“If I have to stay here until snow flies,” muttered Sheldon, “well, then, I’ll stay!”
A week passed. During it he had had no sign that Paula existed—no hint of the theoretical “hiding-place” which he sought. But each day he spent long hours in the quest, striving from the first glow of dawn to the coming of dusk. He had searched out every spot of the cliffs to the south, climbing high up, looking everywhere. Now, in the same systematic way, he turned toward the north. And upon the second day of the second week he came upon part of that which he sought—that and something else.
Upon a broad ledge a score of feet from the ground, hard to climb up to, grew a dense clump of bushes. Only because it was his plan to look everywhere did he go up there at all. On the ledge he saw at once what, from below, had been masked by the bushes.
There was a great hole into the cliff-side through which a man might walk standing erect. Beyond, where dim dusk brooded at midday, was the cave. A glance, as he went in, showed that it was part nature’s work and part man-made. At his feet lay a shovel with fairly fresh dirt adhering to it. Beyond was a pick. Other picks and shovels, several of them, lay at one side of the long chamber.
“Paula!” he called softly. “Are you here?”
But Paula was not there. As he moved on deeper into the cavern he saw that no one was there. There were two tumbled piles of blankets, one on each side. Against the wall by one of them were five rifles, all of old patterns, not one an automatic. He picked them up, one after the other. None was loaded; there were no unfired cartridges with them.
Several sharpened stakes had been driven into the walls which Sheldon found to be of clay almost rock-hard. From these pegs hung cured skins of both deer and bear, wildcat skins, the pelts of other animals. From one was suspended a gay little array of old, old-fashioned gowns like those in pictures of our grandmothers. Sheldon sighed, touched them lingeringly, and called again, “Paula!”
He passed on down the length of the cavern, which had been driven thirty or forty feet into the mountainside. At the far end a pick was sticking into the wall. Near the pick was a bag made of deerskin. He struck it with his foot. It was heavy, seemed filled with small stones. Wondering, he turned the contents out upon the floor.
And, at the sight disclosed there to him in the dim interior of this gloomy place, the soul of John Sheldon, mining engineer, adventurer into the far-out places, thrilled within him.
The bag was half-filled with gold nuggets.