock she sank down on.

The forbidden valley lay below them, green and dark like jasper in the shadow of the overhanging cliffs. It was a tiny grassy park fringed with pines, stunted junipers, and golden aspens. At the far northern end a silver-white veil dropped down the canyon side, splashing crystal sparks into the shimmering air. Across the little canyon on the eastern wall, so near it seemed that she might reach across and touch it, a cavern yawned like a great mouth, enclosing a little city of stone. The slanting sun rays touched the square-piled buildings with rose and violet shadows. The buildings floated in a mist of enchantment infinitely still and awesome, breathing the solemnity of a past which still endures, frozen into sleep, yet ever awaiting the enchanter's wand.

During the time that they all stood silent on the ledge, the impact of the lost canyon engulfed them each in emotion. For Amanda it was the magic of the fairy tale, of nostalgic beauty yearned for and found, at the end of the rainbow—and she knew a moment of pure esthetic joy.

Dart felt no joy, except fleeting relief that here was water at last. He gazed across the canyon at the frozen city of the Ancient Ones, and he thought, Then it
is
here, and if it is really here, it is also forbidden, as Tanosay told me. And he was wearied of the conflict in his heart, he who had never before known conflict.

Hugh examined the valley and the pueblo in one quick, gleaming glance, and he jerked his head and smiled for the first time since they had left Lodestone. “Well, there's the cliff dwellings sure enough. How the hell do we get off this ledge and down to water? I never thought I'd think of water before gold!” And he laughed, a loud jubilant note.

Both Dartlands started and turned towards him. Dart gave himself an interior shake. His brooding eyes lightened.

“Yes, of course,” he said briskly. “Here, I think this must be the old trail.”

He picked a path down amongst the great boulders, fallen from the cliffs, until they reached the sparse fringe of ponderosa pines, and a few junipers and aspens. Beyond the trees lay a clearing in which grew grasses and mountain flowers; the scarlet phlox still blooming in patches like flame, and in the moistest spots near the creek bed the pale orchid of iris waved.

The fertile canyon, not half a mile long, was watered throughout most of its length, until the creek, fed by a spring above the waterfall, disappeared underground to trickle into some subterranean flow beneath the mountain.

Amanda and Dart and Hugh made for the nearest point on the creek. They threw themselves down on the bank and snuffled up the water like animals until they were satisfied, then Dart lit a cigarette and said with decision, “I'm going back to get that wretched burro, we need the bedding and grub, too. I should be able to do it in a couple of hours now I know the way. You two make a fire and wait here.”

“Good God,” cried Hugh, “you're nuts if you think I'm going to sit on my can, with the gold so near. I'm going up there—- ” he jerked his chin down the canyon towards the cliff dwelling.

“With that ankle?” asked Dart quietly. Hugh had unbound his leg and was bathing it in the stream. The foot and ankle were bright purple and swollen to twice normal size. “You give it a rest until tomorrow, Hugh, the gold won't run away. It's been there quite a while. Besides, there's apt to be plenty rattlers in a place like that. You don't want to explore in the dark.”

Hugh knew that Dart was right. He muttered angrily, but he subsided, nursing his ankle and staring up towards the cliff dwelling four hundred feet above and straight up a precipitous slope of slide rock.

“I'll find some firewood,” said Amanda, at once uneasy when Dart had left them. “It'll be nice to have a fire again.” She walked quickly up and down the banks of the creek, picking up pieces of dried juniper and twigs. As the shadows fell heavier on the valley and the warm colors lent by the sun disappeared, she lost the sensation of magical beauty. The cliff dwelling became a jumble of grotesque square teeth on the lower jaw of the cavernous black maw. She avoided looking at it. She gathered wood enough and started a fire beside Hugh, but she could not settle down to enjoy the warmth. She chewed dried raisins and jerky and ate two of the Hershey bars from her knapsack, drank more water, and still the gnawing discomfort did not cease.

She wandered further up the canyon in nervous search for more firewood and saw ahead near a clump of buckbrush what seemed to be a cluster of white sticks and a round white stone, glimmering in the half light. She came nearer, staring curiously, and bent over to pull up one of the smooth sticks. It was attached to its fellows, and as she pulled, all the other curving sticks moved with it, and the round stone rolled off a little distance on the grass.

Then Amanda saw what she held in her hand, and she jumped back giving a sharp cry. It was the bleached rib cage of a skeleton at which she had been tugging, and the round stone was the skull.

She rubbed her hand violently back and forth against her levis, still feeling the chalky rough surface she had touched. Panic waves washed over her, and receded.

Stupid to be so frightened. The bleached skeleton must have been there a long, long time. She crept back presently to stare down at the bones in fascinated horror. She saw a small, dark object wedged between two of the ribs near the crumbling spine. She hesitated, then snapped on her little flashlight and bent nearer. The dark object was a flint arrowhead, and near it on the ground beneath the rib cage she saw a dull gleam and a flash of shiny black.

She reached down, careful not to touch the bones, and drew up the second object. It was a heavy onyx crucifix, with the figure of the Christ carved in elaborate, tarnished silver.

She put the crucifix in her pocket and walked slowly back to camp. Her legs were trembling. She sat down by the fire, gazing into the bright flames. “I didn't really believe it before—” she whispered to herself.

“What are you mumbling about?” Hugh snapped, closing the medical kit. He had just given himself another hypodermic.

She raised her hand in an almost helpless gesture, then let it drop on her knee. “I've just found the skeleton of Padre Rodriguez,” she said, “the one who was slain by an arrow from the skies. It did happen like that. It
all
happened....”

“Well bully for us! What the hell do you think we're doing here anyway unless we believed the story, you little dope? I've always believed it and so most certainly did you.” He snapped a match and lit himself another cigarette.

“I don't know—” she said, still gazing into the fire. “I believed in a dream, I was in love with the bright beckoning flower—it's a strange thing when a dream comes true, I don't think they're meant to—at least not here—not like this.”