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.

After many windings they approached the waterfall and they were so close now that it conveyed a new sense of beauty and size, the waters showing fleeting colors in the sunshine, and their roar growing loud in the ear. Once Charles looped in the path and picked up a rusty iron implement, something like his own miner’s pick that he carried, but of an antique make.

“That is shorely mighty cur’ous an’ interestin’,” said Jed.

“It is at least significant,” said the Professor.

The path now led directly to the edge of the fall, and they saw that the water, after rushing down a steep incline, leaped far out when it came to the precipice, leaving, as at Niagara, though on a much smaller scale, a space between the fall and the rock behind it.

“The path will have to stop here,” said Herbert.

“It will go behind the fall,” said Charles, and after a sharp turn around a great stone it led straight in between the water and the cliff, as he had predicted. Again Charles did not hesitate. He advanced boldly, the others following through a light spray, and they passed behind the fall, picking their way over slippery stones, until they came out on the other side, where the path as before led on ahead.

“Behind the veil,” said Charles to himself, and then:

All felt instinctively that they were now near the end of their search. In truth Charles believed it to be so close at hand that he was seized with a sudden fear, lest someone was watching and following them, and would demand a share of the gold, a profit in their work. He resented the suspicion, and was filled with anger against the unknown. All the treasure was theirs, there was not a dollar which they did not want. The story had come to him as an inheritance, they had done all the work and taken all the risk, and they did not propose to be robbed on the eve of the harvest by an intruder. His hand slipped to the butt of the pistol, which he carried in his coat pocket. He was ready to use his weapon like a castaway at sea, fighting for the last drop of water, and his face grew damp with the continued dread that somebody was at hand to force a partnership in their discovery.

Once a stick broke under Charles’ feet with a snap, and they paused in fear, lest the noise had given warning of their movements. They were crouching then behind the bushes and they remained there, quite still for five minutes, when, hearing nothing, they resumed their search.

The wind soon ceased and its moan was succeeded by complete stillness. Long black weeds grew in the ravine that they now entered, and their slender stems were outlined like threatening spears against the sky. They paused for a few moments at the exit of the ravine, and looked at the tangled mass of vegetation that covered the hollow, seeking to see a way through it. Charles’ eye alighted at last upon a line which seemed to cleave a path among the somber weeds and trailing vines, and when he called the Professor’s attention to it, he responded at once, saying that he was sure they were following in the footsteps of the old Spaniards. His surmise seemed correct to Charles and, the magnetic power of the gold increasing as they approached it, they entered the path which was not a path at all, merely a streak of bushes and briars lighter and less stubborn than the rest, as if used for a way long since, but grown up again, and pressed on, determined now to reach the treasure and anxious to put their hands upon it.

When they were nearly across the new dip which seemed to narrow at the far side into another ravine, Charles’ foot struck a hard object, and stooping to see what it was, his eyes caught a bright gleam. He lifted a stone about the size of his fist and held it where the moonbeams, falling upon it, disclosed fine light streaks running through the mass. He believed these to be threads of gold, and all surmised at once that the fragment had been dropped in the path by those who worked the mine in old times.

This was the last proof that their course was leading them directly to the treasure, and Charles could not repress a cry of triumph. The visions of wealth which had wavered dimly at a distance before him were so close now, so warm, so palpable, that he felt the treasure, untold sums of it, in his hands. There were many shining and brilliant things that he would do; money would give him the power. But he kept these thoughts to himself for the present and still led on.

The ravine seemed to run far back into the mountain, but it was not so rough as the path over which they had passed. At points the cliffs overhung it and at other points receded; in the narrow places they were in the shadow, in the wider the moonbeams fell upon them, and thus they advanced across bars of light and darkness, their regular sequence reminding them strangely of the rising and falling of their hopes, their sanguine feeling that they should find the treasure, their despair and then hope again. The cliffs around them were of reddish stone with innumerable streaks shining through them, and to their excited fancy everything was impregnated with gold. They felt that now they were face to face with the treasure, and they were oppressed by a kind of awe as if the heaps of gold that lay beyond had a superhuman authority, and forbade them to speak in their presence. They were approaching the master, and unconsciously they showed reverence for the power to which most kneel. Nor did they have any shame at the time.

Presently the ravine ended, seeming to die out against blank wall, but when they looked more closely they saw an opening in the dark stone.

The mouth of the cavern seemed high enough for entrance, without their stooping, and they paused in front of it before taking the last steps in their search. Dark as it was in the ravine the cave itself showed nothing but blackness. It seemed to be a pit of mysterious depth, and all its aspects were repellent, as if it would still preserve the secret that it had kept so long.

Yet, the feeling of apprehension, inspired by the blackness of the cave mouth, was but momentary. They now permitted neither fear nor exultation to rule them, and believed it fitting to preserve a dignity equal to their fortune. They sought to dismiss expression from their faces, and to affect an air of careless humor.

They took a step or two into the opening and Charles, after a strong attack of nervous hesitation, drew out his little match case and struck a match. It was with the most extraordinary feelings that he watched the tiny flame flicker and sputter, and then grow stronger. It seemed to him that all he hoped for depended upon that feeble sputter.

The light became steady, and he uttered an irrepressible cry of joy. They stood in a low-roofed cave, partly natural and partly dug out by the hand of man, and at the far side, leaning against the wall were many objects resembling sacks of provisions. He lighted another match, crossed the cave floor and touched one of the sacks. It was made of the hide of some animal, and as it crumbled away at his touch, its contents poured out with a dull metallic sound on the stone of the floor. Charles stooped, plunged his hand in the yellowish flood, and lifted it up, palmful, just as the match went out. But he struck another match with his free hand, and held its light over that which lay in the palm.

The Professor, who stood beside him, bent down and looked at the light that shone on Charles’ face.

“Gold!” he said. “Hundreds of pounds of it! Ours! Spaniards washed it out two or three centuries ago; this was their storehouse!”

His voice trembled slightly as he spoke. None of them worshiped money, but they were not so foolish as to despise it.

“This is shorely mighty cur’ous an’ interesting,” said Jedediah Simpson o’ Lexin’ton, K—y, in an awed whisper.

“Why was it left here?” Herbert asked.

“This was their storehouse,” said the Professor. “All were killed by Apaches and the secret was lost. It has been waiting here these many generations for us. We are the heirs.”

Then Charles murmured under his breath:

“Poor Ananias Brown! How ill he deserved his first name!”

They went outside, and, after much hunting, secured sticks that would burn. Then they returned to the cave, where they examined the treasure with minute care, thirty bags in all, chiefly in grains and scales of gold, and the Professor calculated that there were approximately two tons of it, worth about a million dollars.

“It was washed out of a river bed somewhere,” he said. “Probably our own little river above the fall, and the Spaniards may have been working here a year, or two years.”

The cave was a dark little place, not too dry, but it was a true golden chamber for them. Charles, searching amid the debris on the floor, found two or three ancient implements, resembling those used for the washing out of gold, and he was confirmed in his opinion that the treasure had come from a river, although it was not important now to know where, and they had no intention of searching.

After more than an hour spent in the cave, they tore themselves away from the golden heap, and returned to the cliff dwelling.

Jedediah Simpson o’ Lexin’ton, K—y, had been silent throughout the return journey “home,” but he was full of something, and upon their arrival it burst forth.

“See here, Charlie,” he said, “I ain’t got no share in this! That gold belongs to you an’ Herb there. Me an’ the Purfessor jest lighted down on you by accident.”

“He speaks the exact truth,” said Professor Longworth quietly.

“And I ain’t no butt-in,” continued Jed. “I was jest talkin’ through my hat, when I was paintin’ all them gorgeous pictures about the big organ in the wall, the D. M., and the red cart with the yellow wheels. I don’t come in on this.”

“You come in exactly to the extent of one quarter,” said Charles firmly. “I am the original depository of the secret. The chance was left to me by Ananias Brown, but I never could have done the task alone. You and the Professor have already saved my life three times, and it’s not going to be any easy task to get this gold away from here and put it safely in bank. Herbert and I need you now worse than ever. We’ve made the agreement, and it’s your duty as well as ours to stand by it.”

“Of course it is,” said Herbert.

The Professor bowed his head in assent. In his heart he thought that their greatest tasks and dangers were yet to come, and that he and Jed would be needed badly.

“Now don’t you be a fool again, Jed,” said Herbert reproachfully. “I’ve been looking forward to riding in that yellow cart of yours, with the red wheels, and I certainly want to hear the D. M. play the big organ.”

Jed’s face beamed.

“You boys are shorely white,” he said. “But I hope somebody will try to take that gold from us, an’ in the big fight I can prove I’m worth my share.”

“You may have the chance, Jed,” said the Professor.

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