“That,” said Roy, “is why I kept quiet. I thought you would think I was crazy.
“I think we both are.” Rod stared around. Filling the depth of the gallery, not seen from below, was terrace on terrace of cliff dwellings.
They were not inhabited, nor had they ever been by men. Openings which must have been doors were no higher than a man’s knee, not wide enough for shoulders. But it was clear that they were dwellings, not merely formations carved by water. There were series of rooms arranged in half a dozen low stories from floor to ceiling of the gallery. The material was a concrete of dried mud, an adobe, used with wood.
But there was nothing to suggest what had built them.
Roy started to stick his head into an opening; Rod shouted, “Hey! Don’t do that!”
“Why not? It’s abandoned.”
“You don’t know what might be inside. Snakes, maybe.”
“There are no snakes. Nobody’s ever seen one.
“No . . . but take it easy.”
“I wish I had a torch light.”
“I wish I had eight beautiful dancing girls and a Cadillac copter. Be careful. I don’t want to walk back alone.”
They lunched in the gallery and considered the matter. “Of course they were intelligent,” Roy declared. “We may find them elsewhere. Maybe really civilized now these look like ancient ruins.”
“Not necessarily intelligent,” Rod argued. “Bees make more complicated homes.”
“Bees don’t combine mud and wood the way these people did. Look at that lintel.”
“Birds do. I’ll concede that they were birdbrained, no more.
“Rod, you won’t look at the evidence.”
“Where are their artifacts? Show me one ash tray marked ‘Made in Jersey City.'”
“I might find some if you weren’t so jumpy.”
“All in time. Anyhow, the fact that they found it safe shows that we can live here.”
“Maybe. What killed them? Or why did they go away?”
They searched two galleries after lunch, found more dwellings. The dwellers had apparently formed a very large community. The fourth gallery they explored was almost empty, containing a beginning of a hive in one corner. Rod looked it over. “We can use this. If may not
be the best, but we can move the gang in and then find the best at our leisure.”
“We’re heading back?”
“Uh, in the morning. This is a good place to sleep and tomorrow we’ll travel from ‘can’ to ‘can’t’ I wonder what’s up there?” Rod was looking at a secondary shelf inside the main arch.
Roy eyed it. “Ill let you know in a moment.”
“Don’t bother. It’s almost straight up. We’ll build ladders for spots like that.”
“My mother was a human fly, my father was a mountain goat. Watch me.
The shelf was not much higher than his head. Roy had a hand over when a piece of rock crumbled away. He did not fall far.
Rod ran to him. “You all right, boy?”
Roy grunted, “I guess so,” then started to get up. He yelped.
“What’s the matter?”
“My right leg. I think. . . ow! I think it’s broken.” Rod examined the break, then went down to cut splints. With a piece of the line Roy carried, used economically, for he needed most of it as a ladder, he bound the leg, padding it with leaves. It was a simple break of the tibia, with no danger of infection.
They argued the whole time. “Of course you will,” Roy was saying. “Leave me a fresh kill and what salt meat there is. You can figure some way to leave water.”
“Come back and find your chawed bones!”
“Not at all. Nothing can get at me. If you hustle, you can make it in three days.”
“Four, or five more likely. Six days to lead a party back. Then you want to go back in a stretcher? How would you like to be helpless when a stobor jumps us?”
“But I wouldn’t go back. The gang would be moving down here.”
“Suppose they do? Eleven days, more likely twelve Roy, you didn’t just bang your shin; you banged your head, too.”
The stay in the gallery while Roy’s leg repaired was not difficult nor dangerous; it was merely tedious. Rod would have liked to explore all the caves, but the first time he was away longer than Roy thought necessary to make a kill Rod returned to find his patient almost hysterical. He had let his imagination run away, visioning Rod as dead and thinking about his own death, helpless, while he starved or died of thirst. After that Rod left him only to gather food and water. The gallery was safe from all dangers; no watch was necessary, fire was needed only for cooking. The weather was getting warmer and the daily rains dropped off.