"You must be an X-ray machine," declared Tad, chuckling.

"It didn't need anything of that sort. He was so shimmery that you could see right through him."

"What became of the spook? Did he fly up?" asked the guide.

"No, the spook just spooked," replied Stacy.

"How do you mean?" questioned Professor Zepplin.

"He thawed out like a s...o...b..ll, just melted away when I yelled."

"Very thrilling, very thrilling. Most remarkable. A matter for scientific investigation," muttered the Professor, but whether he were in earnest or not the boys could not gather from his expressionless countenance.

"What did Chunky have for supper?" asked Walter.

"What didn't he have?" scoffed the guide. "We have to eat fast or we wouldn't get enough to keep up our strength."

"I guess I don't get any more than my share," retorted Stacy. "I have to work for that, too."

"Well, I'm going to bed," announced Ned Rector. "You fellows may sit up here and tell ghost stories all the rest of the night if you want to. It's me for the feathers."

"You're right, Ned," agreed Tad. "We are a lot of silly boys to be so upset over a fellow who has had a crazy nightmare. Professor, don't you think you ought to give Stacy some medicine?"

"Yes, give him something to make him sleep," chuckled Walter.

The boy was interrupted by a roar from Ned Rector's tent. Ned was shouting angrily. He burst out into the circle of light shed by the camp fire, waving his hands above his head.

"They've got mine, they've got mine!" he yelled, dancing about with a very good imitation of the ghost dance so recently executed by the fat boy.

"Got what?" demanded Dad sternly, striding forward.

"Somebody's stolen my rifle. The spook's robbed me. It's gone and all my cartridges and my revolver and-----"

The camp was in an uproar instantly. Chunky was nodding with satisfaction.

"It wasn't stolen. The spook just spooked it, that's all," he declared convincingly.

"But you must be in error, Ned," cried the Professor.

"I'm not. It's gone. I left it beside my bed. It isn't there now.

I tell you somebody's been in this camp and robbed me!"

A sudden silence settled over the camp. The boys looked into each other's faces questioningly. Was this another mystery of the Bright Angel Gulch? They could not understand.

"Mebby the kid did see a ghost after all," muttered the guide.

"The kid did. And I guess the kid ought to know," returned Stacy pompously.

CHAPTER XX

IN THE HOME OF THE HAVASUPAIS

An investigation showed that Ned Rector was right in his a.s.sertion.

His rifle had been taken, likewise his revolver and his cartridges.

It lent color to Stacy's statement that he had seen something, but no one believed that that something had been a ghost, unless perhaps the guide believed it, for having lived close to Nature so long, he might be a superst.i.tious person.

There was little sleep in the camp of the Pony Rider Boys for the rest of the night. They were too fully absorbed in discussing the events of the evening and the mysteries that seemed to surround them. First, Stacy had lost his rifle, the captive lion had mysteriously disappeared, and now another member of their party had lost his rifle and revolver.

Dad directed the boys not to move about at all. He hoped to find a trail in the morning, a trail that would give him a clue in case prowlers had been in the camp.

A search in the morning failed to develop anything of the sort. Not the slightest trace of a stranger having visited the camp was discovered.

They gave up---the mystery was too much for them.

That day Nance decided to move on. Their camp was to remain at the same place, but the half breed was directed to sleep by day and to stay on guard during the night. Jim proposed to take his charges into the wonderful Cataract Canyon, where they would pay a visit to the village of the Havasupai Indians.

This appealed to the Pony Riders. They had seen no Indians since coming to the Grand Canyon. They did not know that there were Indians ranging through that rugged territory, red men who were as familiar with the movements of the Pony Rider Boys as were the boys themselves.

They arrived at the Cataract Canyon on the morning of the second day, having visited another part of Bright Angel Gulch for a day en route.

At the entrance to the beautiful canyon the guide paused to tell them something about it.

"I will tell you," he said, "how the Havasupais came to select this canyon for their home. When the several bands of red men, who afterwards became the great tribes of the south-west, left their sacred Canyon---mat-aw-we'-dit-ta---by direction of their Moses---Ka-that-ka-na'-ve---to find new homes, the Havasupai family journeyed eastward on the trail taken by the Navajos and the Hopi.

One night they camped in this canyon. Early the next day they took up their burdens to continue on their journey. But as they were starting a little papoose began to cry. The Kohot of the family, believing this to be a warning from the Great Spirit, decided to remain in the canyon.

"They found this fertile valley, containing about five hundred acres of level land. They called the place Ha-va-sua, meaning 'Blue Water,' and after a time they themselves were known, as Havasupai---'Dwellers By the Blue water'. They have been here ever since."

"Most interesting, most interesting," breathed the Professor. "But how comes it that this level stretch of fertile land is found in this rugged, rocky canyon, Nance?"

"That's easily answered. During hundreds of years the river has deposited vast quant.i.ties of marl at the upper ends of this valley. Thus four great dams have been built up forming barriers across the canyon.

These dams have quite largely filled up, leaving level stretches of land of great richness."

"Do they work the land?" asked Tad.

"In a primitive way, they do, probably following the methods they learned from the cliff dwellers, who occupied the crude dwellings you have seen all along these walls in the canyons here."

The Cataract Canyon proved to be the most interesting of all that the boys had seen for variety and beauty. The Havasu River, foaming in torrents over Supai and Navajos Falls, fifty and seventy-five feet high, respectively, they found gliding through a narrow canyon for half a mile, in a valley matted with ma.s.ses of trees, vines and ferns, the delicate green of whose foliage contrasted wonderfully with the dead gray walls of the deep, dark canyon at that point.

For some three miles below this the Pony Riders followed the smoothly-gliding stream through a canyon whose straight up and down walls of gray limestone seemed to meet overhead in the blue of the sky.

Below they seemed to be in the tropics. During that first day in the Cataract they saw another wonder, that of the filmy clouds settling down and forming a roof over the Canyon. It was a marvelous sight before which the Pony Rider Boys were lost in wonder.

The Bridal Veil Falls they thought the most beautiful wonder of its kind they had ever seen. Here they saw the crystal waters dashing in clouds of spray through ma.s.ses of ferns, moss and trees, one hundred and seventy-five feet perpendicularly into a seething pool below.

Their delight was in the innumerable caves found along the Canyon. In these were to be seen flowers fashioned out of the limestone, possessing wonderful colors, scintillating in the light of the torches, reds that glowed like points of fire, stalact.i.tes that glistened like the long, pointed icicles they had seen hanging from the eaves of their homes in Chillicothe. They discovered lace-work in most delicate tints, ma.s.ses and ma.s.ses of coral and festoons of stone sponges in all the caves they visited. There were little caves leading from larger caves, caves within caves, caves below caves, a perfect riot of caves and labyrinths all filled with these marvelous specimens of limestone.

"I think I would be content to live here always," breathed Tad after they had finished their explorations of the caves and pa.s.sed on into a perfect jungle of tropical growth on their way to Ko-ho-ni-no, the canyon home of the Havasupais.