“Yeah, and I can go on and finish that argument, myself. I can’t do no more damage to society while I’m herdin’ with the coyotes, and if I can help you find what you’re lookin’ for, that’s better than loafin’ around doing time in Carson. So you won’t be doing nothing worse than taking a boarder off the hands of the State. That’s about the way you doped it out, ain’t it, professor?” “Essentially the same, yes,” Abington admitted. “I’m glad you have so thorough an understanding of the matter. I think if your offense was not too great I could perhaps get you paroled and placed in my charge, but that would take time and-- They’ve just discovered the skull of an ape man in Rhodesia, Bill! I’d give a good deal to be able to show them a Cretaceous man found in America.” Bill leaned back with a sigh of repletion and lighted his second cigarette. “Well, I dunno how Cretaceous they are, professor, but they’re fossils all right enough. Stone, anyway, way back in a cave--you have to crawl on your belly quite a ways, where I went in. I guess maybe there’s another opening somewhere. I didn’t look for it. I had pinon knots for torches, and I lit a fresh one soon as I come into this chamber--or cave. And when the blaze showed them stone skeletons-- Say, professor, I backed right out the same way I’d went in!” “How do you know they were fossilized? They may have been modern--no more than a hundred years old! They may even have been frontiersmen trapped in there while trying to escape from hostile Indians.” Abington’s tone was crisp. “I went back,” Bill declared calmly. “Got over my scare and wanted to see for sure whether them skeletons was twelve feet high like they looked to be, or just plain man size. So I looked good, next time in. There was four, and the biggest wasn’t over eight feet. And they was solid stone, far as I could tell.” “I don’t suppose you could describe the geologic conditions--I shall have to determine that, of course, when I arrive at the spot.” During five minutes Bill smoked and silently eyed the archaeologist, who sat meditatively tapping another burned stick into coals. “One thing I better tell you, professor,” he ventured at last, vaguely stirred by the rapt look in Abington’s dark eyes. “There’s a lot more to it than just arriving ‘at the spot,’ as you say. When I went into that cave, I was scared in. There’s something up in there that got my goat. I beat it outa there--that’s how I got nabbed by the law. “I can’t tell you what it is, professor. Some kinda animal. Makes tracks like a mountain sheep--but it ain’t a sheep; or if it is-- All I can say is that us Adam chasers will have to keep our eyes peeled.” CHAPTER IV--THE FOOTPRINT CLEW