by Rada, J. R.
“Lack pigment,” David repeated. “Do you mean that their skins are colorless?”
Jared nodded and David glanced over at Adam and Sarah. Adam nodded that he understood. David thought he even detected the hint of an “I told you so” smile.
“Why would the Indians be so fascinated with an underground world and coming through emergence holes if there wasn’t some truth connected with their beliefs? There usually is a grain of truth associated with most legends,” David continued.
Alex agreed, and then said, “I can only guess at what that truth might be, though. I’m no theologian. Neither is Jared. The underworld myths may just be the Indian way to explain the existence of caves, or death, or birth. All I know is what is not the truth. Men cannot live deep within caves.”
David heard Adam grunt slightly in obvious disagreement, but the old Indian didn’t say anything.
“People have been fascinated with death since the beginning of time. There is always that mystery of what happens to someone after he dies. But science has proved the Indian legends about other worlds where the dead go wrong just as it proved the earth is not flat,” Jared said.
“Would you like to go back down into the caverns, David? With a light, you can see why man can’t live in complete darkness. I’m sure Gary would love to meet and talk with you. I’m working as one of the top men for Gary and the others today,” Alex offered.
“How do we get down there to talk to him?” David asked.
“Jared can show you the way. I’ll be top man by myself for a while.” Alex said.
Jared grabbed a jacket and stepped out onto the grass, closing the door behind himself. The cool air from inside the Winnebago disappeared much to David’s dismay.
Jared saw his disappointed expression and said, “Don’t worry, after an hour or two downstairs, you’ll learn to appreciate the heat.”
“How cold is it in the caves?” Sarah asked.
“About fifty-two degrees. It varies a little here and there. Chamber one is obviously the warmest since it’s directly beneath the entrance.”
Jared walked over to a pickup truck parked a few yards in front of the RV. Leaning over the truck bed, he pulled out three miner’s helmets. They were yellow hard hats with flashlights built into the crown. Jared tested the light on the first hat by cupping his hand over the face of the light to see if it lit up. Satisfied, he passed the helmet to Sarah.
“You’ll need to wear this while you’re down there. We don’t have any lighting other than what we take in,” Jared explained.
He tested two more helmets and handed them to Adam and David. The fourth helmet he put on his own head.
“Have any of you ever been caving before?” Jared asked.
Adam and Sarah shook their heads. David said, “Years ago I went when I was a Boy Scout.”
Jared laughed. It was a deep, throaty sound. “My, my. You are in for a surprise then.”
He walked over to a large pulley hanging over an open hole.
Jared ran his hand over his curly, black hair and smiled. “This is it. It’s also the only entrance to the cave we can find so far. We know there has to be a natural entrance because the river that formed the cave had to enter and exit somehow. Our best guess is the natural entrance is probably in the foothills near the San Juan, but we haven’t been able to locate it so far.”
“But the river is three miles away,” Sarah noted.
Jared nodded. “It’s one hell of a cave.”
David looked over the edge into the hole. He had to steady herself on the tripod frame of the pulley to keep from falling in.
Jared grabbed the nylon cord threaded through the pulley. On the end of the cord was a loop.
“Put one foot in this loop and hold on. I’ll operate the winch on the truck to lower you down.”
Adam took one step back and lowered his hands. “Not me. I don’t feel up to making this journey. Please, the three of you go.”
David looked at him with surprise. Was Adam scared of the cave? The man who had charged into his room and saved him from the Bow Clan?
David walked over beside him. “Are you all right, Adam? Before we got here, you wanted to see the cave,” David whispered.
Adam put his hand on David’s shoulder. “I’m an old man, David. I have seen the underworld in my visions, and that nearly killed me. I don’t have ability to recover as quickly as one your age. Besides, I have found my answers. It is your answers that lie beneath the ground,” Adam told him.
David walked back to the tripod.
Jared handed David the rope. “Test it out. That’s a mountain climber’s rope. It’s made of nylon so that it will be fray resistant. It may not look like much, but it could hold you, me, and Sarah.”
David arched his eyebrows. He wasn’t too anxious to find out if something made out of what women wore on their legs would keep him from falling.
Sarah laughed. “You’re such a coward. Just like a white man. I’ll go down first, you big baby.”
“I’ve already fallen in there once. I don’t want to do it again.”
“What if the ground gives way like it did with David?” Adam asked.
“The surrounding ground is sturdy. But, we’ve taken precautions if we happen to be wrong. The winch is hooked to the truck, which we parked far enough away so that if the ground collapsed, you’d fall no further than a few feet.”
Sarah took the nylon rope from Jared. “Okay, I’m convinced. Let’s get going.”
She stepped into the loop and hung suspended over the black hole. David watched her spin around in a slow circle as Jared walked back to the red Jeep Cherokee. He opened the door and slid behind the wheel.
“Ready?” he asked.
Sarah waved her hand. David unconsciously held his breath as she started to descend into the hole. He wondered if he would chicken out when the time came.
As if reading his mind, Sarah looked up at David. “Chicken,” she said right before her head disappeared below the surface.
CHAPTER 24
A four-foot wall of rock surrounded Sarah at first. Then the rock disappeared and she was in total darkness. The light from the hole above her head extended only three or four feet into the chamber. As she waited for her eyes to adjust to the darkness, she expected to see vague shapes come into view like she would if she walked from a lighted room into the night. Instead, she saw nothing. There was no light available for her eyes to adjust to.
Sarah had never been in utter blackness before. Even in the kivas there were fires that would cast a yellow-and-orange glow over the room. If this had been a month ago, the darkness wouldn’t have bothered her, but now, knowing that Kuskurza and the dark kachinas actually existed, it made her uncomfortable. The years she had spent living with her mother in Phoenix had given her her mother’s skepticism of Hopi beliefs. Her grandfather had softened her somewhat towards the Hopi way; at least enough so that she could live among them unlike her mother had been able to do. Sarah had always hung onto her doubts about the legends. Now she was not so sure.
“Switch on your headlamp so I can see where you are,” David called out from the edge of the hole.
Sarah looked up and saw the round circle of light that was the hole Jared had lowered her through. It looked only as big as a plate. Part of the hole was blocked out by David’s head as he leaned over the edge. How far into the cave was she?
Sarah reached up on the side of her helmet and pushed the button to turn on the battery-powered light. The small amount of light extended her vision to about ten feet.
“How’s that?” she called to David.
“Better.”
Not much, Sarah thought.
She touched the bottom of the cave floor. The cord slackened suddenly and she almost lost her balance because she had been leaning on it.
“I’m down!” she yelled once she had steadied herself. She heard David relay her comment to Jared.
“Tell me when you’re out of the loop,” David said.
Sarah pulled her foot free from the loop at the bottom of the cord. “Okay. I’m out.”
She watched as the orange nylon cord disappeared into the darkness above her. She was stuck now...trapped. If for some reason, they couldn’t get the rope back down into the cave...
Sarah slowly spun around in a circle trying to see if there was a wall or a rock formation nearby she could use to orient herself with, but there was nothing within her small area of sight. The light from her helmet didn’t penetrate the darkness far enough, and she was not inclined to move from her spot unless she had someone to guide her.
She stopped turning.
Had she seen something moving at the edges of the light?
Were there animals in caves besides bats? She knew it hadn’t been a bat. Bats would have flown through the passage. Whatever she had seen had been moving closer to the ground.
The Bow Clan?
Had the dark kachinas sent more members of the Bow Clan after David? Was it that important that David be killed? He didn’t seem like anything particularly special. Just another white man like her father had been. And just as likely to run off leaving her and her grandfather holding the bag if the Bow Clan came after him again.
Sarah shivered even though the temperature in the cavern was comfortable—about sixty degrees. When David touched down on the cave floor a minute later, she was still shivering.
“Are you cold? It’s cooler down here, but it certainly isn’t cold,” he said.
Sarah shook her head. “Is Jared on his way down here? I’d like to get out of here as soon as possible.”
“Now who’s the chicken?” David said without any humor in his voice.
Sarah glanced at him and saw that he was just as tense as she was. His eyes darted around the cavern. It was if he expected the Bow Clan to attack him again.
Jared came down two minutes later shining a powerful flashlight around the cavern that illuminated the walls as he descended. The chamber was not as large in the light as it felt in the dark. She guessed the chamber was ten-feet wide at its largest width and maybe fifteen-feet long.
“This is chamber one,” Jared explained, “but it is by no means the largest. Chamber three has that distinction so far. It’s about one-hundred-and-ten-feet long, thirty-two-feet wide, and twenty-three-feet high. My guess is we’ll find some even larger chambers the deeper we go.”
Jared started walking and David and Sarah fell in behind him. Sarah positioned herself between the two men so that she wouldn’t have to see the scurrying shadows behind and in front of her. The shadows reminded her that there could be anything hiding in the darkness ready to attack her.
Jared pointed out the different features of the passages by shining his flashlight on them. He also illuminated holes and rocks to avoid. Despite the light from the three miner’s helmets and Jared’s flashlight, Sarah still had the feeling that she was being suffocated in a small tunnel. She wondered if she was claustrophobic, but she had been in smaller rooms before, and hadn’t been bothered. It was not the size of the caves that bothered her; it was the darkness.
As they passed into chamber three, Sarah saw a bright light in the center of the room.
Gary Morse was not the sort of man Sarah had expected to meet. In her mind, she had thought Gary would be more like David. Medium height, broad-shouldered, strongly muscled. Gary Morse was only as tall as her. His skin was pale and appeared almost white under the lights, but still not as white as the Bow Clan’s skin. His dark hair was cut short and he wore round, wire-rimmed glasses. The one thing he did share with David was his muscles. Because of his shorter height, he looked even more muscular than David.
After Jared introduced Sarah and David, he excused himself and made his way back to chamber one. For a moment, Sarah thought David would follow him. He took a step toward Jared but then stopped.
Gary motioned to toward one of the tunnels. “Come on, I’ll take you to meet the rest of the team.” He glanced at Sarah. “Are you claustrophobic?”
“No,” she snapped a bit too forcefully.
“I’m sorry if I’ve offended you. I just thought you looked a bit uncomfortable. I don’t love my work enough to force you and Mr. Purcell to stay down here if you’re uncomfortable,” he explained.
Sarah took a deep breath. “Please don’t apologize. It’s just a little unsettling. I feel like I’m sitting in the very center of a dark kiva. I don’t know whether the walls are a foot away or a mile, but I know they’re there.”
Gary’s eyebrows knitted together. “Really? I’ve never seen it that way. To me, it’s like sitting in my backyard on a starless night or sitting in a large cathedral with only candles for light. Maybe that’s what separates spelunkers from the rest of the world.”
“Spelunkers?” David said.
“Cave explorers. I’m not sure myself as to how the term came about or why. It’s just something that people who explore caves are called. Maybe the first person who fell into a cave made a sound like ‘spelunk!’ when he hit.” Sarah and David laughed. “Well it’s nice to know all the time I’ve spent down here hasn’t dulled my sense of humor.”
David chuckled. “I was told that the state hired you to explore this cave for commercial possibilities. What do you think so far?”
“This is a magnificent cavern. So far my team has mapped a little over two miles of passages and chambers. We think that it’s only the beginning of this cave system, though. We’re hoping for a lot more.”
“Five miles?”
Gary shook his head. “More like fifty.”
David shuddered.
“It’s almost like a small underground city under Blanding,” Sarah said.
“Sort of redefines the way you look at the world, doesn’t it?” Gary said. “Don’t judge a book by its cover as they say.”
Sarah nodded. “So this is longer than the Carlsbad Caverns?”
Gary shook his head. “At least not yet, but I think it will be. This cavern was more than likely formed when the Great Salt Lake was still part of the ocean. When the water receded, it carved its way through the ground leaving this behind. For all we know, there may be a small line of caves that runs all the way to the ocean. There hasn’t been much water in here since then unless there’s a water source we haven’t found yet, which is entirely possible.”
Sarah liked the sound of Gary’s voice. It was warm and friendly. It sounded like the voice of the old storytellers in Oraibi who would sit on the edge of the pueblo and tell the children the legends of the Hopi. It was a voice that young men tried to copy but never duplicated. It could only be earned through experience.
“How deep under the surface are we?” David asked.
Gary turned toward him. “I’m not sure, but it is deep, and will get even deeper. I’d say right now we’re about one-hundred-and-fifty feet below the surface.”
“Oh,” David said weakly.
“Are you going to recommend that this cave be developed for tourists to visit?” Sarah asked.
Gary shrugged. “It hasn’t been decided yet. It seems large enough to attract people. Right now we’re mapping the cave in detail so we can see if there are any ‘touristy’ features. Since this cave is fairly dry, the stalagmites and stalactites are small so we’re looking for other features. We’ve found a few of those and have been giving them fancy names. After we finish our exploration, we’ll need to compare our maps of the caverns to the state land maps and see if the state actually owns all of the property. If not, we may have a bit of problem, especially if the natural entrance turns out to be on private property.”
Gary walked into a low tunnel and Sarah and David followed. From chamber three, the trio entered a low passage. To pass through it, they had to duck-walk through a low, wide tunnel. Gary stopped in chamber four and shined the flashlight on four different exits from the chamber, not including the one they had come through.
“Now this seems to be unique to this cave system,” Gary explained. “Up until
the point my team entered this chamber, we thought we were in the common chamber-type cave. Now we’re not so sure.”
“Why not?” David asked.
“Chamber caves are just what the name says. Chambers. A series of them usually along one main route. Such as the series of chambers we walked through to get here. There is only one line of travel. In this room, though, there are four choices, not one. We have already explored one passage and discovered it was a dead end, but that still leaves three exits. It certainly is not typical for a chamber cave.”
Gary walked toward the gaping hole on his left. At least in this passage, they were able to walk upright.
“If this isn’t a chamber cave, what is it?” Sarah asked. She looked over her shoulder and saw David was still standing near the entrance to the passageway.
“The other choice would be a catacomb cave. Those types of caves are more like mazes or spider webs. Of the one-hundred-and-seventy developed caves in the United States, only two are catacombs and both of them are east of Mississippi. I know of five more wild caves that are catacombs, and except for one, they are also all in the East. None of the other caves in this area are catacombs so I don’t expect this one to be either, which makes this cave that much more interesting at least to spelunkers like me.” He stopped walking and looked over his shoulder at Sarah. “If just one or two of the exits from chamber four continue in different directions, we may have some sort of new cave, which would definitely make this cavern unique. That alone might not make it a tourist attraction, but it would make it a scientific attraction.”
And that attraction would be disastrous, Sarah thought.
Sarah could tell when they entered chamber five without being told by Gary. The lights that had been reflecting off the rock walls in the passage suddenly stretched itself out to its limits and found nothing to reflect back from.
In front of the group, three circles of light bobbed, and then pointed at the three of them. Sarah panicked for a second when she saw the lights. She couldn’t see the people behind the lights and she thought it might be members of the Bow Clan coming for David.