And so the two young men hitched up their day-hiking backpacks and started hiking the barely perceptible left fork of the trail.
In a matter of minutes, the stand of pine trees thinned and the black, rich loam of the pine-needle-covered forest floor gave way to pea-sized gravel of ancient volcanic rock, and the faint path the two had been following disappeared.
A hundred feet more and Kevin and Curt paused at the base of a black, craggy outcropping of pressure welded basalt tuff rising at a steep angle some sixty feet high in front of them.
Curt took off his western hat and wiped the sweat sheen from his brow with the back of his hand. With his other hand, he unsnapped the cover on his canteen and pulled the metal canteen out. The small chain attached to the canteen that secured the canteen cap from being lost tinkled against the canteen. He placed his hat back on his head and then began unscrewing the canteen cap as he surveyed the outcropping. "Hey, you know, this thing can be climbed. Want to try?" Curt asked.
Kevin, the ever more cautious of the two, cocked his head and also surveyed the sixty feet of rugged, ancient lava flows that had welded one on the other into a solid mass of vertical volcanic rock. "Why? Why would we want to do that? We don't want to do anything stupid and get hurt."
"Aw, c'mon. To see what we can see from the top. But, hey, look up there — see that opening — there," Curt pointed, "in the rock over there on the far right? 'Bout twenty, twenty-five feet up? Let's check it out. That's climbable. Maybe it's a cave. Maybe there's some pottery or Indian stuff stashed in there. Some old stuff. You know what I mean?" challenged Curt as he took a swig of water from his canteen, screwed the cap on, and slipped it into the felt-lined canteen cover and secured the two flaps.
"Yeah, well, I thought you got enough of the Indian 'stuff' a couple days ago. But whatever. Let's just get closer and make sure it looks climbable without us breaking our necks. Remember, God is not going to suspend the natural laws — in this case, gravity — for two guys, Christians or not."
"I know. I know. C'mon," exclaimed Curt as he took the lead.
Fifty paces later they were directly under the opening that, close up, looked more like thirty feet above them.
Kevin was studying the feasibility of the ascent when Curt exclaimed, "Hey, look at that! Sunlight must be coming through from somewhere. It must be some kind of cave!"
Kevin looked up at the opening and although the cleft was a narrow inverted V-shape, maybe only four feet wide or so at the bottom and narrowing to an apex six or seven feet higher, there did appear to be sunlight coming at an angle from some opening inside.
The shaft of sunlight bathed the right side of the opening in stark contrast to the darkly shadowed left side.
"Huh. How about that," said Kevin. "Yeah, looks like it might be a cave. But maybe just a hollow place in the rock."
Kevin studied the opening for a moment and then added, "The sun's on the backside of this cliff or whatever it is at this time of the day, so there must be an opening of some kind on the backside or maybe on the top to let the sun shine in at certain times," then he added as an afterthought, "Maybe just certain times of the year."
Curt caught the implication of Kevin's afterthought and chimed in and said, "Well, if it happens only certain times of the year, and if it's a cave, it may have been something special to the Indians a long time ago. Who knows what we might find up there. If we find old artifacts, I can do the GPS coordinates, and when we get back to Albuquerque, let the archeological department at UNM know," adding, "This may be our lucky day!"
Kevin thought about it for a moment and then, caught up in Curt's excitement and the potential for a discovery, said, "Okay — let's check it out."
~~~
"I'll go first," said Curt as he dropped his backpack. And with those words, Curt began his climb.
Given his sometimes full-speed-ahead personality, Curt was uncharacteristically cautious in picking his handholds and foot placements because the ascent was steeper and not as easy to climb as Curt had first supposed.
Although the first ten feet were relatively easy with table-sized volcanic shelves that acted much like a giant staircase, they quickly gave way to another ten feet of vertical climb where handholds and footholds were doable but marginal at best.
In fact, Curt's right foot momentarily slipped off a small ledge not much more than two or three inches wide on his first attempt at the vertical section. His heart was pounding with the sudden adrenaline rush of having almost fallen, but he had a good handhold, and was able to regain a tenuous footing on the narrow ledge.
"This is tougher than it looks," Curt spoke loudly into the rock face. "I can make it, but you'd better be real careful, Kevin. That ledge I slipped on is tricky. Make sure you get a good handhold, okay?"
"Will do," replied Kevin as he watch Curt climb and made mental note of Curt's route.
Curt continued to climb with deliberation. Despite the slipping incident, he made the rest of the climb look relatively easy. In a matter of a couple of minutes, he reached the entrance to the cave by acquiring and then standing and crabbing sideways on a convenient thirty-inch ledge that began some eight feet to the right of the cave, leading straight to the entrance.
"Piece o' cake," shouted Curt in feigned bravado to Kevin, "Your turn. Be careful."
Kevin hollered up, "You be careful. You might find the cave occupied with a member of the cat family, and I don’t mean 'domestic.' "
"Now you tell me!" laughed Curt as he eased in the cave opening, bent down, and stuck his head inside.
Not detecting anything alarming, Curt raised up and took a step into the cave and felt the coolness and smelled mustiness, but failed to detect what would be the unmistakable odor of cat or any other animal.
Curt hollered down to Kevin, "It don't smell like any animals been here."
"Doesn't."
"What?"
"Doesn't smell. "
"Whatever, English teacher. I'm going in farther and see what I can see."
"Wait. Wait for me," shouted Kevin.
Curt's eyes were having difficulty adjusting from daylight to the darkness in the cave as he stood peering into the cave's blackness. The adjustment was made even more difficult because the shaft of sunlight from the softball-size hole high on the opposite cave wall was piercing the blackness like an arrow shot directly to the cave opening where Curt was standing. The effect caused Curt to have a déjà vu moment about the spotlight in his face during his four agonizing performances of saying three-lines of dialogue as a bit actor in last year's high-school Latin play.
Squinting in an impossible attempt to penetrate the darkness while partially bathed in the shaft of sunlight, Curt yelled over his shoulder, the sound of his voice echoing in the cave, "Can't see anything. Too dark. We should have brought a flashlight. Bring up something that can burn — something we can use for a torch, and come on up."
Kevin looked around for a stick or a tuft of dried grass that could be used for a torch, but the volcanic gravel and rock were bare.
"Nothing down here to burn," Kevin hollered. "We'll have to use our matches. But wait for me. I'm coming up."
Kevin shrugged off his backpack and began the climb, and, like Curt, found the first ten feet of vertical climb relatively easy. As he gained a foothold on the narrow, three-inch wide ledge, the same narrow ledge that had given Curt a problem, he reached for his next handhold, and then, like Curt, Kevin slipped, too…
Chapter Seven
The Cave and the Encounter
The shaft of sunlight eclipsed and then disappeared from the hole on the far wall of the cave.
Kevin stood a step inside the cave entrance while Curt was standing a couple of feet farther inside. Their eyes were adjusting to the darkness, but other than the light cast by the cave opening, the extent of the cave and the areas to the left and to the right of the cave entrance were shrouded in deep blackness and were beyond the young
men's ability to see.
"It's too dark," said Kevin. You're going to have to light a couple of matches."
"Yep. You're right." Curt retrieved the waterproof metal container of wooden matches from his pocket, unscrewed the lid, took out two matches, screwed the lid back on, and placed the container back in his pocket.
Kevin remained just inside the cave entrance and watched as Curt took another tentative step into the darkness before he struck one of the wooden matches. Curt held the flame high. In a millisecond, Curt let out a yelp and began backing up toward Kevin and the cave entrance.
"What is it? What did you see?" Kevin asked anxiously.
Curt half-turned as he reached the entrance and looked at Kevin. Curt's face was ashen and his expression one of surprise. "Man, I saw a skull! Human. I think we'd better get out of here."
"You're kidding."
"Really. And a bunch of pottery, too. Let's go. It's another one of those Indian burial things or something like that."
"Oh, man! Not again!" And with those words, Kevin turned from the cave entrance and led the way down the thirty feet of rock face to the base, half-sliding and half-finding handholds and footholds, and half not. In the process, Kevin skinned his right knee painfully.
Curt followed down the rock with abandon and twice almost lost control of his descent, but he made it unscathed although his hat came off early in the descent and tumbled lazily to the table-sized volcanic shelf nearest the ground.
When Curt joined Kevin on the ground, Kevin said, "Well, we're far from those burial grounds we stumbled across the other day, but I guess there's all sorts of surprises around here. You okay?"
Curt retrieved his hat and said over his shoulder, "Yeah. Scraped my right palm a bit, but, yeah, okay. Let's head back to camp. I don't know about you, but I've had enough excitement for one day."
The two picked up their mini-backpacks — and Kevin, his rifle. They shouldered their backpacks and, driven by an urge to put distance between them and the cave, trotted, and backtracked the short distance to the stand of ponderosa pines they had entered earlier.
In the coolness of the cathedral-like shading trees, they stopped. They took long swigs of water from their canteens, and then sat and rested for a couple of minutes.
Curt said, "I can't believe this has happened twice."
"Me, neither. You about ready to go?"
Curt nodded.
As they resumed their hike back to the fork in the trail, now only a few yards away, Curt said in dismay, "I forgot to get the GPS coordinates. The professors at the university would be interested in that cave, I'll bet."
Kevin said, "Don't worry about it. We can come back tomorrow. Right now, I just want to get back to camp."
"Me, too. I'm hungry, too."
At the fork, they paused. Kevin remarked, "This trail to the right, the one we took up here from down below, somehow looks different. It looks wider than I remember — it's wide enough for a jeep. Something's changed. Something's different. And, oh-oh, look! Those are horseshoe imprints in the trail — hoof prints! Somebody riding a horse has come through here and is headed up trail to that saddle over there," Kevin exclaimed as he pointed up trail to the swale in the mountain maybe a mile away.
Stooping down and examining the hoof prints closely, Kevin said, "These tracks are fresh, too. We would have seen them before if they were old. Somebody else is up here."
"Oh, man, I hope it's not an upset Indian hunting for us," groaned Curt.
"Chill. I think it's only one horse. And, anyway, whoever he is, he's headed up the trail, and we're going down the trail," replied Kevin. "But, what I don't understand is why the trail looks so different — so wide. Do you remember it being so wide?"
"Uh-uh. But we're at the fork. It's got to be the trail back to camp."
"Yeah, I guess."
~~~
The two began the descent down the trail. Kevin continued to be puzzled by the trail width and the appearance of the hoof prints, and Curt was especially disappointed that another human being on horseback had disrupted their private paradise.
Twenty-five yards down the trail a familiar massive twelve-foot high ancient igneous boulder they remembered when coming up the trail confirmed they were on the correct trail.
The boulder marked where the trail ahead would jog sharply to the right for a more or less straight, downhill shot back to the stream they had forded two hours earlier.
Kevin had taken the lead. He was about twenty feet ahead of Curt. Suddenly, Kevin heard shuffling and clinking sounds on the trail ahead. What in the world…?
But the source of the sounds was hidden behind the massive boulder that he was approaching.
Someone else is on the trail and close! And no sooner had that thought struck Kevin when he rounded the boulder and a huge horse immediately in front of him reared up in surprise, but not any more surprised than was Kevin who jumped back quickly to avoid an errant hoof.
The rider of the horse commanded, "Steady! Steady!" and his horse settled down, wild-eyed, quivering, and snorting.
In the next instant, Curt rounded the boulder and came to an abrupt halt at the sight of Kevin not more than five feet away standing in front of a large horse with a rider clad in a dark blue uniform with a single narrow, red bar outlined in gold stitching on each shoulder of his gold-trimmed-high- collared waistcoat.
In addition, the rider wore a black, cowboy-style, narrow brimmed felt hat set at a rakish angle on his head of shoulder-length black hair. The hat had a string band in gold braid with two gold tassels, and a theatrical long, white feather plume attached to the left side.
In that same instant of steadying his horse, the uniformed rider drew a long-barreled pearl-handle revolver from his holster and leveled it first at Kevin and then at Curt and then back to Kevin.
"Who in the blazes are y'all? What're y'all doin' on this here trail? Speak!" commanded the rider, his demeanor all the more intimidating because of his fiery dark eyes, black pointed goatee, and black handlebar mustache.
Before Kevin or Curt could answer, the rider bellowed, "First Sergeant O'Malley! Get up here! Now!"
As the command rippled down the column of blue-clad riders on the trail, Kevin noted that the eyes of the rider in front of him never broke contact with him or Curt.
Neither did the rider's pistol.
Kevin, still in shock but gathering his wits, took in the two-by-two blue-clad figures on horseback that snaked down the trail as far as he could see behind the rider that was shouting at him. It became clear to Kevin that he and Curt had encountered some kind of a military unit and that the irritated and very demanding person on horseback in front of them must be an officer of some kind and obviously in-charge.
Seconds later, the first sergeant, easily recognizable by the large chevrons on each sleeve, squeezed his horse with some difficulty around the others on the narrow trail and came alongside the officer.
The first sergeant eyed Kevin and Curt while simultaneously saluting the officer.
The first sergeant asked, "What ya have me to do, Lieutenant Wheeler, sir?" in what sounded like an Irish brogue.
"Dismount, First Sergeant, and get that man's rifle," ordered the lieutenant.
"The lad's rifle, sir," acknowledged the first sergeant.
Kevin caught the strange acknowledgment and, given the Irish lilt of the first sergeant, suddenly remembered that his Irish grandmother on his mother's side never used the words yes or no either — it was a peculiarity of some Irish; some simply repeat part of the question as an acknowledgment as the first sergeant had done.
The first sergeant handed the reins of his horse to the lieutenant and dismounted.
Kevin had yet to speak a word, but it was suddenly obvious to him that his rifle posed a potential threat — at least from the lieutenant's perspective, and that potential was the reason the lieutenant's pistol tended to concentrate more on Kevin than it did Curt.
Being a threat, of course, had never entered Kevin's mind, but he now understood why the unexpected encounter had become confrontational so quickly.
It also dawned on Kevin that the hoof prints he and Curt had seen when arriving at the fork were probably made by a scout — probably Indian — on horseback who was scouting the trail ahead of the main column. Kevin and Curt had simply started down the trail after the scout had passed and before the column came up the trail.
The first sergeant, a burly, red-bearded, heavy jowled, red-faced, older man with impressive gold chevrons on both sleeves and large epaulets on the shoulders of his dark blue waistcoat drew a long-barreled revolver as he dismounted. Unlike the lieutenant though, he simply held the revolver in his left hand pointed at the ground as if he did not see the same threat that the lieutenant saw, or because he believed his very presence was intimidation enough, which to Kevin and Curt, it was, as he strode purposefully toward Kevin.
At an arm length away, the first sergeant's eyes never leaving Kevin's eyes, the first sergeant, towering a head taller than Kevin and easily outweighing Kevin by a hundred pounds or more, reached out with his enormous right hand, grabbed Kevin's rifle sling, and jerked the sling and attached rifle off Kevin's shoulder with such force that Kevin was momentarily knocked off balance.
Kevin heard a guffaw or two from those close by in the column.
"That be enough of that!" bellowed the first sergeant to those laughing, gaining instant silence.
The first sergeant then backed away from Kevin toward the lieutenant, all the while maintaining eye contact alternately with Kevin and then Curt, revolver held steady in his left hand, pointed to the ground. At the neck of the lieutenant's horse and with his back to the lieutenant, eyes never leaving Kevin and Curt, the first sergeant raised Kevin's rifle high and the lieutenant grabbed it.
The lieutenant glanced quizzically at the rifle's bolt and then flipped the rifle end-for-end and examined the bore of the barrel. He then handed the rifle back to the first sergeant over the first sergeant's shoulder because the first sergeant still had his back to the lieutenant.
"One more time. And it'll be the last time ah be askin'. Who're y'all?" commanded the lieutenant in an unmistakable Southern drawl.
In the couple of minutes that had transpired since the encounter, Kevin's brain was processing what he was seeing, and what he was seeing was to him like a scene from a John Wayne western movie: The officer on the horse in front of him and the line of mounted men behind him — from what Kevin could see — were dressed in dark blue US Army Cavalry uniforms, circa the 1800s, and reminiscent of Wayne's famous movie The Searchers.