"There are no snakes. Nobody's ever seen one.
"No... but take it easy."
"I wish I had a torch light."
"I wish I had eight beautiful dancing girls and a Cadillac copter. Be careful. I don't want to walk back alone."
They lunched in the gallery and considered the matter. "Of course they were intelligent," Roy declared. "We may find them elsewhere. Maybe really civilized now- these look like ancient ruins."
"Not necessarily intelligent," Rod argued. "Bees make more complicated homes."
"Bees don't combine mud and wood the way these people did. Look at that lintel."
"Birds do. I'll concede that they were bird-brained, no more.
"Rod, you won't look at the evidence."
"Where are their artifacts? Show me one ash tray marked 'Made in Jersey City.'"
"I might find some if you weren't so jumpy."
"All in time. Anyhow, the fact that they found it safe shows that we can live here."
"Maybe. What killed them? Or why did they go away?"
They searched two galleries after lunch, found more dwellings. The dwellers had apparently formed a very large community. The fourth gallery they explored was almost empty, containing a beginning of a hive in one corner. Rod looked it over. "We can use this. If may not
be the best, but we can move the gang in and then find the best at our leisure."
"We're heading back?"
"Uh, in the morning. This is a good place to sleep and tomorrow we'll travel from 'can' to 'can't'- I wonder what's up there?" Rod was looking at a secondary shelf inside the main arch.
Roy eyed it. "Ill let you know in a moment."
"Don't bother. It's almost straight up. We'll build ladders for spots like that."
"My mother was a human fly, my father was a mountain goat. Watch me.
The shelf was not much higher than his head. Roy had a hand over- when a piece of rock crumbled away. He did not fall far.
Rod ran to him. "You all right, boy?"
Roy grunted, "I guess so," then started to get up. He yelped.
"What's the matter?"
"My right leg. I think... ow! I think it's broken." Rod examined the break, then went down to cut splints. With a piece of the line Roy carried, used economically, for he needed most of it as a ladder, he bound the leg, padding it with leaves. It was a simple break of the tibia, with no danger of infection.
They argued the whole time. "Of course you will," Roy was saying. "Leave me a fresh kill and what salt meat there is. You can figure some way to leave water."
"Come back and find your chawed bones!"
"Not at all. Nothing can get at me. If you hustle, you can make it in three days."
"Four, or five more likely. Six days to lead a party back. Then you want to go back in a stretcher? How would you like to be helpless when a stobor jumps us?"
"But I wouldn't go back. The gang would be moving down here."
"Suppose they do? Eleven days, more likely twelve- Roy, you didn't just bang your shin; you banged your head, too."
The stay in the gallery while Roy's leg repaired was not difficult nor dangerous; it was merely tedious. Rod would have liked to explore all the caves, but the first time he was away longer than Roy thought necessary to make a kill Rod returned to find his patient almost hysterical. He had let his imagination run away, visioning Rod as dead and thinking about his own death, helpless, while he starved or died of thirst. After that Rod left him only to gather food and water. The gallery was safe from all dangers; no watch was necessary, fire was needed only for cooking. The weather was getting warmer and the daily rains dropped off.
They discussed everything from girls to what the colony needed, what could have caused the disaster that had stranded them, what they would have to eat if they could have what they wanted, and back to girls again. They did not discuss the possibility of rescue; they took it for granted that they were there to stay. They slept much of the time and often did nothing, in animal-like torpor.
Roy wanted to start back as soon as Rod removed the splints, but it took him only seconds to discover that he no longer knew how to walk. He exercised for days, then grew sulky when Rod still insisted that he was not able to travel; the accumulated irritations of invalidism spewed out in the only quarrel they had on the trip.
Rod grew as angry as he was, threw Roy's climbing
rope at him and shouted, "Go ahead! See how far you get on that gimp leg!"
Five minutes later Rod was arranging a sling, half dragging Roy, white and trembling and thoroughly subdued, back up onto the shelf. Thereafter they spent ten days getting Roy's muscles into shape, then started back.
Shorty Dumont was the first one they ran into as they approached the settlement. His jaw dropped and he looked scared, then he ran to greet them, ran back to alert those in camp. "Hey, everybody! They're back!"
Caroline heard the shout, outdistanced the others in great flying leaps, kissed and hugged them both. "Hi, Carol," Rod said. "What are you bawling about?"
"Oh, Roddie, you bad, bad boy!"
12. "It Won't Work, Rod"
In the midst of jubilation Rod had time to notice many changes. There were more than a dozen new buildings, including two long shedlike affairs of bamboo and mud. One new hut was of sunbaked brick; it had windows. Where the cooking fire had been was a barbecue pit and by it a Dutch oven. Near it a stream of water spilled out of bamboo pipe, splashed through a rawhide net, fell into a rock bowl, and was led away to the creek... he hardly knew whether to be pleased or irked at this anticipation of his own notion.
He caught impressions piecemeal, as their triumphal entry was interrupted by hugs, kisses; and bone-jarring slaps on the back, combined with questions piled on questions. "No, no trouble- except that Roy got mad and busted his leg... yeah, sure, we found what we went after; wait till you see... no... yes... Jackie!... Hi, Bob!- it's good to see you, too, boy! Where's Carmen... Hi, Grant!"
Cowper was grinning widely, white teeth splitting his beard. Rod noticed with great surprise that the man looked old- why, shucks, Grant wasn't more than twenty-two, twenty-three at the most. Where did he pick up those lines?
"Rod, old boy! I don't know whether to have you two thrown in the hoosegow or decorate your brows with laurel."
"We got held up."
"So it seems. Well, there is more rejoicing for the strayed lamb than for the ninety and nine. Come on up to the city hall."
"The what?"
Cowper looked sheepish. "They call it that, so I do. Better than 'Number Ten, Downing Street' which it started off with. It's just the hut where I sleep- it doesn't belong to me," he added. "When they elect somebody else, I'll sleep in bachelor hall." Grant led them toward a little building apart from the others and facing the cooking area.
The wall was gone.
Rod suddenly realized what looked strange about the upstream end of the settlement; the wall was gone completely and in its place was a thornbush barricade. He opened his mouth to make a savage comment- then realized that it really did not matter. Why kick up a row when the colony would be moving to the canyon of the Dwellers? They would never need walls again; they would be up high at night, with their ladders pulled up after them. He picked another subject.
"Grant, how in the world did you guys get the inner partitions out of those bamboo pipes?"
"Eh? Nothing to it. You tie a knife with rawhide to a thinner bamboo pole, then reach in and whittle. All it takes is patience. Waxie worked it out. But you haven't seen anything yet. We're going to have iron.
"Huh?"
"We've got ore; now we are experimenting. But I do wish we could locate a seam of coal. Say, you didn't spot any, did you?"