Well, of course, I wanted to go in, right then, but I knew it would not be safe to go into such a strange place alone. I had no idea of what I might find, or what trouble I might encounter.
By this time the sun was well off the horizon and I thought perhaps I had better get back to Sam and console him lest he think I had deserted him. I looked up the old dirt road towards Carlsbad to see if I could see any signs of Brown returning, but all was quiet.
I reasoned he would spend the night in Carlsbad and get an early morning start for the return trip, which would get him here a little before noon or so.
"Sam," I called out, "how is everything down there?"
"Get me out," he pleaded. "I've had all I want of this. I'm never going into a cave again."
I was quite excited about the larger cave I had just discovered and, of course, I wanted to tell Sam all about it, but when he said he never wanted to go into a cave again, I figured maybe he was in no mood to listen, let alone share my enthusiasm.
The best plan, it seemed, was to get his mind off his predicament so I tried to get him to talk about other things. He kept talking about how dark and cold it was down there in the hole, and when would Brown come back so that he could get out and why was he so foolish as to listen to me in the first place.
All this time I was eager to return to the new, big cave where all the bats were, yet I didn't want to leave Sam alone any more as I could see he was getting madder all the time. So the morning dragged on for him and for me as well.
Every few minutes he would call out to me and ask me to look and see if there was any sign of Brown. I had to keep saying no, but to say anything else would have raised false hopes, and I just couldn't do that.
About noon I noticed a cloud of dust on the horizon in the direction of Carlsbad, and as I watched it I could see it was getting bigger. That meant Brown was almost here. When I told Sam, he suddenly came to life again. I guess he felt like the condemned man who has just received a pardon.