l it met the slope of the other
side of the mountain. It was nothing but two shoulders, joined, on the
top of the mountain.

"Just below us there was a break in the level--a wide gash about fifty
feet across, so deep that we couldn't see the bottom. There was a
ledge on our side about three or four feet wide, and a bridge stretched
from it across the canyon. We decided that the bridge was the one
Queza had told the boys about--it led to the cave where the treasure
was kept. We laid there for an hour, watching. The buildings were all
huddled together--a lot of flat, brown adobe houses. We could see the
natives moving down among them, but none of us noticed anything unusual
going on until Taggart calls our attention.

"'Did you notice?' he said.

"'Notice what?' we all answered.

"'That they're all women down there--I ain't seen a man!'

"That was a fact. There didn't seem to be a man anywhere about. We
talked it over and concluded that we'd got there at a most advantageous
time. We decided that the men were away, on a hunt, most probably, and
after we'd watched a while longer we decided that we'd sneak down some
way and go after the treasure about midnight. We figured they'd all be
sleeping about that time. After dark they lit fires and sat around
them.

"We watched until about eleven--until we saw that nearly all the fires
had gone out--and then we sneaked down the slope of the mountain. We
didn't make any noise; we were silent and slippery as ghosts as we made
our way through the timber on the slope. It was slow work, though; the
woods were full of tangled vines and prickly bushes, and we got clawed
up considerable and had all we could do to keep from cussing out loud
when a thorn or something would rip a cheek open. It was blacker than
any night I've ever seen before or since; we couldn't see a foot ahead,
and the sounds we heard in the woods didn't make us feel any too
comfortable, for all we'd got used to living in the open. We knew, of
course, that the sounds came from birds and bats and moths and such,
but when a man is out on a job like that his nerves are not what they
are at other times--every sound seems unusual and magnified. I didn't
like so much silence from the village down below us--it seemed too
quiet; and it appeared to me that the noises we heard in the woods were
most too continuous to be caused by only us four. We went in single
file, one man almost touching the other, to be s