The youth tugged determinedly at the fine fuzz of black mustache that adorned his upper lip. “Honanki Ruins or bust—that’s our motto, John!” he retorted, his black eyes twinkling merrily at the reluctant cowman. “Here’s Fewkes’ map, with the ruins marked ‘Inaccessible’ on it, and, by jerry, we’re here, if the map’s right. They’re somewhere above us, and it’s up to us to bust ’em.”
“Yaas,” said Big John, shifting his weight to the nigh stirrup to give the white horse under him a change of load. “Somethin’ hed orter be done about it, thet’s shore! You mosey up—an’ I’ll hold yore hoss!”
All of which preliminaries usually meant that Big John really meant to take the lead in climbing himself once the ruins were found. Sid knew that all this feigned reluctance about climbing cliffs was mere camouflage on Big John’s part. He urged his pinto across the cañon so as to get a better view of the cliff face. He wanted to size up that cañon wall first, for he knew that the only way to keep Big John off that cliff was to tie him down, which “ain’t done.” The two had been boon comrades for a long time; first up in Montana on the hunt for the Ring-Necked Grizzly, later in the Cañon de Chelly region where the Black Panther of the Navaho had met his end. That expedition had been Sid’s start in practical ethnology. Now they were down in the White River reservation of the Apache, seeking out ruins that had been noted by Dr. Fewkes of the Smithsonian but had been left unexplored for lack of time and facilities.
“There it is!” rang out the youth’s voice excitedly from across Cañon Honanki (Bear Cañon). “Come over here, John!”
The huge cowman trotted his white mustang over to where Sid had halted his pinto under a big western pine. Far up, at least three hundred feet above the floor of the valley, they saw holes like swallow’s nests pierced in the cliff at irregular intervals. They seemed small and round and black as ink, and near them were carved on the rock odd circular spirals, lightning zigzags, primitive horses, apparently all legs, and geometrical armed-and-legged designs intended to represent men. Ragged holes further along on the cliff face showed that galleries and passageways ran in behind the living rock up there. These natural caves, common enough in Arizona, had been scoured out by water action in geologic times.
But it was a fearful place for human beings to attempt to climb to! Tall perpendicular folds in the cliff face cast their black shadows on the surrounding stone, the cracks beginning and ending nowhere. There were impracticable clefts, ledges that shaded off to flat precipice faces, dents and scoriations not over two feet deep, yet they seemed to be all the footholds for climbing that the place afforded.
“Gorry!—a cavate dwelling!” whooped Sid, overjoyed. “The kind that is built in the solid rock instead of being made of stone slabs, John,” he explained with the ethnologist’s enthusiasm.
Big John grinned. “Gawsh!” he exploded. “I s’pose that humans once tried to live in such places—but eagles would know better! Nawthin’ll do but we gotto bust her, eh?”
“Yep,” said Sid confidently. “A shaman or a pueblo priest lived up there once. Sort of hermit, you know. Holy man. If that old scout lived there we ought to be able to climb up once.—What think?”
“He didn’t come pilgriming down to shoot up the gulch muy plentiful, I’m bettin’!” averred Big John sardonically. “I’ll tell ye, Sid; thar’s only one way to bust her, and that’s to make a string of long ladders, same as he done. You don’t get me off this hoss on no fly-creepin’ climb without a-doin’ jest that—savvy?”