Page:J Allan Dunn--The Girl of Ghost Mountain.djvu/251

233 of the cave into which water had long since ceased to penetrate. Shrunken faces, glints of teeth between shriveled lips, bodies shapeless in dust-coated covered serapes and rebozos. There was another group, close to the heaped ashes of afire,—men these. On the dried skulls sombreros still rested, or lay close by.

Near were yellow bones, others partly covered, the skulls and scattered skeletons of horses that had furnished the last meals to the band shut up in the cave. Perhaps the mounts of the women. Full realization of the end of this wretched folk came to them. Not all had been smothered by the landslide but had died slowly, not of suffocation, but of thirst. The avalanche had been more merciful.

Sheridan turned from the sight to find the blocked entrance. A rubble of the clay had tongued into the cave beneath the rocky arch and, partly in it, there loomed a bulky mass that made his heart leap.

It was a wagon! Thick with fine dust, its tires rotted, sagging to one side where the wheels had collapsed. Traces and harness, withered and rotten, showed on each side of the pole where the horses had been taken out. This must be one of the treasure wagons; the horses must have bolted in their frenzy and under the lashing of frantic drivers, through the sliding earth, into the false safety of the cave.

His shout brought the rest to him. A blow from a pick proved the whole fabric rotten. Under their efforts it went crumbling down in a cloud of dust and the smell of decayed wood. And, in the middle of it all, something surged heavily to the floor with a dull thud.