CHAPTER IX.

THE HOME OF A VANISHED RACE.

The meal disposed of, the cow-punchers and the boys, all of whom were pretty well tired out by their exertions of the morning, lounged about a while. Then preparations for the return to the ranch began. A guard was to be left over the cattle, however, as they were still restless and ill at ease, and the boys begged hard to be allowed to form a part of it. At first Mr. Harkness would not hear of it.

"Why, dad, the boys are out here to get experience," protested Harry, "and what better training could they have in ranch life than by standing a night watch over restive cattle?"

"That's all very well," rejoined his father, "but you must remember that I am in a measure responsible for the safety of these young men, and you boys have, up to date, displayed quite a capacity for getting into mischief."

"And getting out of it again," put in the irrepressible Tubby. And the victory was won, as many another victory has been, by a burst of laughter. Soon after, the boys loped to the top of a nearby knoll, and waved good-by to the ranch-bound party. Then they turned their ponies and cantered back to the cow-punchers' huts at a smart pace. Besides the boys, the three Simmons brothers, Frank and Charlie Price and Jeb Cotton were to share the Scouts' watch, Mr. Harkness having promised to 'phone to their various homes explaining their absences. In charge of the four punchers was Blinky, who had also been given orders by Mr. Harkness to keep the boys out of mischief. The cattle, however, grew so restive during the afternoon that the attention of the punchers was fully occupied in "riding them." It seemed to soothe the bovines to have their guardians constantly near them.

"The brutes smell Injuns, just as sure as my name is Blinky Small," declared Blinky emphatically.

The boys, after riding a few rounds with the punchers, began to find this occupation growing monotonous, and looked about for some other means of diversion.

"I know," shouted Tubby suddenly.

"Tubby's got an idea," laughed Merritt.

"Tell him to hold it. He may never get another," jeered Rob.

"Let's play ball," went on the stout youth, absolutely unperturbed by the laughter Rob's comment aroused.

"Fine," came sarcastically from one of the boys. "Where's the bat?"

"Where's the ball?"

"Where are the mitts?"

"Oh, where's the earth?" interrupted Tubby impatiently, stemming the tide of objections. "Say, can't you fellows play ball without a big league collection of stuff?"

"Well, here's a bit of board I can trim down a bit and make a bat of," said Jeb Cotton.

"Good for you, Jeb. You are a young man of resource and ingenuity. You'll make a good scout. How's this for a ball?"

The stout youth held up a rounded bowlder, which must have weighed at least four pounds.

"Oh, rats! Say, what do you want to do--brain us?"

"Couldn't," responded Tubby enigmatically.

"Couldn't what?"

"Brain you."

"Why?"

"Haven't got any."

"Any what?"

"B-r-a-i-n-s, brains!" yelled Tubby, retreating to a safe distance.

"I have it!" exclaimed Rob suddenly.

"What, the pip?"

"No, an idea," responded the boy recklessly, forgetting his own comments on Tubby's inspiration.

"Ho! ho! ho!" howled the stout youth delightedly. "Step up, ladies and gentlemen, and see the eighth--or ninth wonder of the world--Rob Blake has an idea. Step up lively now, before the little creature gets away."

"We can borrow some potatoes from Soapy Sam," said Rob, when some of the laughter at his expense had subsided.

"Borrow them?" exclaimed Bill Simmons. "I guess it will mean giving them. What I couldn't do to a potato with this bat----"

He flourished the piece of lumber Jeb Cotton had shaped, as he spoke. However, Rob's suggestion was tried; but even as Bill Simmons had prophesied, the borrowed potatoes did not prove a success as baseballs. One after another, they were scattered into tiny fragments, and Soapy Sam, on being requisitioned for more, threatened to evict the entire party from his premises.

"Oh, pshaw!" exclaimed Tubby petulantly. "What'll we do?"

"Go swimming," laughed Merritt.

"I have it," exclaimed Rob suddenly.

"He's got it again--a relapse of ideas," grinned Tubby.

"What's the matter with climbing that cliff and exploring those old cave dwellings?"

"Great!" was the unanimous verdict. Privately, one or two of the boys who had heard the ghost legend, were not quite as eager as they seemed to be, to traverse the mysterious passages and tomb-like dwellings of a vanished race, but they didn't say so.

"It's about three hours to sundown. We'll have to shake a leg to get up there and back," said Frank Price.

Acting on this advice, no time was lost in making a start.

"Have we all got revolvers?" asked Rob suddenly.

"Sure," responded Jeb Cotton. "I brought mine when I heard that it was a stampede we were called out on."

The others had done likewise.

"Say," put in Tubby gloomily, as they set out, "what's the good of taking guns with us?"

"Why, you never know what you'll run into in a cave," said Bill Simmons.

"Huh, I never heard of guns being any good against ghosts," chillily remarked the fat youth.

"Well, you're a nice cheerful soul, you are," burst out Rob. "Are you scared?"

"Oh, no; I'm not. Go ahead and rout your ghosts out. Stir 'em up, and make 'em jump through the hoops and back again. Fine!" exploded Tubby.

"Whatever is the matter with him?" asked Merritt, looking about for an answer.

"That idea he had a while back has gone to his head," laughed Harry.

And such was the general opinion.

As has been said, the cliff, at the summit of which were the cave dwellings, lay about half a mile back from the huts of the Far Pasture cow-punchers. The cliff was in itself a remarkable formation. It towered sheer up and down like the wall of a house. It was just as if a giant cheese-knife had shaved a neat slab off the face of the mountain--a slab some four hundred or more feet in height, and a mile or more wide at the base.

From where the boys were, however, they could perceive an old cattle trail winding up the mountainside, off beyond one edge of the smooth cliff. It traced its way among the scrub growth and stunted trees almost--so far as they could judge--to a point near the summit, and afforded an easy way of reaching the top of the cliff.

An hour or more of tough climbing brought them to the top of the mountain--or high hill--which formed a sort of plateau. No time was lost in making for the edge of the cliff, in the face of which, some twenty feet or more from the top, were bored the entrances to the cave-dwellers' mysterious homes.

"Well," said Tubby triumphantly, as he gazed over the dizzy precipice "no cave man's home for us."

It looked as if the stout youth was right. A narrow ledge, forming a sort of pathway against the naked side of the cliff, ran below the cave dwellings as a shelf is seen to extend sometimes below a row of pigeon holes. But from the summit of the cliff to the ledge was, as has been said, all of twenty feet, and there seemed to be no way of bridging the distance.

"Those cave men must have been way ahead of the times," mused Tubby.

"How do you make that out?" inquired Jack Simmons, Bill's younger brother.

"Why, they must have had air ships. They couldn't have rung their front door bells any other way."

"Nonsense they must have had some way of getting down," interposed Rob, who was looking about carefully--"Hooray, fellows! I've got it," he exclaimed suddenly, "look!"

He pushed aside a clump of brush and exposed to view a flight of steps cut in the face of the rock. So filled with dust were they, however, that they had not been visible to any but the sharp eyes of the Boy Scout leader.

"What are you going to do?" asked Merritt, as Rob made for the lip of the cliff.

"Going down there, of course," rejoined Rob.

Merritt, as he gazed over the brink and viewed the sheer drop, down which one false step would have sent its maker plunging like a loosened stone, was about to utter a warning. He checked himself, however, and, with the rest, eagerly watched Rob, as the boy made his way down the precipitous steps, or rather niches, cut in the face of the rock.

It was breath-catching work. The descending boy was compelled to cling to the surface of the cliff like a fly to a window-pane. Between him and the ground, four hundred feet under his shoe soles, nothing interposed but the narrow ledge of rock outside the cliff-dwellers' "front doors."

Rob made the descent in safety, and presently stood in triumph on the ledge. One after another, the Boy Scouts of the Range Patrol followed him, and presently they all stood side by side on the narrow shelf.

"Say, I hope the underpinnings of this don't give way," said Tubby, as he joined them, his round cheeks even ruddier than usual from the exertion of his climb.

"You ought to have been an undertaker, Tubby," exclaimed Merritt. "All you can think of is death and disaster and ghosts."

"Well, if you feel so good about it, you can have the first chance at going into one of those holes," parried Tubby.

"Very well, I will," rejoined Merritt, flushing. He privately did not much relish the idea of being the first to enter those long-untrod passageways. They looked dark and mysterious. An oppressive silence, too, hung about the boys, and half-unconsciously they had dropped their voices to a whisper, as they stood on the threshold of a civilization long passed to ashes.

"Go ahead," said Rob, coming to Merritt's side. Together the two boys, followed by the remainder of the newly recruited Boy Scouts, entered the rocky portal of the first of the dwellings.

A faint, musty smell puffed out in their faces.

"Smells like grandpa's cellar in the country," remarked Tubby, sniffing it.

"Where you used to swipe milk and apples, I suppose," laughed Merritt. Hollow echoes of his merriment went gurgling off down the dark passage, almost as if distant voices had taken them up and were repeating the joke over and over, till it died away in a tiny tinkle of a laugh, like the ghost of a baby's whisper.

"Ugh, I guess I won't laugh again," remarked Merritt.

"Say, Rob, how about a light?" asked Jeb Cotton suddenly.

"I've got a bit of candle here in my pocket," rejoined Rob. "I put it there the other night when Harry was developing some pictures. By the way, I wish you'd brought your camera, Harry."

"So do I. This would make a dandy flashlight in here."

The boys gazed about them admiringly, as Rob struck a match from his waterproof match-safe and lit the candle. They had penetrated fully a hundred feet into the cliff by this time, and the walls about them were marked with curious paintings and carvings, the work of the long-vanished cave-dwellers.

Under their feet was a thick, choking dust, that entered their eyes, ears and noses as they breathed, almost suffocating them. But not one of them was inclined to notice this, when there was so much to take up his attention elsewhere.

"I wonder what the cave-dwellers ate----" began Tubby, when his words were fairly taken out of his mouth by a startling occurrence.

A sudden puff of wind, chill as the breath of a tomb, blew toward them down the tunnel, and at the same instant Rob's candle was blown out. It was all the boys could do to keep from shouting aloud with alarm as they stood plunged into sudden blackness.

The next instant there came an appalling sound, an onrush like the voice of a hundred waterfalls. The wind puffed in their faces in sharp blasts, and something swept by them in the darkness with a strange, muffled shriek.