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208 The stone resisted, seemingly solid as the butte itself. Larkin tried with strong thumb and fingers and then Harvey. Nothing happened.

"Wot does it do?" asked Larkin, petulantly. Nice lot of Jugginses we are, tryin' to poke a w'y through a bloomin' paving stone!"

"I don't know exactly what it does do," admitted Stone. "Lyman was pretty far gone. He told me to push the knob at the bottom of the thing the bird was holding. That was almost the last thing he said."

"Bet you tuppence farden 'e's larfing at hus now," said Larkin, gloomily.

"Where's that hammer you used, Lefty?" asked Stone at last. "We can't shift it without force, and we'll have to take a chance on breaking it."

"'Ow in 'ell did Lyman know w'ot it was for?" asked Larkin as he handed him the tool.

"I don't know. He didn't have time to tell me much. He may have heard about it from someone. An Indian perhaps. May have tried it because he thought it was here for a purpose. Those old ladders led somewhere."

"Oh, for Gawd's sake 'it the bloody knob!" Larkin burst out. "Bust hit if you 'ave to."

Stone still hesitated. There was evidently some mechanical principle that opened up the rock. A contrivance made by some tribe that flourished long before the cliff-dwellers of Mancos, before even the Mayans. And he feared by one blow to destroy the mechanism, to shut them off entirely from whatever lay within. The nervous sweat dripped into his eyes