CHAPTER II

At the end of an hour he was still wondering.

At midday the canyon was chill and dank, lit only by a half light which

at times dwindled to a deep dusk as the rock walls beetled together

hundreds of feet above his head. Always when he stumbled through one of

the darkest passages, he heard and half saw immense gray bats flapping

above him. In the half-lit reaches, he hardly took a step without seeing

great rats with gray coats, yellow teeth, and evil pink eyes. But rats

and bats combined were not as bad as the snakes. They were almost white,

and nowhere had he seen rattlers of such size. If his caution relaxed

for a second, they struck at him with fangs as long and sharp as

needles.

The tortured, twisted cedars, the paloverdi, occatilla, cholla, opunti,

through which he edged his laborious way, all offered an almost animate,

armed hostility.

Altogether this journey was the least sweet he had taken anywhere. Yet

he went on.

Why had eleven Mexican bandits refused to advance even to within decent

rifle range of the canyon's mouth? What was there about the putrid yet

gorgeous perfume that had made the stallion go off his nut, so to

speak?

After a time, Kirby veered away from a fourteen-foot rattler which

flashed in a loathsome coil on his left hand. Hungry, weakened by all he

had been through since breakfast time, he plodded doggedly on.

But a moment later he stumbled past a twisted cedar, and then stopped,

forgetting even the snakes.

At his feet lay the bleached skeleton of a man.

* * * * *

Beside the right hand, in a position which indicated that only the final

relaxation of death had loosened his grip upon a precious object, lay a

cylinder, carefully carved, of rich, yellow gold.

Of the science of anthropology Kirby knew enough to make him sure that

the dolicocephalic skull and characteristically shaped pelvic and thigh

bones of the skeleton had belonged to a white man.

As for the cylinder--But he was not so sure what that was.

Regardless of the dry swish of a rattler's body on the rocks behind

him, he lifted the object from the spot in which it had lain for no man

knew how long. Of much the size and shape of an old-time cylindrical wax

phonograph record, the softly gleaming thing weighed, he judged, almost

two pounds.

Two pounds of soft, virgin gold of a quality as fine as any he had seen

amongst all the treasures brought out of Mexico, Yucatan, and Peru

combined!

But the gold was not the only thing. If Kirby was human enough to think

in terms of treasure, he was also enough of an amateur anthropologist to

hold his breath over the carvings on the yellow surface.

First he recognized the ancient symbols of Sun and Moon. And then a

representation, semi-realistic, semi-conventionalized, of Quetzalcoatl,

the Feathered Serpent, known in all the annals of primitive Mexican

religions.

Good enough.

But the mere symbols by no means told the whole story of the cylinder.

The workmanship was archaic, older than any Aztec art Kirby knew, older

than Toltec, older far, he ventured to guess, than even earliest archaic

Mayan carvings.

God, what a find!

* * * * *

For a moment it seemed almost impossible that he, Freddie Kirby, native

of Kansas, unromantic aviator, should have been the one to discover this

relic of an unknown, lost race. Yet the cylinder of gold was there, in

his hand.

After a long minute Kirby looked around him, then listened.

From up the canyon came the provocative rumble of the geyser. It was

closer now, and Kirby, glancing at his watch which had been spared to

him in the Wasp's crash, noted that just forty-four minutes had passed

since the last eruption. There was nothing to be done about the bleached

skeleton. So, tucking the precious cylinder into his tunic, Kirby

headed on up the gash of a canyon.

Far away indeed seemed the neat, maple-shaded asphalt street, the rows

of parked cars and farm wagons, the telephone office and drug store and

bank, of the Kansas town where he had grown up.

Time passed until again he heard the geyser, and again was dizzied by

the perfume. As the fragrance--close and powerful now--died away, he

flailed with one arm at a two-foot bat which flapped close to his head.

And then he trudged his dogged way around a deeply shadowed bend, and

found the chasm not only almost wholly dark, but narrower than it had

been at any previous point.

"Holy mackerel," Kirby groaned. "Phew! If this keeps up, I--"

He stopped. His jaw dropped.

"Oh, hell!"

The beetling walls narrowed in until the gash was scarcely fifteen feet

wide. Further progress was barred by a smooth wall which rose sheer in

front of him.

* * * * *

Kirby did not know how many seconds passed before he made out through

the gloom that the wall was man-made and carved with the same symbols of

Sun, Moon, and Feathered Serpent, which ornamented the cylinder of gold.

But when he did realize at last, the shout with which he expressed his

feeling was anything but a groan.

It simply meant that the skeleton which once had been a man, had almost

surely found the golden cylinder beyond the wall and not in the canyon.

And if the dead man had passed that smooth, carved barrier, another man

could do it!

Kirby jumped forward, began to search in the darkness for some hidden

entrance.

Minute after minute passed. He gave another cry. He saw a long, upright

crack in the stone surface, and a quick push of his hands made the

stones in front of him give almost an inch.

All at once his shoulder was planted, and behind that square shoulder

was straining all the muscle of his two hundred pound body. The result

was all that he desired. When he ceased pushing, a slab of rock gaped

wide before him, giving entrance to a pitch dark tunnel.

For a moment he held the portal back, then, releasing his pressure, he

stepped into the dark passage. By the time a ponderous grating of rocks

assured him that the door had swung shut of its own weight, he had

produced matches and struck a light.

* * * * *

The puny flame showed him a curving passage hewn smoothly through the

heart of bedrock. Before the flare died he walked twenty feet, and as

another match burned to his fingers, he found the right hand curve of

the passage giving way to a left hand twist. After that he dared use no

more of his precious matches. But just when the darkness was beginning

to wear badly on his nerves, he uttered a low cry.

As he increased his rapid walk to a run, the faint light he had suddenly

seen ahead of him grew until it became a circular flare of daylight

which marked the tunnel's end.

Out of the passage Kirby strode with shoulders square and head up, his

cool, level, practical blue eyes wide with wonder. Out of the tunnel he

strode into the valley of the perfumed geyser.

"God above!"

The words were vibrant with hoarse reverence. He saw the sunlight of a

cliff-surrounded diminutive Garden of Eden. He saw a vale of flowering

grass, of palms and live oaks, saw patches of lilies so huge as to

transcend belief, and dizzying clumps of tree cactus almost as tall as

the palms themselves.

What was more, he saw in the center of this upland, cliff-guarded

valley, a gaping black orifice which every faculty of judgment told him

was the mouth of the geyser of perfume. And beside it, outstretched on a

smooth sheet of rock which glistened as though coated with a layer of

clear, sparkling glass, he saw--

* * * * *

Kirby blinked his eyes rapidly, hardly believing what he saw.

On the glistening rock lay the perfectly preserved figure of a Spanish

Conquistadore in full armor. Morion and breast-plate were in place, and

glistened as though they had been burnished this morning. And the

Spaniard's dark, handsome, bearded face! Kirby saw instantly that no

decay had touched it, that even the hairs of the beard were perfect. The

whole armor-clad corpse gleamed softly with a covering of the same

glassy substance which covered the rock.

Kirby glanced at his watch, saw that twelve minutes must elapse before

the geyser spouted again. Then his eyes narrowed. He remained standing

where he was, hard by the mouth of the tunnel, knowing that a wise man

would conduct cautiously his exploration of this valley of wonders.

Arsenic! Silicon!

The two words stood out sharply in his thought. In Africa existed plenty

of springs whose waters contained enough arsenic to bring death to those

who drank. Might not the Spaniard's presence here be explained, then, by

assuming that the geyser water was charged with a strong arsenic

content, and, in addition, with some sort of silicon solution which,

left to dry in the air, hardened to glass?

Lord, what a discovery to take back with him to Kansas! Almost it made

the discovery of the golden cylinder pale by comparison. Why, the

commercial uses to which this silicon water might be put were almost

without limit, and the owner of the concession might confidently expect

to make millions!

It was while Kirby stood there, breathless and jubilant, waiting for

the geyser to spout, that he began to feel that _he was being watched_.

Suddenly, with a start, he shot a sweeping glance over the whole grove.

But that did no good. He saw nothing save sunlight and waving green

leaves.

Eleven days were to pass before he discovered all that was to be

involved in that sensation of being gazed at by unseen eyes.