Carefully, I looked around again. I edged back toward the entrance hole and listened.
Nothing.
Again my eyes went to the walls. The candle cast few shadows, but against the limestone walls the candle gave much light. My eyes searched for shadows, not wanting to find them but not daring to miss them.
The silent dead lay within that other room. They were the ones I had come to see.
How long ago had Keokotah seen them? Suddenly I realized I did not know. Had it been just now? A few days ago? Or had it been months? Even years?
I moved then, and something else moved. I was suddenly still, my heart pounding. Had something moved? Or was I dreaming? Had expectation created the sound? I took a step, and something else stepped.
It was an echo, that was all. My footstep against these walls. How carefully clean it was! As if the floor had been swept, and not long since.
My eyes went to the sticks left by Keokotah. They were neatly piled, and ready to be added to the fire, had there been a fire.
But of course there had been. He had spoken of it, and the ashes were there. This was the fire that brought the shadows to life. Should I light it again? Should I make that experiment too?
Ridiculous. I was not cold. I did not need a fire. Outside thunder rumbled. Maybe I would need a fire. It was going to rain.
Well, it was warm and dry in here. I swallowed. It seemed warm, and that made no sense. Such caves were always cool, always almost cold. Had not I heard somewhere that caves kept an even, cool temperature?
Regardless of that, this cave was warm. Almost as if there had been a fire.
The hair on the back of my neck prickled and I felt my skin crawl. For a moment I looked at the gray, dead ashes. Suddenly, impelled by what impulse I know not, I bent over and touched the ashes with my fingers.
They were warm!
EIGHT
I felt of them again. Soft, gray wood ashes but definitely warm.
Well, why not? Was there anything so mysterious about that? I had come to the cave seeking an answer to a puzzle, but Keokotah had come seeking shelter, so why not others after him? And before?
Again my eyes went to the entrance to the inner cave. I started forward and then stopped. There was a cobweb in the opening. Whoever had been using the cave had evidently not entered the inner cave at all.
Brushing the cobweb away I ducked into the inner cave, holding my candle before me.
The three bodies lay side by side, each wrapped in a neat cocoon of skins. They were very, very old skins and looked as if they might disintegrate at a touch. Two of the bodies were those of women, one obviously an old woman, one young. Their faces were shrunken, the skin on their hands and feet also. It was tight to the bone, but I could still tell that one had been much younger than the other. The third figure was that of a man who seemed to have been buried later than the first comers. His skin looked fresher, his face composed as though he had died in his sleep, yet his eyes were open and they seemed to be looking at me as if he were about to speak. I shuddered.
Beside the first two bodies there was a woven basket containing grain. There was a jar nearby that had no doubt contained water or some other liquid.
There were no weapons, nor was there any jewelry, yet I had a feeling that when the bodies had been left here there had been both.
Slowly, I backed away, looking about me. This cave, too, was spotlessly clean. Obviously it had been swept. In vain I looked for some clue as to who these dead might have been or where they had come from. There was nothing, and I had no wish to examine the bodies. Far better to let them lie as they had for these many years.
Years? Perhaps even centuries. The interior of the cave had a cool, almost cold temperature. It was dry. The warmth of the brief fire in the outer room did not seem to have penetrated here. I backed away, and the eyes seemed to follow me. At the opening, I paused, and something made me speak.
“I shall leave you now, as you have been. Is there anything I can do?”
No lips stirred, nor did the eyes blink. I shook my head. What was I expecting? Was I as superstitious as a child? Yet in the eyes of the young man there seemed to be a pleading, a longing, as of something unsatisfied.
“I wish I could help,” I said quietly.
I crawled through the opening into the outer cave and gathered my few things. It was time to go. Yet I was slow in the gathering and felt reluctant to go.
Suddenly a voice seemed to speak. “Find them!” it said. I turned sharply, my brow furrowed. Had I actually heard a voice? Or was it in my own mind?
Find who?
Itchakomi? Or was I to find someone else? Someone akin to those buried in the inner cave? Had someone spoken? Or had it been been imagination only? No matter. It was time to go.
Slinging my pack and taking up my bow, I went out into the morning.
For a moment I stood still, listening. Every sense alert for possible danger, for it was always nearby. I heard no sound, felt nothing, saw nothing but the quiet forest and the blue sky above.
I moved out, found a trail, and began walking. As always I checked the trail to see what or who had passed. I found only the tracks of a deer and of birds and one place where a snake had crossed the path. I walked on into the morning. This was a new land for me, a land where few had been before me, and perhaps no white man after those in the cave back there.
My mind worked on two levels, as always. One was alert for danger, aware of all my surroundings, missing nothing. The other was my own inner thoughts, and this morning I was puzzled about myself.
Why had I chosen to come west? To explore new lands, I had told myself. To be the first to see, the first to experience. Yet was that all? I was uneasy with the explanation, feeling it was not enough. Was it not simply the desire to be on my own? To experience things for myself? Was I not escaping to myself?
My father and older brothers had been complete and efficient men, grown so by the demands made upon them, so when living with them I had been content to follow, to accept their judgment, and to leave the responsibility to them. I was as capable as any of them, yet lived in their shadows. To go off by myself relieved me of that tendency to go along. It left all the decisions to me and the responsibilities to them.
That might explain my actions in part, an effort to escape to myself.
Yet there was something more. There was an unheard voice that was calling me westward, something beyond my father’s urge to cross the far blue mountains. I did want, however, to see what lay beyond the Great River, beyond the Far Seeing Lands, beyond the Shining Mountains. Whatever else there was might be imagination or some strange communication from someone or something. I had no explanations for that. Sakim and I had often talked of that, and my father had spoken of it.
Yance scoffed, and we were amused by his scoffing. Yance was a complete realist. He believed in things he could see, touch, taste, and feel. He had little faith in Lila’s second sight or that of my father. He chided them gently or merely shrugged off their accurate predictions. He said, which was undoubtedly true, that our senses picked up vibrations of which we were unaware, warning us of changes in the weather, the approach of enemies, and other such things. He said we were aware on more than one level, of that which drew our immediate attention and of other vibrations or sensings of which our immediate attention took no notice. There was logic in what he said, and we were not inclined to argue.
The air was clear and cool. The summer sun was not yet in the sky. I moved off, carrying with me a good burden of dried and smoked meat. As I walked I chewed on a piece of this.
A squirrel chattered at me irritably. A small flock of parakeets flew up angrily, circling a crow who sat on a bare branch. The crow sat waiting, confident.