The lazy clouds above the valley blossomed suddenly into radiant hues. The gaunt hills blushed and the cañons all seemed bathed in crimson and yellow flames. As through the narrow window of a belfry tower, Abington gazed down on a world of magnificent peaks and crags flaunting their bold reds and yellow beneath a redder sunrise.
For the moment the scene held him, then he turned back to the problem of finding a way out; for although a glimpse of the outside world was heartening, he could not squeeze through an eight-inch split in the rock. There must be some other exit. He turned away from the window and went on.
The passage took another twist and he entered a roughly outlined room into which the daylight seeped through several fissures between the shattered blocks of sandstone; high overhead most of them were, although two or three were low enough to serve as narrow windows.
A square boulder, the top hollowed in the shape of a rounded trough, stood in the center of the chamber. Otherwise the room was empty, unless the intricate mass of carved symbols might be classed as furnishings, for the walls were covered with them.
Abington’s spirits rose, though he paid little attention to the writings. To him they proved, as did the boulder which he recognized as a sacrificial altar, that this was a chamber much used by the ancients. Since the route by which he had entered could not be called a thoroughfare, there would be another way out, possibly several.
Within two minutes he had found the passage, and something else. There on the rock floor which slanted down from the chamber on the side opposite the one by which he had entered, was a cigarette stub; it was one of the oval kind he himself always smoked. He stooped and picked it up, his black eyebrows lifted in surprise.
“Never reached this point yesterday—h’m! Bill not only borrowed my gun and went hunting last night, but did a little exploring on his own account. Looking for me, perhaps. No, Bill was scouting around for himself. H’m! Growing surly and quarrelsome, pretending a distrust he can’t actually feel, hoping I’d give him an excuse to turn on me. Wonder, now, if Bill didn’t raid his own cave and hide the stuff!
“A full burro load of grub—with gun and ammunition he could live all winter—h’m!” He went on: “Looking now for a hideout—place where I can’t find him! Bill, my lad, you should pay more attention to details; one little oversight—such as a cigarette stub—has hanged a man before now. A good inch and a half of tobacco wasted here. You’ll be wanting a cigarette very badly, Bill, before you get another supply, remember.”
He laid the stub down where he had found it and went on, haggard eyes peering this way and that, seeking further signs of the traitor’s presence. If Bill had been looking for his partner, then it was an odd twist of circumstance that had sent them both wandering around in the same labyrinth of caves and complicated katabothra without once permitting them to meet. If, on the other hand, Bill had been hunting a hiding place which Abington would never find—and the archaeologist was certain this was the case—he had a surprise in store.
Just now Abington wanted most of all to get out of there and find his way back to their camp, where there should be food. If not—well, he had his automatic; he had seen game; and he was a fairly accurate shot. He would not starve.