Ernest was strolling around the parade ground, waiting for them, and shook hands heartily all around. If it happened that his grasp of Fatty’s plump and dimpled paw was enough closer to make the owner give a faint squawk of surprise and pain, it did not seem that Ernest was conscious of it. He smiled blindly and pumped Bill’s skinny arm up and down. Bill did not seem to mind.
After showing the boys all around the camp proper, they walked to the highest part of the cantonment and Ernest pointed out in the distant hills where the caves were to be found.
Kentucky is full of caves, and every little while someone will discover new ones. These, Ernest stated, had been but slightly explored. They had found dangerous drops and passages in the ones that had been opened, and the others had been forbidden. A sign “No Trespassing” shut them off but Ernest thought that after lunch the boys ought to go over and see what they could.
“Why not go now?” asked Eddie. “Then this afternoon we can go swimmin’.”
“That’s all right, too,” said Ernest.
They strolled slowly across fields, down and up dusty roads, and over barbed wire fences that invariably took toll of blood from Fatty. After an abrupt scramble up a steep hillside and around a jagged curve that looked impassable a few feet away, they came into a region filled with overhanging, broken masses of rocks, with dark, forbidding holes yawning at them here and there. As they walked on they saw that a number of the openings were marked “Dangerous.” Finally they came to one that looked as though it had been well traveled.
“We had better not go in,” said Ernest. “It isn’t safe without a flashlight.”
Bill produced one. “Frank and I always carry one apiece for fear we will have night trouble with the flivver,” he explained.
“Good enough!” said Ernest. He took the flash and led the way into the cave. “I will lead,” he said. “I have been in here a dozen times!”
The cave, as caves in Kentucky go, was small but strictly up to specifications. The first space or chamber was scarcely head high and only about eight feet square. This was fairly well lighted from the opening and was littered with lunch papers and boxes, and in the center there was the blackened coals of a fire someone had built. From this they went single file through a narrow and twisted passage for fully twenty feet. They found that they were going down a gentle incline. Strange to say, the air was pure and clear; and a soft breeze fanned their faces. It was gloriously cool.