Jack, the Young Ranchman: A Boy's Adventures in the Rockies

by George Bird Grinnell

By this time the morning was pretty well gone, and he hesitated whether to go home for dinner, or to spend the afternoon here beneath the cliffs. Finally he determined to ride up the ravine a little further, on the chance of seeing more of this scattered brood, and then, if he did not find any, to go home.

Following up the valley a short distance, a grouse rose under Pawnee's feet, and flew up the hillside, alighting among some low pines that grew at the very base of the cliff. Jack thought the bird might have gone into a tree, and clambered up on the chance of getting a shot. When he reached the pines he could not find the bird, and after looking for it a little while, he sat down to rest, and to watch some little striped squirrels that were playing among the rocks just above him. While he sat watching the squirrels, he suddenly heard a rushing sound, so close to his ear that he dodged, and a great hawk, with long tail and sharp pointed wings, darted over one of the squirrels, and in an instant rose in the air with the tiny creature in its talons. It had happened so quickly that Jack hardly realised the squirrel's capture until he saw the hawk rise, and with a few strong strokes of its wings, swing up and alight on a shelf of the cliff, above the tops of the tall pines that grew on the hillside. Here the blue rock was stained white, and Jack made up his mind that the hawk had a nest there. He determined to climb up and see if he could not get to it, and learn what was in it. There might be young birds, and these would make capital pets if they could be tamed. It seemed a long way up to where the hawk sat, and the cliff looked sheer as a wall, but here and there were crevices and places where the water had worn away the rock, and he thought that perhaps he could get up to the nest.

The climb to the base of the cliff was long and slow. When he reached it he saw that it would be impossible to get far up if he carried his gun with him, so he left it here, resting against a rock, and clambered up toward the nest for thirty or forty feet, and then he reached a place where he could get no further. But a little below, he had passed a narrow shelf, running out to one side, and going down to this, he made his way very carefully under the cliff to a crevice, up which he worked a short distance, and then this ran out and ended in a bare, smooth wall. He would have to give it up: the nest could not be reached. He thought it would be shorter and easier to follow the crevice down to the steep hillside at the foot of the cliff, instead of going back along the shelf, as he had come. Going down was easy, until he had almost reached the foot of the wall, and could see, five or six feet below him, ground on which he could walk. Here the crevice ended. It was rather a long jump down to the ground, and that sloped off so sharply that he did not feel sure that if he jumped he could stop himself. He turned around, therefore, and let himself down backward, feeling with his toes for some little knob of rock on which to rest his feet, but, as he let himself down the rock all seemed smooth, and he could find no foothold. He was now clinging by the ends of his fingers to the rock above, too far down to draw himself up again, and yet with his feet a foot or more above the ground. There was nothing for it but to let himself go, and he dropped. The slope which his feet struck was too steep for a foothold. He fell over backward, and rolled thirty or forty feet down the slope, bringing up in a clump of bushes.

Jack was a little shaken and bruised by his roll, but not hurt. He picked himself up and looked back at the way he had come, and congratulated himself that it had been no worse. He started to climb up the slope again to get his gun, but first it was necessary that he should get out of the brush into which he had rolled. To his right there seemed a place where the bushes were thinner than those over which he had passed on his way down, and he turned in this direction to make the ascent. He had gone only a few steps when he stopped, for there before him was a great dark hole in the side of the hill. It was shaped almost like a door, high, and not very wide, and within all seemed black. Grass and bushes grew up in the entrance, and there was no sign that anything ever passed in or out.

This hole looked rather mysterious to Jack, and he wondered what there could be in it. He walked up to it and looked as hard as he could into the blackness, but he could see nothing. He wanted very much to go in, yet it was useless to do so unless he could see something when he got there. "If I only had a lantern now," thought Jack, "or even a candle, I could go in and see what is there. I'll bet no one at the ranch knows of this cave, and I'd like to find out all about it and tell them. That would be a good story to take back." He thought for awhile, and decided that he must make a torch; but what could he make it of? For a little while he could think of nothing to use. He remembered that in the books that he had read, people had always had birch bark for torches, or fat with which to make candles, but he had neither. Then he thought of pine torches of which he had read. There were plenty of pines growing here on the mountain, but nothing that he could make a torch of. Suddenly he remembered that dried pine needles burn brightly, though only for a little while, and that on the ground not far from here he had seen a half dozen pine limbs, twisted off from one of the trees in some heavy wind storm. He thought if he could tie a good many bunches of these needles together, they would make a torch for him. He crept out of the underbrush and saw near by several of these pine limbs, with the dried red needles on them, and he picked a number of the bunches. Now he needed some string. "If I only had Pawnee here," he thought, "I could take the strings from my saddle;" but Pawnee was feeding far below him in the valley. As he cast his eye about him, in perplexity, he saw a yucca plant growing on the slope, and he remembered what Hugh had told him about using the fibre of this plant for thread. He climbed up to it, cut off a number of the long bayonet-shaped leaves, selected a straight dead stick, and went back to his pile of pine needles. Splitting the tough leaves of the yucca, he found that they could be used as strings, and with these strings he bound his bunches of pine needles, one beneath the other, to the stick, and soon had what he thought might perhaps serve him as a torch. Going back to the mouth of the cave, he again looked into it, and listened, but all was darkness and silence. He parted the low growing bushes at the entrance, and stepped in, and then, lighting a match, touched it to the top of his torch. The bunch of pine needles flared up for two or three seconds, and then went out, but the light was enough to show that for six or eight feet further in there was a smooth floor to the cave, paved with small stones. The walls above and on either side seemed high. A second match, touched to another bunch of pine needles, gave another flame, lasting only an instant. Plainly, the torch would not burn from the top downward. The only thing to do was to light it below, and let the flames run up the stick. Jack lighted another match, took two or three steps forward, and then touched the torch at its lower part. The pine needles flared up, the flame caught the next bunch above, and then the next. Jack could see on the ground before him some feathers, a half dozen slender sticks, and, far back, raised above the floor of the cave, was a pale, dim thing. There was a whirring sound, something struck his hat, something else struck the torch, he dropped it, and it went out.

CHAPTER XXVIII
WHAT THE CAVE HELD

There was something alive in the cave, and Jack did not wait to see what it was. With two or three long jumps he passed out of the entrance and stood again among the underbrush, through which the bright sun was sending down its long sheaves of light. Nothing more happened, and as he looked back into the cave it was all quiet there. He was breathing fast, startled and excited, yet not exactly frightened, and when he reached the open air and had recovered from his start, he felt curious to know what had made the strange noise and what had hit him. It did not seem that it could be anything very terrible, for if it had been, it would have struck him harder and made more noise. He looked back into the cave, but the darkness gave no answer to the question in his mind. He could see two or three tiny sparks faintly glowing, which went out one by one as he watched them. This was the remains of his torch. He wondered what that dim pale shape could be, that he had seen for an instant, but too indistinctly to tell what it was. Though he was anxious to know more about the cave, he did not feel like venturing into it again without a light, and he determined to go home and tell his uncle, and, in a day or two to return, better prepared for the investigation.

His mind was so full of what he had seen that he started down the hill toward his horse, altogether forgetting his gun, and when he remembered it, he had a long climb back to recover it.

It was the middle of the afternoon before he reached the house, and there was no one about to whom he could talk of his adventure except Mrs. Carter. To her he told his story, but she could throw no light on the matter, nor, indeed, could his uncle when he consulted him at supper.