“It’s sure no easy job to get up there from this level,” admitted Jo. “Suppose we deploy around and hunt for the side door.”
This they did, that is, Jim went one way, while Jo and Tom sought for an opening in the opposite direction, but without success.
Juarez had meantime studied the face of the vine clad rock below the mouth of the cave, and when his companions returned he undertook the ascent or climb. Mounting first on Jim’s stalwart shoulders he found crevasses into which he dug his toes, and with his great knife scooped out fragments at irregular distances, thus by degrees mounting to the cave’s mouth.
Once a secure footing gained, he let down his lariat, and one after the other, the boys climbed up, and all stood looking out upon the auditorium below. Surely a more beautiful green bower of exaggerated proportions could not be imagined.
But it was not scenery that had induced them to seek the cave, and at once their thoughts turned to the business at hand.
The floor of the cave was dry, and the place showed no signs of recent occupancy. It extended into the rock beyond the limit of vision.
Jim had thoughtfully gathered and sent up a bundle of fagots, some dry slow burning sticks, one of which was now lighted. The blaze cast a fitful glare upon walls that shown in places with metallic gleams.
While Jim and Juarez busied themselves near the entrance with the digging into and examination of some mounds of earth which excited their curiosity, Jo and Tom with the burning fagot penetrated deeper into the tunnel, for such it seemed to be. It presented at the start nothing out of the ordinary. It was simply as Jo put it, an enlarged burrow of irregular width and height, varying in width from six to eight feet and in height the same. The sides were of earth with here and there a stone. Whether of natural formation or an artificial construction the boys could not determine.
“Doesn’t seem to be anything worth seeing in here,” said Tom, who was in the lead and carrying the torch. “We might as well go back.”