disease. He called for the swiftest runner to go with him.
Huckween, the Night Voice, volunteered, and so they started, all the
warriors accompanying them to Sentinel Point, chanting prayers to the
Great Spirit.

"Several days later Huckween returned to camp, haggard and weak and
hungry, bearing the medicine wand of Eagle-Foot. He took it straight to
the Chief, and on bended knee told him the strange tale. How Eagle-Foot
had left him in the morning at the entrance to a mighty cavern and told
him to follow in at 'high sun.' This he did, and when he reached this
spot, the Bottomless Pit, he found Eagle-Foot's sacred medicine wand
stuck in the mud, his belt of sacred feathers fastened to the end of it,
dangling down into the mouth of the pit. From the depths he heard strange
sounds, but Eagle-Foot was gone. As he lay looking into the blackness, he
seemed to realize suddenly that the wand was the promised cure, and that
Eagle-Foot had given his own life in the Bottomless Pit that the sacred
feathers might become a saving potion for his people. It was the old idea
of a blood sacrifice.

"Every season since that the great medicine man of the Utes came here to
receive the mystic cure, bringing with him Eagle-Foot's staff and belt.
Long strips of cedar bark were bound together into a rope. This was
soaked in deer's grease, one end lighted, and dropped into the Pit, the
other fastened to the staff, which was stuck into the ground near the
edge. The spirit of Eagle-Foot thus returned, using the flaming bark rope
as a ladder, to bless the feathers of his brother, the medicine man of
the Utes."

"Do you suppose there are really bodies there at the bottom?" asked
Sleepy, as the candles were relighted and the group passed on into the
depths of the cave.

"I wouldn't be surprised," replied the Chief.

Finally the first flight of rickety wooden steps was reached, and the
boys descended, one at a time. Then came the "Fat man's misery," where
the ceiling of the cave almost met the floor, leaving only a small
opening. There was much laughing as Fat squeezed his body through. In the
"Bridal Chamber" every fellow traced his initials on the white stone with
his smoking candle. Then came the "Auger Hole," which is a round opening,
not more than twenty inches in diameter and about fifteen feet long,
through a solid wall of rock. About the middle of the passage there is a
sharp turn, and the remainder of the passage slopes down into the n