No cliff dwellings had been seen and the men were beginning to lose faith in the stories of their guide. As dusk was settling over the canyon, the men stood about their campfire.
“Moss,” one of the men questioned, “where are those ruins that you have been telling us about?”
“Right up there,” Moss replied, with a swing of his arm that took in the whole out-of-doors.
Unimpressed, the men stepped away from the campfire and began to scan the cliffs above. In the bottom of the canyon they stood in the gathering shadows of twilight but far above the cliffs were lighted by the last dying embers of the setting sun. Suddenly the men saw what John Moss had not even suspected when he had said, “Right up there.”
In the topmost cliff was a cave and in it, standing out in bold relief against the shadowy background, were small stone houses. Moss was right—there was a ruin “up there.”
In spite of the growing darkness the men scrambled up the canyon walls. Just as total darkness fell, two of them entered the little cliff dwelling. It was the earliest known discovery of a Mesa Verde cliff dwelling by white men.
The next morning Jackson and his men returned to the ruin and photographed it. Two-Story Cliff House they named it because of a splendidly-built, two-story structure it contained. Excitedly they climbed about the small village, poking into every dark corner. In the debris of the cluttered rooms they found things that aided them in their wild speculations about the vanished people; pottery, corn cobs, stone tools—the Mesa Verde was beginning to give up its secrets.
Today Two-Story Cliff House still clings to the face of its cliff. It has changed little since Jackson saw it and few men have entered it since that fatal day when the Indians left it behind.
Long ago the people of Two-Story House were neighbors of the people of Cliff Palace, the great cliff dwelling toward which we are moving. To them it must have been a metropolis, a great city, the largest they ever knew. It took only an hour for them to trot up the canyon to the larger community. Often the men of the little village must have slung their prized possessions over their shoulders and set out for Cliff Palace on trading and gambling expeditions. It was “big town” to them.
