Chapter IX: Gold!

Hardly waiting for breakfast or daylight, we were at the kitchen door next morning, with tools and torches, eager to renew the investigations. One thought had ripened in my mind, by the unexplained mental process, that even while we sleep, labors ceaselessly upon the problems that perplex us while we wake. The mystic wielder of the trowel who had a place in the picture writing, but who to our minds, “but little relevancy bore,” now played an important and logical part in this crystallized pantomime. I now remembered that the impression made in the writing of the hieroglyphics was rather in appearance that of an instrument in a soft substance which had afterward hardened, leaving the curled edges of the mortar plainly visible; but in the rush of thought following the discovery, this idea had not been evolved.

Therefore my first act was to try the wall without picks, and we found that there was indeed a layer of some sort of stucco or cement on the wall in which the letters had been traced. “Here, youngster,” said Abner, “you’d better cipher out your gibberish on the wall! I forgot to go to the ’varsity when I was at Chicago, so it’s all upstairs German to me. The only good the most of the young fellers get by goin’ there is to learn by experience the scientific meanin’ of a line, the shortest distance from the front door to the rear one, with a practical application by the toe of the old professor’s boot; or if they didn’t learn it that way they ought to have before they got to be professional sluggers, or human racehorses with the water for a track and an oar for legs.”

“I suppose you’ll take it all back if I cipher out the meaning of this inscription?” I said.

“Why, as to that, lad, I’m not doubtin’ that you improved _your_ time and made it a payin’ investment to put you to school, and if you’ll make those jackrabbit tracks talk I’ll be sartin and sure of it. You’ve taken hold of this here business all the way through since we got to be partners as though you meant business, and an old man knows a likely young feller when he sees him.” Then he added, as if he had indulged in too much flattery for my good, “So you see, it proves the good judgment of old Abner.”

I lighted my torch and began a careful, systematic investigation of the inscription, copying the letters with a pencil in a memorandum book, and by the time I had done so I had also translated it into English which read, following as literally as possible the original:

“He that dwelleth in the secret place of the Most High shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty.”

I was disappointed, but when I had read my translation to Abner, he merely nodded and said: “Yes, we’ll find some sort of religious mummery in here that’s to admonish them to get their sanctimonious countenances on.” He had cleared away a small space between the two series of writings, revealing the outline of the upper half of a door, and as soon as we chipped away a portion of cement in a narrow strip following the seam or joint, we were able as easily to open it as we had the outer door, and found it to be hung precisely the same way as the other. Entering we found the flight of stairs symbolized and descending, some five or six in number. We followed along the passage, feeling as though we had been there before, and knew just where to turn. There at the end of the passage on our right hand was the door just as we expected to find it. It yielded to our touch and we stood--awed into silence and agitated by conflicting feelings and swayed more or less by a superstitious fear of the place--in a veritable Temple of Solomon in miniature.

Abner was not over-squeamish on religious subjects, and, therefore, was the first to recover himself, exclaiming, “Hurra, laddie! this suits my taste better than a gold mine, for here’s the gold already refined.” There was a plentiful show of it sure enough. The place was superbly fitted up as a place of worship with its altar and golden censer and shovels and flesh hooks of brass, and the snuffers and basins and spears of pure gold, all the rich and costly trappings described in the scriptural account of Solomon’s Temple were imitated in miniature here, the utensils of perfect gold, the wood overlaid with pure gold, and there was the curtain separating the holy place from the Holy of Holies. The curtain was of fine material, beautifully woven and dyed an exquisite purple, and within the cherubim of gold and all the accompanying paraphernalia, and under its protecting wings was the ark of the covenant whose staves projected beyond the separating curtain, “that the ends of the staves were seen out in the holy place.” Within the ark, which was hewn from solid rock, was a copy of the Old Testament on parchment, written in Hebrew, as if with a reed dipped in purple ink of the same shade as the curtain.

What further evidence could be wanting that here was a genuine Jewish Temple locked for ages in the “secret caves of the earth?” Here were the nets of checkered work on the walls spoken of in the scripture narrative of Solomon’s wondrous architectural achievements, and the wreaths of chain work and lily work engraved upon the pillars that supported the center of this immense temple which was a hundred feet in length and thirty-three feet in width. All the dimensions of the room and furnishings bore the exact proportions to the size of the temple as compared with that of King Solomon.

Truly, “the sons of a woman of the daughter of Dan had been there with skill to work in gold, in silver, in brass, in iron, in stone, and in timber, in purple and fine linen and in crimson.”

But its glory had departed. The finger of time had written its resistless decree there. The dust of centuries was over all and the purple curtains were moth eaten and falling to pieces. The gold was tarnished and only the wonderful hue of the Tyrean purple was unchanged.

Here was gold to satisfy the wildest dream of wealth. But feelings stronger than the lust for gold restrained us and quenched all desire to vandalize the sacred place by appropriating a single ornament, or touch an ounce of the gold dedicated to the solemn worship of the Almighty.

But we still had another world to conquer. The symbols on the outer wall indicated that another excavation existed in the rear of this one, and we proceeded to investigate. The door was of the usual form and opened, without hindrance, into a long passage, on either side of which were cut little cells or sepulchers in which we found many bodies of their dead.

Here at last the cunning hand that had wrought out those wonders was probably moldering to dust, and the brain that had been so fertile in ingenious devices was but a ramification of dried tissues that once formed the gray matter of the battery where human thought was generated, but now crumbling into dust indistinguishable from that which had settled upon it. The bodies had been embalmed imperfectly, and the hand of decay was upon them, rendering it impossible to distinguish form or sex, but there were remains of both children and adults.

Only one cell along the corridor was closed and in this effort to baffle discovery all their cunning and ingenuity had culminated. It was situated between two of the ordinary cells to discourage the idea of its having any special interest. It was to the first view, only a smaller cell or narrow shelf cut into the rock, affording room for one body laid across and barely within the doorway, which was the reverse of the posture of all the other sarcophagi whose cells were long and narrow, the bodies being laid with their feet toward the corridor.

Sounding the wall behind this mummy, we thought we could detect a hollow sound, and carefully removing the crumbling mummy to another cell we fell to work to find entrance. But we found we had a task of greater magnitude before us than anything we had yet undertaken in the antiquarian line. Though a faint echo seemed to come from within when we struck our picks against the walls, it was so faint as to give room for doubt as to its existence; but by sounding it from the adjoining cells our theory was strengthened, and with the keen scent of expert archæologists for mystery, we grew more anxious to solve this one in proportion as it grew deeper.

The sarcophagus, or stone coffin in which this body had rested, suggested at first an unexplained problem, too, as it was fully six feet long, and while the doorway was barely six and a half in height by three feet in width, the niche in which it rested crosswise of the doorway was just barely sufficient in length and breadth to admit the coffin. Was it possible that it had been hewn from the rock where it lay? Possible, but not probable; and we determined to remove it, believing that concealed beneath it we should find some catchword to aid us in solving the problem.

It was massive and hard as granite could make it. But we attacked it with our picks, and in half an hour or so we succeeded in breaking it in two in the middle, and then we began to roll it out piecemeal, hampered by the smallness of the place and the ponderous nature of the substance we were handling. By using our picks as levers we raised one part at the point where we had broken it and drew it upon the other half, until one of us could get behind it and overturn it into the corridor. It made a deafening report in the close air of the tombs as it landed in the passage. The other half was quickly disposed of in the same way and rolling them aside we returned to inspect the place it had occupied when, to our great astonishment, an open door invited us to enter the secret grotto of the Cliff Dwellers of the Colorado. Where the coffin had stood a slab of rock had shot up to the level of the top of the coffin as it stood in the niche. The slab was supported on two cedar beams running in grooves in the rock to the depth below. Here was the whole wily device laid bare to our eyes. The door was arranged to rise and fall in a slide and manipulated by levers upon the ends of which the coffin had acted as a counterpoise to keep the door in its place, but when the weight was removed the door had sunk out of sight in its groove, leaving a level threshold so neatly joined that it was hard to detect the work of the artisan.

We scrambled upon the slab, trimmed our fagots, grasped our picks more firmly, and with agitated hearts stepped within the low portal which was on a level with the sarcophagus. Now we knew that our toils and anxieties were about to be rewarded. The feverish labor of days into which had entered the cares of years were ended. The heart of this great system of veins and arteries extending through the mountain in every direction, its network of human skill, was reached. The most cherished secrets of the Cliff Dwellers were about to be made plain as the day before us, for we stood in the treasure vault of The Lost Tribes of Israel.

No architectural labors had been wasted here beyond the mere idea of hollowing out a small chamber for the reception of their valuables. Secrecy was the one problem upon which they had expended all their skill and to what good purpose we could testify through all these weary days when all our powers were bent upon circumventing the cunning and skill of the designers of this receptacle of wealth, for wealth there surely was, wealth in abundance without question of sacrilege or superstitious dread in possessing it. Vessels of brass exactly resembling those represented in the picture writing on the kitchen wall were disposed around the vault in niches, and the first one we examined was full of gold coin bearing the image and superscription of Solomon!

We were strangely silent, almost oppressed by the tremendous wealth suddenly revealed to us. Gold ingots filled some of the pans and gold earrings and ornaments others. Silver still others, and in the last of a dozen or more pans we examined were nuggets of pure gold, from the size of an egg and upward, some of them weighing twenty to thirty pounds troy. The labors and dangers that had seemed of late to have stamped their weight of care on me were as naught. The remembrance of all my bitter struggles flew away on the buoyant wings of youth. But it was pathetic to witness the effect of our good fortune on faithful Abner. On neither of us, if I may judge, was there present any of that miserly love for gold which gloats over it for love of it in itself. My caperings were much like those of a schoolboy when he finds a long cherished plan about to succeed; but to Abner it meant success at last, after weary years of disheartening failures and incredible hardships; not only ample provision for old age but the realization of ideal hopes, the carrying out at last of a lifetime purpose which he had come to regard as his mission, as an artist dreams of the hour when he shall be able to fix his highest ideal upon canvas, not because of the gold it will bring him, but because he is an artist.

So Abner was of that sanguine, hopeful temperament that can ever see the gleam of the yellow gold before its eyes, and is frightened by no disasters nor deterred by any dangers from following out the natural bent of its mind. He seemed half-stunned by his good fortune, as if he were already wondering how he could content himself without prospecting, and felt a sense of loss as if he had spent a long life in faithful service to his employer and had suddenly, without warning, been discharged.

I rallied him upon his solemn visage in the face of a princely fortune. He roused himself and replied in his old, hearty way: “That’s all right, laddie, but I was just thinkin’ of my old mother that I left back East and how I’d like, if she could be alive now, to share some of this stuff. I used to send her a trifle when I’d make a little raise, but all the gold in creation can’t be of any service to her now; but I’ll tell you what I’m going to do with the first dollar of this money that I spend after we get back to Chicago, I’m goin’ to order her the best monument in the shop, and see that it is put up over her dear old grave.” And he wiped a tear from his eye and blew his nose vociferously to hide his emotion.

“Well, how much do you think we have here, Uncle Abner?” I asked. He sized up our pile carefully with his eye and replied, “Well, I think as near as I can calkerlate, about a bushel and a half.”

“And how, for heaven’s sake are we going to get the stuff all back to Chicago without being robbed?” I said, feeling for the first time in my life the novel sensation of anxiety as to how I should care for my riches. This subject was one on which for several days we held long and anxious consultations. But meantime we must finish our work of exploration, though we were now rather indifferent as to what further treasure might be stowed away here, having all that any rational being could desire.

The only nook or cranny that we had not ransacked in the vault was what appeared to be one of the little niches in the wall closed up by cement which we broke away, and removed a stone very nicely fitted into the opening; and where had lain hermetically sealed for centuries the records that were to reveal the story of a long-lost people and prove of more importance to the world a thousand fold than all the gold we had discovered.

We brought forth a tube of brass with a tightly fitting cap over the end. On removing this we came to a neat roll of fine cloth of the same beautiful purple as the drapery of the temple without, and within its folds was a parchment tightly rolled and covered thickly with Hebrew characters written in crimson ink with a blunt reed pen or something similar. The story of the Cliff Dwellers with the history of their perilous voyage in search of a refuge from oppression will be recited in the following chapters.