Novel 1978 - The Proving Trail (v5.0) by Louis L’Amour Page B

could figure, but a man sitting up there with a rifle could cover anybody coming down that canyon where I was.
    The cave was right at the junction of those two canyons, and the more I looked at that cliff house, the more I wanted to see what was inside. Certainly once a man got in there, a body would surely be in a fix trying to get at him. If I could get in.
    Riding up the canyon was no easy matter. There was a sandy strip in the bottom where water had run during rains, but great boulders and slabs of rock had fallen across the way in several places. There was more pottery down here, or bits and pieces of it, and there were several ruins tucked back under the brows of the cliff. Back at the junction those canyon walls were maybe five hundred feet high, but a little less toward the canyon’s head. Near the far end I glimpsed what seemed to be some ruins in behind some spruce trees. Leaving my horse cropping at some brush, I scrambled up there and found the ruins of a house and the edge of what might have been a kiva, one of their round ceremonial centers. It was mostly filled with rock that had sloughed off the roof of the cave. The place was cool, still, and almost entirely hidden from below. In a couple of pools water stood, runoff from recent rains that had not evaporated in this shaded place.
    Returning to my roan, I found a place where it could be hidden behind a thick stand of spruce, a fairly level area, although small. Here, too, there were broken fragments of pottery and some ears of corn that were only three or four inches long and no larger around than my finger. Stripping the gear from the roan, I hid it as well as I could with some fallen branches and the like. Then, taking my rifle and canteen, I went back down the canyon, working my way along the steep side, following what must at one time have been a foot trail, that took me higher and higher along the canyon wall.
    Several hundred feet above the canyon floor I found a crack in the canyon wall where stood the notched trunk of a cedar. Rigging a crude sling for my rifle, I hung it over my back to have both hands free for climbing. Slowly and carefully, aiding myself with handholds or fingergrips on the rocks, I mounted to an excessively narrow ledge, then by another notched pole to a still higher one.
    Working my way along and up, I reached a ledge that led to the cliff house. Once settled inside, I unslung my rifle and peered out through a crack in the crumbling wall. From here I could look down to the junction of the two canyons. It was an easy rifle shot, but did I wish to kill?
    Settling back, I studied my surroundings. On my right, almost under my elbow, was the edge of the kiva, a round ceremonial room with some of the ancient timbers still in place although the roof had long since fallen in.
    There was a door broader at the top than at the bottom, for is not a man wider at the top? And often carrying a burden on his back or shoulders? And another opening that gave access to an area beyond.
    There were bits of broken pottery lying about and a number of small corncobs, less than a third the size of those with which I was familiar. Corn had been domesticated, apparently, but not developed to our present standard. I took a short drink from my canteen and settled back to rest.
    All was quiet in the canyon. Occasionally a rock, loosened by some animal or by the workings of nature, would tumble off into the canyon below. Once I heard some small animal scurrying.
    My horse was reasonably safe. Shielded by trees as he was, and somewhat above the canyon floor in the old ruin, there was small chance he would be discovered. It would need someone totally lacking in caution to go up the canyon to its end, completely exposed to rifle fire from a dozen possible places of hiding. Felix Yant was not, I was sure, such a man.
    What I needed was a little rest, time to think and to plan, and a chance to observe my enemy, if such he was, and to learn what manner of man he