“Not me, Mas’r Harry. I was never so wide awake in my life. I tell you, sir, I’ve seen you poking and stirring up amongst the sticks and stones in all sorts of places, just as if you was looking for some old woman’s buried crock of crooked sixpences; and as soon as you’ve been gone these Indian chaps have come and looked, and stroked all the leaves and moss straight again. You’re after something, Mas’r Harry, and they’re after something; but I can’t quite see through any of you yet. Wants a good, stout, double-wicked six held the other side, and then I could read you both like a book.”
“Nonsense, Tom—nonsense!” I cried; though I felt troubled, and a vague sense of uneasiness seemed to come over me.
“P’r’aps it is nonsense, Mas’r Harry—perhaps it ain’t. But this here ain’t Old England; so don’t you get thinking as there’s a policeman round every corner to come and help you, because there ain’t, no more than there’s a public-house round the corner to get half a pint when a fellow’s tongue’s dried up to his roof. So now let’s understand one another, Mas’r Harry. You’ve got to keep close up to the house.”
“Nonsense!” I exclaimed. “What good would that do? Look here, Tom, my good fellow: I know you are faithful and true-hearted, but you have been following me about till you have found a mare’s nest and seen an enemy in every Indian. You must learn to keep your place, Tom, and not to interfere.”
Tom did not answer—he only looked sulky. Then, spitting in his hands, he rubbed them together, crawled out of the bush, stood up, let his gun fall into the hollow of his arm, and then thrusting his hands into his pockets, stood looking at me, as if prepared for the worst.
“Going any farther, Mas’r Harry?” he said as I rose.
“Yes,” I said, “I’m going up this gorge.”
Then with Tom closely following, I climbed on till we were in a vast rift, whose sides were one mass of beautiful verdure spangled with bright blossoms. High overhead, towering up and up, were the mountains, whose snow-capped summits glistened and flashed in the sun, while the ridges and ravines were either glittering and gorgeous or shadowy and of a deep, rich purple, fading into the blackness of night.
I stopped gazing around at the platform above platform of rock rising above me, and thought of what a magnificent site one of the flat table-lands would make for a town, little thinking that once a rich city had flourished there. Even Tom seemed attracted by the beauty of the scene, for he stood gazing about till, seeing my intent, he came close behind me again, and together, with the traveller’s love of treading the fresh and untried soil, we pressed on, climbing over loose fragments of rock, peering into the stream that bubbled musically down the bottom of the gorge, wending our way through the high growth of long tangled grass, till the gorge seemed to plunge into darkness, a huge eminence blocking the way, in whose face appeared a low, broad archway, forming the entrance to a tunnel, leading who could tell where?
Any attempt to follow another track was vain, as I soon perceived; for, as I saw, the gorge seemed to be continued beneath the archway, while right and left the rock was precipitous beyond the possibility of climbing even to the shelves, where ancient trees had securely rooted themselves in the sparse soil, to hang over and lend their gloom to the sombre scene.