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    “‘The Cousin Jack, as everyone called the Cornishman, offered to fix up the camp a bit, while I started up the canyon saying, "I expect to be back in four or five hours. If you hear shooting, and I am not back by then, I want you to hitch up and pull back to the surveyors' camp. Notify the company officer, and ask him to hunt me up and send word to the Mexican rurales to be on the lookout."

    “‘About a mile up the canyon I reached a small grove of sotol, or giant yuccas. Going through it I came face to face with a large cougar. He almost turned head over heels trying to make a getaway up the canyon, so I felt there was no one in that direction. At last I got to the squaws camp and soon learned from the old signs that they had gone south in the direction of the high Sierra Madras.

     “‘The Indians must have used this camp for years, although there was no signs of tents. In rainy weather they probably used the hidden cave for shelter. There were no shells, beads, or arrows lying about, but immense roots of sotol were scattered everywhere, from which the Indians had drawn out the juice to make liquor; many pits lay open in the soft rock where the juice of the sotol trunks had been drained through beds of charcoal.

     “‘Though I went over the canyon wall where I had seen the mysterious door, I could find no sign of it. Had I been dreaming? No, for cougars had passed by apparently looking for water, the burros' signs were not above four days old, and that patch of green was still there against the canyon wall. The wall behind the vines when tapped with my prospector's pick gave forth a hollow sound. Putting my ear to the wall I heard a drip, drip, drip, as of water, and then a long-drawn, mournful sigh.

    “‘Bracing my shoulder against the wall, I tugged at the grape vines trying to loosen them. All of a sudden,