The pueblo seemed to be nothing more than a jumble of adobe boxes piled in an indiscriminate heap on a gigantic stone level surmounting the crest of a hill. A sheer rock wall, perhaps a hundred feet in height, descended to the surrounding slopes; the latter sweeping down to join the plains. A dust, light, dry, and feathery lay thickly on the adobe boxes on the surrounding ledge on the slopes, like a gray ash sprinkled from a giant sifter. Cactus and yucca dotted the slopes, thorny, lancelike, repellent; lava, dull, hinting of volcanic fire, filled crevices and depressions, and huge blocks of stone, detached in the progress of disintegration, were scattered about.
“It has taken ages for this to happen!” the Judge heard himself murmuring.
Trevison laughed lowly. “So it has, Judge. Makes you think of your school days, doesn’t it? You hardly remember it, though. You have a hazy sort of recollection of a print of a pueblo in a geography, or in a geological textbook, but at the time you were more interested in Greek roots, the Alps, Louis Quinze, the heroes of mythology, or something equally foreign, and you forgot that your own country might hold something of interest for you. But the history of these pueblo towns must be pretty interesting, if one could get at it. All that I have heard of it are some pretty weird legends. There can be no doubt, I suppose, that the people who inhabited these communal houses had laws to govern them—and judges to apply the laws. And I presume that then, as now, the judges were swayed by powerful influences in—”
The Judge glared at his tormentor. The latter laughed.
“It is reasonable to presume, too,” he went on, “that in some cases the judges rendered some pretty raw decisions. And carrying the supposition further, we may believe that then, as now, the poor downtrodden proletariat got rather hot under the collar. There are always some hot-tempered fools among all classes and races that do, you know. They simply can’t stand the feel of the iron heel of the oppressor. Can you picture a hot-tempered fool of that tribe abducting a judge of the court of his people and carrying him away to some uninhabited place, there to let him starve until he decided to do the right thing?”
“Starve!” gasped the Judge.
“The chambers and tunnels connecting these communal houses—they look like mud boxes, don’t they, Judge? And there isn’t a soul in any of them—nor a bite to eat! As I was about to remark, the chambers and tunnels and the passages connecting these places are pretty bare and cheerless—if we except scorpions, horned toads, centipedes, tarantulas—and other equally undesirable occupants. Not a pleasant place to sojourn in until—How long can a man live without eating, Judge? You know, of course, that the Indians selected an elevated and isolated site, such as this, because of its strategical advantages? This makes an ideal fort. Nobody can get into it except by negotiating the slope we came up last night. And a rifle in the hands of a man with a yearning to use it would make that approach pretty unsafe, wouldn’t it?”
“My God!” moaned the Judge; “you talk like a man bereft of his senses!”
“Or like a man who is determined not to be robbed of his rights,” added Trevison. “Well, come along. We won’t dwell on such things if they depress you.”
He took the Judge’s arm and escorted him. They circled the broad stone ledge. It ran in wide, irregular sweeps in the general outline of a huge circle, surrounded by the dust-covered slopes melting into the plains, so vast that the eye ached in an effort to comprehend them. Miles away they could see smoke befouling the blue of the sky. The Judge knew the smoke came from Manti, and he wondered if Corrigan were wondering over his disappearance. He mentioned that to Trevison, and the latter grinned faintly at him.