"Then it certainly is our secret city," said Ned.
As he said this he was busy with his knife, digging at the glistening white bits with which the column was coated. Finally one came off. It fell into his hand and the back of it came into view.
The two boys broke out in an exclamation of delight. The protected portion of the piece was a deep sky blue.
"The Turquoise Temple!" they both cried together. "Hurrah!"
When night came again Ned and Alan were almost too excited for rest or sleep. Nor did they taste food again until the dust of the ruins warned them temporarily to abandon their search. To walk into a treasure house that the daring adventurers of two races had overlooked for three hundred years was enough to turn the heads of any two boys.
The "Doorway of the Sun" as Alan called it, led into a chamber about fifteen feet square. The walls of this were lined with smooth clay squares of black tile, undecorated. Eight feet above the floor, which was also of clay tile and half buried under sand, rose a ceiling of arched stones. There was no opening in this, but steps on the outside of the temple and in the rear led to a chamber above, in the front of which, and also facing the sun, was another opening about two feet from the floor. In front of this window was a stone bench or altar. The meaning of it the boys did not know. This room was barren of either decoration or utensil and it was half full of the debris of what had apparently been another arched stone roof. Only the front or eastern side of the structure was coated with the precious turquoise; the other sides of the column were of plain, fairly well fitted, mortarless stone blocks.
CHAPTER XXVIII
THE COLLAPSE OF THE CIBOLA
An opening in the paved court in the rear of the Temple, half filled with drifted sand, led into a "khiva" or secret religious council chamber beneath. Herein the young adventurers discovered their wonderland and the reward for all their labors.