“Weston says his Lost Indians looked like Chinamen. He means Eskimos, of course. If we found such people over there, would that prove anything?”
“It might mean this,” he said at last. “Weston’s Asiatics may have met the Aztecs coming north. The two streams may have clashed and the Asiatics may have been licked. Naturally they’d retreat. They may have hidden themselves in the mountains.”
“Then there really may have been Lost Indians?” exclaimed Roy.
The prospector laughed outright and shrugged his shoulders. Then he leaned forward, and checking the points on his fingers, said:
“Somewhere in the heart of the lower California or Nevada mountains these Asiatics may have concealed themselves for centuries. There they may have lived, built their towns, manufactured their own strange implements and wares in their own way, and, lost to the world, worshiped their own gods. At last, discovered by other incoming and increasing red men, they fly to a new home. Hemmed in by other savages, worn with flight and war, lessened by disease, the remnant of the band takes refuge beneath the desert.”
“Is that right?” almost shouted Roy.
“Go and find out,” answered Mr. Cook, with another laugh.
Mt. Ellsworth was, by the map, sixty-seven miles northwest of Bluff, a few points west of northwest. From that peak Kaiparowits lay seventy miles south of west. In passing from Ellsworth to Kaiparowits, Pine Alcove Creek would be crossed not far west at Hi. Clark’s camp. Here there was food and a small supply of gasoline. Roy and Weston took breakfast with Clark’s men the next morning, having left the corral in the Parowan a little before five o’clock.
At eight o’clock with the Escalante River not more than twenty miles away, the Parowan was started on the real search for the Sink Hole. All of Weston’s conviviality of the night before was gone. Roy was nervous. The prospect of meeting belligerent Indians did not frighten him, but he was surprised that neither Weston nor Mr. Cook seemed to reckon this as an item of danger.