“Nobody knows how they got up or when. A hunting party came along once and saw that there was a town up there, and that was all.”
Otto rubbed his chin and looked thoughtful. “Of course there must be some way to get up there. Couldn't people get a rope over someway and pull a ladder up?”
Tip's little eyes were shining with excitement. “I know a way. Me and Uncle Bill talked it over. There's a kind of rocket that would take a rope over—lifesavers use 'em—and then you could hoist a rope ladder and peg it down at the bottom and make it tight with guy ropes on the other side. I'm going to climb that there bluff, and I've got it all planned out.”
Fritz asked what he expected to find when he got up there.
“Bones, maybe, or the ruins of their town, or pottery, or some of their idols. There might be 'most anything up there. Anyhow, I want to see.”
“Sure nobody else has been up there, Tip?” Arthur asked.
“Dead sure. Hardly anybody ever goes down there. Some hunters tried to cut steps in the rock once, but they didn't get higher than a man can reach. The Bluff's all red granite, and Uncle Bill thinks it's a boulder the glaciers left. It's a queer place, anyhow. Nothing but cactus and desert for hundreds of miles, and yet right under the Bluff there's good water and plenty of grass. That's why the bison used to go down there.”
Suddenly we heard a scream above our fire, and jumped up to see a dark, slim bird floating southward far above us—a whooping crane, we knew by her cry and her long neck. We ran to the edge of the island, hoping we might see her alight, but she wavered southward along the rivercourse until we lost her. The Hassler boys declared that by the look of the heavens it must be after midnight, so we threw more wood on our fire, put on our jackets, and curled down in the warm sand. Several of us pretended to doze, but I fancy we were really thinking about Tip's Bluff and the extinct people. Over in the wood the ring doves were calling mournfully to one another, and once we heard a dog bark, far away. “Somebody getting into old Tommy's melon patch,” Fritz murmured sleepily, but nobody answered him. By and by Percy spoke out of the shadows.
“Say, Tip, when you go down there will you take me with you?”
“Maybe.”