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 passageway. 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 stalactites 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 stalactites 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 passageway 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 passageway. 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 passageway, 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.