“We shall have to make a scouting trip in the Golden Eagle,” said Frank with determination, as after they had scoured the valley for the twentieth time, they admitted that it was hardly worth the trouble.
“Yes,” agreed Harry eagerly, “and the sooner the better.”
They stopped for lunch shortly after noon, without having made any progress in discovering anything about the mysterious bell or who its ringer could have been. Although Frank’s pedometer showed that they had covered several miles, they had not even come across the semblance of a footpath or any other indication that they were not the first human beings to explore the mountain-side. Lunch despatched they agreed to proceed as far as a battlemented cliff that shot sheer up ahead of them for two hundred feet or more, cutting off any view of the mountain-top, and then turn back. If they had found nothing by that time to throw any light on the bell-ringer or the instrument on which he performed, they decided that it would be waste of time to keep on.
At the foot of the cliff its beetling height was even more impressive than when seen at a distance. It shot up, naked of tree or bush, like a huge wall. There was not foothold for even a mountain goat on its smooth gleaming surface.
“Well,” said Frank, as the boys gazed up to where its summit seemed to touch the blue sky, “here is where we stop short. Not even a fly could get up that.”
As he spoke, Harry who had been poking at the smooth surface of the obstruction with the axe, gave a sharp exclamation.
“Did you say that the quesal was the sacred bird of the Toltecs?” he demanded in a tone of suppressed excitement.
“Yes,” replied Frank. “Why?”
“Why?” repeated Harry, “just look up there and tell me what you make of that?”
He pointed to some half-obliterated markings on the surface of the cliff about thirty feet above where the boys stood. There was no doubt about it—the markings, though dimmed by time and in places almost obliterated altogether, unquestionably formed a rude exaggerated outline of the bird they had seen that morning.