wider range. This they hoped might facilitate an escape. But in this,
they were mistaken; for the sentinel used renewed vigilance. The moment
they were beyond the prescribed boundaries, the guard, with his fiery
eye fixed on them with a lynx-like keenness, would follow them with his
horn trumpet to his mouth, ready at a second's warning, to sound the
note of alarm.

Things were in this state when they went together to the base of a
precipice, half a mile to the east from where they found the gold. Here
they whiled away an hour discussing the ever present theme of their
captivity, except Edward who, not having the fear of the chief before
him began to tear up mosses, and dig into crevices in search of
precious ore. While doing this, his foot slipped from under him, and he
fell heavily forward against a smooth, slab-like surface of the rock,
when, to his dismay, it gave back a hollow sound, and a large block
yielding an inch or two, showed an aperture within.

Calling his uncle, he pointed it out to him, who after examining it
closely, declared it to be a cavern within; but how the stone came
fitted into the door way, was a question they could not solve, for the
Pah-Utahs had no way of shaping stone with such precision, and
evidently were not aware that the cavern existed.

"Walk quietly away, and appear to be busy about anything you choose, in
order not to draw the attention of the sentinel this way, and I will
communicate it to Whirlwind," said the trapper. The chief after
examining the place, retreated with Howe a few rods distant, and then
said. "That cavern will prove our deliverance. Evidently it is one of
those of which tradition speaks, and that it communicates to some
distant point. That stone door is unknown to the Pah-Utah for the
trailing mosses have become imbedded in the fissures of the rock in a
way it would have taken a hundred years to have accomplished, showing
it could not have been entered in that time."

"Had we better enter it, and try to find another outlet?" asked the
trapper.

"I hardly like to decide; the undertaking is very hazardous. We might
possibly find it, if there is an outlet, but if we should not, a
horrible death awaits us--buried alive; or if we should return, a worse
one at the hands of our captors."

"What reason have you to suspect there is an outlet at a distant
point?" asked the trapper.

"The similarity of this opening to one on the side of the Medicine Bow
Mountains, to