We never did see any forms of life in the cave, other than the millions of bats which made it their home, but on one of our trips into the inner chambers the boys found a large bone. They brought it out to examine it more carefully. It was much too large to be a human bone, and when the boys tried to break it they found it was very hard, resisting for a while the blows of their sledge hammer. The bone apparently was in a state of semi-petrification. We all speculated as to how it could have gotten into the cave, and every man had his own theory. Some said an animal must have fallen into the cave, such as Mr. Simm's cow had done, but lived to stumble on into the cave where he starved to death. The fellows thought this theory unlikely because if it were true, other bones would have been found at the same spot. Another theory was that a cave man centuries ago had killed some wild beast and had taken a leg of meat into the cave where he made his home. Meat and man had long since ceased to exist, but the bone remained. At least we couldn't offer any sound reason against this theory, but it seemed almost fantastic to accept it. The only other theory which seemed at all plausible was that some wild animal, such as a bobcat or lynx, had at some time lived in the cave and had brought in the leg of a deer or moose and left it there after having eaten the meat from it. However, there were no tracks of any kind in the Big Cave, hence that theory had little support. How the bone got there still remains a mystery. 7 The End of the Beginning After the guano operation had been going on for some time I could see that it wasn't turning out to be as profitable as I had originally thought it would be. With the vast quantity of guano under ground, and with our efficient method of extracting it, I wasn't able to realize what I felt was a sizeable profit from the time and effort involved. Of course there were lots of factors that entered into the operation which do not meet the eye. For instance, when the guano was brought to the surface it was filled with moisture, and I was paying the freight charges to San Francisco by the ton. Yet when the guano arrived in San Francisco, the Hawaiian Fertilizer Company would pay only for guano that was dry. So, when I found I was paying freight on unwanted moisture, I stopped that in a hurry. I built a series of drying racks or platforms in the western section of Carlsbad and let the guano remain there until it had dried out. This kept a pay load from reaching market and was one more operation which ate into the profits. The freight to San Francisco at that time cost me $9 per ton. The guano was $2.25 per unit, $1 for phosphoric acid, and $1 for potash per ton.