Chapter 16: Behind the Veil

They accomplished a few days later another object that they had in mind and that was the slaying of mountain sheep, the Apache mu-u. The Professor accompanied Charles and Herbert on this expedition which led them high up on a snowy peak, and they secured three splendid specimens, one an old ram weighing about three hundred and fifty pounds and with horns eighteen indies in basal circumference. They brought in the skins and horns and put them as trophies in their cliff houses.

They were comfortable now, amply prepared for the winter and Charles’ mind reverted with great force to the original cause of his journey. It seem to him a duty to prosecute the search for which he had come. He said over to himself again and again the vague words of the dying man, and compared the proof.

“Up and down! up and down!” he had no doubt, as he originally thought, referred to the irregular floor of the first canyon through which he had come, and the highest white peak standing alone must be Old Thundergust—at least, he had named it so. But “behind the veil! behind the veil!”—what did that mean? He repeated the words to himself often, and then the meaning came to him suddenly, like a flash of intuition. At least he believed that he had solved it.

All at once he was eager for the gold, in a flame, in fact, to find it. The treasure, after being in abeyance, had reasserted its power to lure him. He approached the Professor who was standing on the shelf, and said:

“Professor, I feel that I have solved the secret of Ananias Brown’s words. It has come to me all at once. Will you and the others go with me?”

“Of course,” said the Professor, and he called to Herbert and Jed.

“I don’t think the trip will take us far,” said Charles. “It leads just through the street of our city here.”

They did not question his intuition, but went with him without a word. The terrace in front of the village seemed to stop abruptly at either end, but Charles had noticed at the north a rude trace on the side of the cliff, and he believed that it had been made originally by man, though almost wholly covered up by nature.

“I’ve a theory that this path or at least what used to be a path leads some distance further,” he said. “Just wait here a minute, will you?”

He returned to the first cliff dwelling, and, securing the miner’s pick that had been in his pack, broke a way through some dense undergrowth, clustering at the head of the trace. It had grown so thick and strong, and the slope at that point was so steep that it took him, with the help of the others, half an hour to do the work, and they had, too, to practice the greatest caution to prevent a fall that would have been fatal.

When they had cut a path through the thick bushes in the crevices of the cliff, and Charles had come out on the other side, he uttered a joyous “Ah!”

“Have you found what you expected to find?” asked the Professor.

“So far, Professor,” he replied.

“This is surely mighty cur’ous an’ interestin’,” said Jed.

Herbert was silent, but no detail escaped him.

They entered upon a clearly defined trail or trace, hidden from notice before by the rocks and trailing bushes, but affording a comparatively easy footing. Charles, usually so contained, began to show excitement, and the others shared it with him. They, too, suddenly felt the spell of gold, and their blood sparkled into a flame.

The path now led along the slope in a parallel line, a slope itself and scarce a foot in width. No eye, from either below or above, could have noticed it there. It led straight on, a long distance toward the waterfall where the canyon stopped, and Charles noticed the fact exultantly. Again were his hopes confirmed.

“Will this path take us to the top of the mountain or to the floor of the canyon?” asked Herbert.

“Neither, I think.”

Straight the path went on, not veering from its horizontal course, and leading directly toward the waterfall.

“It shorely is mighty cur’ous an’ interestin’,” repeated Jedediah Simpson o’ Lexin’ton, K—y.

They had started late under the impulse of the moment, and the day was somber and dim. A strange new influence, the sudden spell of the old lost gold, now overpowered the four.

A pale sun looked over the vast mountain and shed faint rays on each face, turning it to gray, and leaving the features dim. They seemed so shadowy in the pallid light that Charles feared to reach out his hand and touch any one of them, lest the fingers meet no resistance. Yet they had been too long together now for him to doubt the reality of the misty forms, or to believe that they were not his tried comrades.

Their figures wavered, swaying easily, as if they yielded to the lightest breath of the wind, and would mark, moreover, by their own motions the uncertain state of their minds. They heard no noise, save the wail of the wind among the cliffs and peaks, and the rustle of the withered leaf as it fell. They looked up again at the sun, but it was pallid, and was yielding still further to the advance of clouds. The light faded, and the tops of the trees and cliffs were lost in the mists and vapors.

Charles felt a moment of terror lest he had missed the way, and the gold should elude them forever, continuing its long centuries of hiding from the hands of man. The word swam around them, a mystic globe without a pathway. A sense of guilt began to mingle with his feeling of fear, as if he were seeking a treasure to which he had no right. He was a thief, creeping forward, trying to find out what the earth would conceal. Then his reason told him that he did no wrong. The men who heaped up the treasure were dead hundreds of years without a rightful successor, and they should disturb the possession of no one; yet the feeling of guilt remained and troubled him; he believed that unknown eyes were watching him, he trembled when the scant foliage rustled before the wind; there was a noise at his feet, and he sprang into the air to escape the fangs of a rattlesnake, but it was only the tiniest of lizards scuttling over the dry leaves. Herbert trembled and turned paler and grayer than ever in the wan light. He, too, was in the grasp of superstitious fear. Over them loomed the vast desolation of the Arizona mountains, somber and wan, and the four were alone in the world.

They advanced a few steps, choosing their way with care, and came to the edge of a mountain pool, made by rare, but recent, rains, whose waters were jet black, save where the scanty sunbeams made gray spots upon its surface. There they sat upon the stones, and gazed at the inky gulf. The sigh among the peaks told that a light breeze was blowing, but they saw no motion on the surface in front of them. Not a wave was raised, and the water failed to quiver in the dim light; all was dull, stagnant and dead. Charles cast a stone into the middle of the pool. It sank with a murmur, but there was no echo. The mountain rose up beyond it, bare and sombre. The pale light of the sun fell upon its rough sides, distorting the crags into fantastic shapes.

Herbert looked down into the pool, and spoke of the evil chance that a slip would bring. It never occurred to any of them that a fall into those waters could be other than mortal, and when the boy spoke they crept away from the bank, the black depths filling them with a curious fear.

Although knowing that he sought to commit no sin, Charles felt again the sense of guilt and his eyes wavered like those of a thief, when Herbert looked at him. They had no right, a vague instinct told him, to seek the treasure, guarded unnumbered years by a dead hand, and yet there was no living being who had a claim upon it, perhaps none but themselves who knew of its existence. He spoke aloud, asserting their title to it, then waited in fear lest someone should have heard him and deny their right.

They passed around the pool, looking fearfully into its black depths, and went deeper into the maze of a vast, lonely mountain.

Once they heard a rustle and a sound, like a faint pressure upon the earth, on the slope above them, but looking again they saw nothing. Then, after the momentary pause, they went on with cautious footsteps. Yet two fiery eyes were regarding them from a crevice in the rocks where the tawny body of the dispossessed mountain lion lay, blending with the tawny earth and stone, and watching again with angry and jealous eyes these formidable strangers in his domain. Doubtless some far-away ancestor of his had seen far-away ancestors of theirs, but no knowledge of it had come down through the generations to the mountain lion.

He had heard them coming, and he had crawled among the rocks where he might see them pass, and yet they might not see him. His soul was filled once more with curiosity, hatred and anger. He could have struck down any of the four with his great tawny paw, but their aspect and the strange human odor that came to him filled him as always with dread. He would have fled back up the mountain, and far from these extraordinary creatures, but the path would lie across the bare rock where the light lay with dreadful brightness, and their terrible straight gaze might fall upon his tawny body.

He crouched lower and lower and with burning red eyes watched them as they crept along the mountain slope. Their strength was absurd in comparison with his. He could see that they kept close together, that they tottered, that they might fall of their own weight and unsteadiness into the dark gulf below—all these things he saw, but fear of them ruled him nevertheless, and he shrank against the hard stone, trembling lest a single stray glance of theirs might light upon him. They passed on and a turning of the cliff hid them from his sight, but as long as the faint human odor that bore upon it the breath of terror came to him he clung to his crevice in the cliffs. Then when it reached him no longer and the pure air blew over the mountains, he sprang from his place of hiding, rushed up the slope, not stopping until he was far from the place that bore the dreadful taint that made him afraid.

The four went ahead, knowing nothing of the lion and his watchful fears. They, too, stole on, still dwelling in the heart of fear. The peaks about them were now alive and personified. Far to the north a monster, with his head among the snows, gazed at them in hoary disapproval, and to the east and west other white heads nodded in confirmation of their leader. Gigantic and age-old they looked down in contempt upon the brief and tiny human creatures that crawled along the shoulder of one of their number. A wind, too, arose and moaned among the gorges, singing the same song, majestic and weird, to which the solemn mountains had listened for scons. But it fell upon the human motes, and they shivered, and kept close together.

Soon it grew darker. The twilight had come and then quick upon it the dark, but there was a faint bluish light which permeated the night and showed the way, though it threw all the objects around them—trees, rocks and gullies—out of proportion.

The mountain grew wilder and more difficult, and Charles did not wonder that the secret of the lost treasure had remained hidden so long. Their progress was slow, the intricate character of the slopes delaying their steps, and the imperfect light compelling them often to feel the way, lest they break their limbs on the sharp stones or end their lives at the bottom of the cliff. They had never before noticed such strange shapes in rocks and mountain slopes; the crest of the ridge in front of them looked like the upturned edge of a saber, the projecting stones in the sides of a cliff formed a sneering and gigantic face. The path wound between huge rocks along the edge of fathomless dark gulfs. Long, sharp briars and the stubby arms of bushes grasped at their clothing. Heavy vines, gray and coiling, hung down from either cliff above them, and when they trailed across their faces they started as if they had been touched by a serpent. Never before had they been in such a desolate and lonely world, and now and then they dragged their feet over the stones that they might reassure themselves with a friendly noise. But the echo increased the sound manyfold.