CHAPTER V.
THE HOLLOW ALTAR.
"Magnificent indeed!"
The words, falling from the professor's lips, echoed hollowly againstthe walls of the lofty, vaulted chamber in which the adventurers foundthemselves, after traversing a narrow passage leading inward from thecauseway.
The walls of this chamber, which must have been fully thirty feet inheight at its greatest altitude, were formed of the soft rock, out ofwhich it had been excavated apparently uncounted ages before. Theywere daubed with grotesque figures in faded, but still discernible,colors. Most of these figures had to do with scenes of violence, andin almost all of them the figure of what appeared to be an enormousrattlesnake, with human head and arms, predominated.
Among the mural decorations were some that puzzled the professorconsiderably. They were crude drawings of men in what appeared to beintended for boats. The professor found these inexplicable. The veryidea of boats in that arid spot seemed absurdly out of place. Why,then, should the mesa-dwellers have depicted them?
Light was furnished to the chamber by an irregularly shaped hole in theroof above. Although there was plenty of illumination, it had yet beensome moments before the adventurers, coming out of the brilliantsunlight outside, grew used enough to the gloom to make out theirsurroundings. When they did so, the first words uttered were those ofthe professor recorded above.
Like some queer, long-legged bird, the man of science, with a giantmagnifying glass held up to his eye, sped hither and thither on hislong, angular limbs, inspecting minutely the drawings and crudeattempts at decoration. Already he had out his tape-measure andsketch-book, making observations and recording measurements.Presently, however, he recalled himself from the first heat of hisenthusiasm.
"After all," he said, "we shall have plenty of time in which to explorethis chamber, which seems to have been used as a council hall. Let usexamine the remainder of this remarkable place."
"You may well call it that, perfusser," grunted Pete. "It's remarkablefer the dust thet's in it, if nothing else. But what I'd like toknow," he added to himself, "is jes' whar the owners of them footstepsvanished themselves to."
Which brings us to a remarkable discovery, made a few moments beforeour party had entered the "Council Hall," as the professor called it.
As you may imagine, they had traced the footsteps with some care,hoping to come upon a solution of the mystery of their origin. Picturetheir astonishment, then, when you are told that the footsteps abruptlyvanished at the summit of the zig-zag trail. Although dust lay thickon the chambers within the mesa, not a solitary foot-mark marred itssoft gray surface. With the exception of the numerous footsteps on thetrail to the summit, there was no other sign of human visitors.
Like most old plainsmen and all wild animals, Pete was suspicious ofanything he couldn't understand, and it certainly did seem inexplicablethat a party of men should have visited the mesa and contentedthemselves with running or walking up and down the causeway outside, orpromenading the summit. Such, however, appeared to be the onlyexplanation, and as such they were forced to accept it.
But such speculations as these were far from monopolizing the minds ofthe professor and the boys. They eagerly traversed chamber afterchamber, finding these latter to be small "apartments," so to speak,giving upon a common passage just beyond the "Council Hall." Theprofessor told them that each of these small chambers was formerly thehome of an aboriginal family. In the floor of the passage he pointedto numerous bowl-like holes, which, according to him, had been used forthe sharpening of spears and arrow heads.
In some of the small chambers specimens of rude pottery were found, allornamented with the same figure of the human-headed rattlesnake.Evidently the form represented must have been a deity of the tribe.Each of the small chambers was lighted by one of the holes cut in theface of the cliff, which they had noticed from below. The boys dartedin and out of the various rock chambers, like ferrets in a rabbitwarren, followed at a more leisurely pace by the professor and CoyotePete.
"Maybe we'll find some treasure," suggested Ralph Stetson, as, withflushed faces, plentifully begrimed with dust, they paused in the lastof the rocky chambers.
"Say, you've got treasure on the brain, ever since we found that chestof Jim Hicks' in the passage-way under the old mission, and started ourbank accounts," laughed Jack. "You must be forgetting that this mesahas been visited frequently by cattlemen and wandering prospectors."
"Well, I should hardly call it frequently, Jack," put in ProfessorWintergreen, who was now standing with Coyote Pete at his elbow, in thenarrow entrance to the rocky chamber.
"Nope," added Coyote Pete; "you can bet your boots we didn't come hereexcept when we had to. In the past, though, it made a mighty goodwatering-place for the cattlemen driving from one section of thiscountry to another. Sence they cut up that land over to the westwardinter farms, though, the big cattle drives have stopped, and I don'tsuppose any one's bin around here for a long time, 'cepting thosevarmints whose feet-marks we seen."
"How do you know they are varmints?" laughed Walt Phelps.
"Don't see what business they'd hev here otherwise, and----" beganPete, but a perfect tempest of laughter at his expense drowned the restof his speech.
"Well, now that we seem to have pretty well explored the habitationpart of the mesa, let us make our way to the summit," suggested theprofessor.
With a whoop and yell, the excited boys followed the suggestion atonce, and a dash up the narrow causeway followed at imminent risk ofone of another losing his footing.
"Hey, hold on thar!" yelled Pete, as they dashed upward, "we don't wantno funerals here, an' it's er drop of more'n a hundred feet to therground."
This rather checked the boys' enthusiasm, and they went more slowlythereafter.
The summit of the mesa was found to consist of a small plateau, about aquarter of an acre in extent, perfectly bare, and shaped like a saucer.Near the center was the hole which gave illumination to the councilhall below them, while in a spot almost exactly in the middle of thequeer elevation, was a rough, square erection of sun-baked brick. Thiswas about twelve feet in length, five feet in height, and six feet orso through. Apparently it had once been a kind of an altar. Theprofessor thought this assumption tenable, as it was known that theaborigines who had once inhabited the mesa had been sun-worshipers.
"Ugh!" shuddered Jack, as he gazed at the altar. "And they used tooffer human sacrifices here."
"I think it altogether likely," said the professor calmly; "probablythat altar has witnessed the immolation of more than a hundred victimsat a single tribal ceremony."
Ralph Stetson was clambering up on the altar as the professor spoke,but at hearing these words he hastily descended again.
"I guess I'll defer examining it till some other time," he saiddecidedly.
From the summit of the mesa a wonderful view could be obtained. Atthat altitude the rocky, desolate range of sierras to the south couldbe seen clearly, although a mile or so distant.
"Thar's the border yonder," said Pete, pointing.
"And over across there is father, I guess," said Jack. "I hope hefound everything at the Esmeralda all right."
"Sure he did," said Pete confidently. "I tell you, these greaseruprisings don't amount to a busted gourd. Mister Diaz's tin soldierscome along, and 'pop-bang! Adios!' It's all over."
"But I have heard that in this case the insurrectionists of NorthernChihuahua are exceptionally well provided with arms and ammunition,"objected the professor. "The American government can't make out fromwhence they are supplied with guns and munitions of war."
"Huh, where'd they git 'em from, I'd like to know?" snorted Pete. "Theborder is well guarded at any point where they would be likely to ship'em across, and----"
"How about the _unlikely_ points?" inquired the professor amiably.
"Um--ah--well," began Pete, somewhat stumped by this last, "I don't seewhat that's got to do with it."
"But I do. Mexicans, my friend, are, as you should know, a cunningrace. Moreover, those of them who dwell along it know the border farbetter than any white could ever hope to. By the admission of our ownsecret agents, it has hitherto been impossible to find how the arms,which the Chihuahua rebels are receiving, can reach them. It isobvious, however, that there must be some way in which they do,hence----"
"Waal, perfusser, hev it your own way," grunted Pete, rather red andangry. The professor's logic did indeed seem unassailable. The rebelsof Northern Chihuahua were getting arms--but how? The cow-puncher andthe boys recalled now a visit made to Mr. Merrill's ranch some weeksbefore by a party of United States secret agents.
The men were puzzled and angry over their failure to locate the "leak."Somehow arms were being shipped across the border into Chihuahua fromAmerican soil, but just how had hitherto baffled all the efforts oftheir ingenuity to discover.
"There, there, don't be so easily offended," counseled the professor,perceiving Pete's palpable irritation. "After all, the matter hasnothing to do with us. We are here to measure the mesa for scientificpurposes, not to get into arguments over how a band of insurrectos aregetting their arms. Come, boys, to work. Let us begin at the top, bymeasuring the altar. Suppose, Jack, you lay the tape on it, while Imake a rough field sketch of the structure."
The boys, now over their first repulsion to having anything to do withthe altar, about which such grisly memories clustered, eagerly began tocarry out these orders, while Coyote Pete seated himself on the side ofthe summit overlooking the travelers' camp below, and amused himself bythrowing small bits of detached rock down at the unoffending One Spot,Two Spot and Three Spot.
The base of the altar being duly measured and recorded, Jack, tape inhand, followed by the others, clambered up its rough sides, whichafforded an easy foothold, for the purpose of ascertaining thedimensions of the top. To the lad's astonishment, however, there wasno summit. That is to say, the altar was hollow.
The professor exhibited considerable scientific excitement on hearingthis. The man of science had been greatly puzzled over the totalabsence of any traces of the human sacrifices he knew must have takenplace there. He now hailed Jack eagerly.
"Are there not some bones or traces of sacrifices inside it, my boy?"he inquired excitedly.
"Nary a bone," shouted Walter cheerfully.
"Hold on, though," cried Jack. "There are some queer-looking thingsdown in one corner."
Lowering himself inside the altar, he made for one corner of theerection, in which he had spied a heap of fragile-looking bones of somekind.
"Skeletons of snakes!" he cried, holding up one of these for theinspection of the professor, who had by this time hoisted his bonyframe over the top of the altar and now stood beside them.
"That's right, my boy; they are serpents' skeletons. Doubtless intheir sacrificial ceremonies these people also offered up rattlesnakes,which seem to have been a sort of sacred reptile among them; much as,in a sense, the cat was sacred to the ancient Egyptians, and the pythonis worshiped in certain parts of India."
"But, professor," protested Jack, "if, as you say, numerous humansacrifices were offered here in the past, why do we not find any humanremains here?"
"Who can say, my boy? Many of the habits of these pre-historic peoplesare veiled in mystery. We can only surmise and reconstruct. They mayhave burned them or disposed of them in some other way."
"Say!" exclaimed Ralph suddenly. "This floor sounds to me as if it washollow; maybe there's a chamber or something underneath."
The boy, who had been stamping about with a vague sense of making somesuch discovery, hailed them with excited looks.
"Hollow, you say?" asked the professor, with every appearance of deepinterest.
"Yes, listen!"
Again Ralph stamped about. There was no question about it--thestone-paving, of which the floor of the altar was formed, gave out anunmistakably hollow sound.
The professor was down on his hands and knees instantly, searchingabout, like a hound on the scent. In the meantime the others stampedabout in other parts of the interior, but only where Ralph's feet hadgiven out the hollow sound did the floor appear anything but solid.
"Queer!" exclaimed the professor, as, after a considerable search, herose to his feet covered with dust and streaming with perspiration,"there should be some sort of trap-door here, to judge by the sounds,but so far as I can see, the joints between the pavement are perfectlytight, and I can find no ring or lever which might open such anaperture."
"Perhaps----" began Ralph, but he was interrupted by a sudden wild yellfrom Pete.
"Wow! Yee-ow! Come here quick, everybody!"