Snake Gulch 



Our horses, browsing in the sage far below, looked 

 like ants. So steep did the ascent become that we 

 desisted; for if one of us had slipped on the smooth 

 incline, the result would have been terrible. Our 

 voices rang clear and hollow from the walls. We 

 were so high that the sky was blotted out by the 

 overhanging square, cornice-like top of the door; 

 and the light was weird, dim, shadowy, opaque. It 

 was a gray tomb. 



&quot; Waa-hoo ! &quot; yelled Jones with all the power of 

 his wide, leather lungs. 



Thousands of devilish voices rushed at us, seem 

 ingly on puffs of wind. Mocking, deep echoes bel 

 lowed from the ebon shades at the back of the cave, 

 and the walls, taking them up, hurled them on again 

 in fiendish concatenation. 



We did not again break the silence of that tomb, 

 where the spirits of ages lay in dusty shrouds; and 

 we crawled down as if we had invaded a sanctuary 

 and invoked the wrath of the gods. 



We all proposed names: Montezuma s Amphithe 

 ater being the only rival of Jones s selection, Echo 

 Cave, which we finally chose. 



Mounting our horses again, we made twenty miles 

 of Snake Gulch by noon, when we rested for lunch. 

 All the way up we had played the boy s game of spy 

 ing for sights, with the honors about even. It was a 



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