d climb up
the slippery stones was fatiguing, but I did not hesitate, for I was
determined to know. Once upon the ledge, I let out a yell that quickly
set my companions in my direction. The figure I had seen was a dark,
red devil, a painted image, rude, unspeakably wild, crudely executed,
but painted by the hand of man. The whole surface of the cliff wall
bore figures of all shapes--men, mammals, birds and strange devices,
some in red paint, mostly in yellow. Some showed the wear of time;
others were clear and sharp.

Wallace puffed up to me, but he had wind enough left for another whoop.
Jones puffed up also, and seeing the first thing a rude sketch of what
might have been a deer or a buffalo, he commented thus: "Darn me if I
ever saw an animal like that? Boys, this is a find, sure as you're
born. Because not even the Piutes ever spoke of these figures. I doubt
if they know they're here. And the cowboys and wranglers, what few ever
get by here in a hundred years, never saw these things. Beats anything
I ever saw on the Mackenzie, or anywhere else."

The meaning of some devices was as mystical as that of others was
clear. Two blood-red figures of men, the larger dragging the smaller by
the hair, while he waved aloft a blood-red hatchet or club, left little
to conjecture. Here was the old battle of men, as old as life. Another
group, two figures of which resembled the foregoing in form and action,
battling over a prostrate form rudely feminine in outline, attested to
an age when men were as susceptible as they are in modern times, but
more forceful and original. An odd yellow Indian waved aloft a red
hand, which striking picture suggested the idea that he was an ancient
Macbeth, listening to the knocking at the gate. There was a character
representing a great chief, before whom many figures lay prostrate,
evidently slain or subjugated. Large red paintings, in the shape of
bats, occupied prominent positions, and must have represented gods or
devils. Armies of marching men told of that blight of nations old or
young--war. These, and birds unnamable, and beasts unclassable, with
dots and marks and hieroglyphics, recorded the history of a bygone
people. Symbols they were of an era that had gone into the dim past,
leaving only these marks, {Symbols recording the history of a bygone
people.} forever unintelligible; yet while they stood, century after
century, ineffaceable, reminders of the glory, the mystery, the sadness
of