FINDING A WAY UP

That night they kept no fire going. Frank seemed to think it best that they remain quiet, so as not to announce their presence in the neighborhood. Though for that matter, it would seem that if any one were perched aloft in one of those slits in the face of the cliff, that represented the windows of the cave dwellings, the entire canyon below must be spread out like a book.

Nothing happened to disturb them. Once Frank thought he heard a distant shout, and this excited his curiosity not a little. According to what Charley Moi said they were now in a neighborhood where ordinary tourists never visited.

He thought of the two sheriffs and the lawless men they were pursuing. Could it be possible that they were destined to run across those desperate characters sooner or later?

The thought was a disquieting one. It served to make Frank wakeful, and his restlessness was communicated to Bob, although the latter did not know what caused it.

But if the fugitives from justice were loitering around in that particular part of the Grand Canyon, either hiding from the determined sheriffs, or looking for rich quarry, neither they or anyone else disturbed the camp of the saddle boys.

Again, in the morning, Charley Moi lighted a fire, and made ready to prepare a modest breakfast. As Bob had said, their supplies were running low, and unless something happened very soon the Chinaman would have to be dispatched to the nearest store to replenish the food.

Still thinking of the sound he had heard during the night, and which he believed must have been a human voice, rather than the cry of some wild animal, Frank, while they sat cross-legged around the fire, eating the scanty meal, addressed himself to the Chinaman.

"How many times have you come up this far, Charley Moi?" he asked.

The other commenced to figure on his fingers. Having no counting board, used so frequently by his countrymen in laundries, until they get accustomed to the habits of the white man, he took this means of tabulating.

"Allee fingers and this much over," and he held up the first and second fingers of one hand.

"Ten and two, making twelve in all," declared Bob. "Well, you have served the man-with-the-bald-head faithfully and long, Charley."

"And in all these times I suppose you've never known anybody to be around here?" Frank went on.

Charley shook his head in the negative.

"White man, no. Sometime Moqui come 'long, make for stlore down canlon get glub. See same two, thlee times. Charley Moi see old Moqui last night," the Chinaman replied.

"What's that you say?" demanded Frank, hastily. "That you saw a Moqui last night, and after we had come to halt right here?"

"Thatee so," grinned the other, as though pleased to feel that he was able to interest Frank so readily.

"Just when did this happen, Charley Moi?" pursued the other.

"Flank, Blob, down by river, make muchee look-look in glass," answered Charley.

"Now, what d'ye think of that?" ejaculated Bob, in disgust. "While we were away from camp for ten minutes, something happened. Why couldn't it have come about when we were on deck? There's a fine chance lost to get track of Havasupai; for I reckon you believe the same as I do, Frank, and that the old Moqui whom Charley saw was our Indian?"

"Seems like it, Bob," replied the other, "but don't cry yet. Perhaps it may not be too late to remedy matters. See here, Charley Moi, could you show me just where you saw this Moqui last?"

The yellow-skinned guide smirked, and nodded his head until his pigtail bobbed up and down like a bell rope.

"Easy do," he observed, beginning to get upon his feet.

"Come along Bob," remarked Frank. "We'd all better be present. Three heads are better than one when it comes to a question of deciding what's to be done."

"Do you think you can track him, Frank?" questioned the Kentucky boy, eagerly.

"I'm going to try," was all Frank would say; for he was very modest with regard to his accomplishments as a son of the prairie.

Charley Moi was as good as his word. He seemed to remember just where he had happened to spy the passing Indian when looking up from the making of the fire. The Moqui had paid no attention to him; indeed, at the time he was creeping past as though taking advantage of the absence of the two boys in order to make a circuit of the camp near the big cliff.

"Find 'em Frank?" asked Bob, after he had seen his chum bending down over the ground for half a minute.

"Yes, and they are the tracks of an Indian too, for they toe in," Frank replied. "Besides, they are made by moccasins instead of shoes or boots with heels. And if I needed any further proof to tell me our friend Havasupai made these tracks, and not a strange Moqui, I have it in the queer patch across the toe of his right moccasin, which I noticed when he was with us before."

"That's just fine!" Bob exclaimed, filled with pride over the way in which his chum seemed able to fix the facts so that they could not be questioned. "And will you start after him right away, Frank?"

"Watch me; that's all," came the reply, as Frank began to move away, still bending low in order to follow the faint traces of footprints on the rock and scanty soil.

The others came close at his heels, Bob with a look of assurance on his face, because he felt positive that the game would now be tracked to its hiding place; and Charley Moi picturing his wonder on his moon-like countenance.

So the prairie lad led them in and out among the rocks, and the scrub that grew close to the verge of the river. Several times he seemed a little in doubt, as the marks faded entirely away; but on such occasions his common-sense came to the rescue, and, after a look around, Frank was able to once more find the trail.

"Here's where it ends!"

When Frank made this remark Bob could not keep from expressing his surprise.

He gaped upward at the bare-faced wall that arose for hundreds of feet, without any particular ledge or outcropping where even a nimble Indian could find safe lodgment for his moccasined feet.

"But, Frank, however could the old Moqui get up there to see Uncle Felix?" he asked. "D'ye suppose he made some sort of signal, and the hermit lowered a long rope with a noose at the end, which would draw him up? Wow! excuse me from ever trying to fly in that way! It would make me so dizzy I'd be sure to drop, and get smashed."

"You're beating on the wrong track, Bob," remarked the other. "No rope could be lowered all that distance; and even if it could no one man would be able to pull another all the way up."

"But there must be some way of getting to the place where the slits in the face of the cliff tell of windows. However do you think he did it, Frank?"

"Just because you don't happen to see a ladder, Bob, is no evidence there isn't a way to mount upward. One thing about this great cliff I guess you didn't happen to notice. That shows you pass things by. Look again, and you'll see that it seems to have been split by some volcanic smash, ages ago. There's a regular crevice running slantingly up the face of the rock. You see it now, don't you?"

"Sure I do; and I was blind not to take notice of the same before," Bob replied. "Fact is, I did see that uneven mark, but just thought it was a fault in the make of the cliff, as a miner would say."

"Well, that crack extends four-fifths of the way up to the top; and far enough to reach the place where we noticed all those dark marks, which we believed must be windows of the many rooms or houses of the cliff dwellers. Get that, Bob?"

"Sure I do, Frank, and after your explanation I can see what you're aiming at. But where does that ragged crevice start from down here, do you think?"

Frank stepped forward. Just as if he had it all figured out, he bent down, and with his hand drew aside the bushes that grew against the base of the cliff.

"Well, I declare, there it is for a fact!" exclaimed Bob, as he saw a rough opening before him, which came almost together five feet from the ground, leaving only a dark, uneven, slanting line that crawled up the face of the cliff like the photograph of a zigzag bolt of lightning taken with a snapshot camera.

"There you are," said Frank, with a broad smile. "Unless all signs fail, here's the entrance to the mysterious Echo Cave. We have been more than lucky to find it with so little trouble."

"Just to think of it," remarked Bob, as he bent over to look up into the gap as well as he was able; "here's where the queer old Professor has been hiding for all this time, and no one any the wiser. But Frank, however in the wide world do you suppose he found out the way to get up there?"

"We would have found it sooner or later, even if Charley Moi had not seen the old Indian moving along," replied Frank, with the confidence of one who knows what he is talking about.

"Y—yes, I reckon we would, after you'd prowled around a little, and had some chance to look the ground over. Then you believe he must have found the presence of those windows looking out of the cliff just like we did; by using a powerful glass? And, thinking that here was the very place for him to hide and study, he set about looking for the road up, and found it, very likely."

"He did it by using common sense, and applying all he knew about the ways of these people of the long ago," replied Frank. "And you can see that if he chose, he could have thrown that bottle out of one of the openings up there, so that it would drop in the passing current of the Colorado, to be carried down-stream until somebody saw it; and finding the message to my father, sent or carried it to Circle Ranch."

"Well," observed Bob, with a gleam in his eye, "now that we've found a way to get up to Echo Cave, have we the nerve to start in?"Contents