All the way up we had played the boy's game of spying for sights, with the honors about even.

It was a question if Snake Gulch ever before had such a raking over.

Despite its name, however, we discovered no snakes.
From the sandy niche of a cliff where we lunched Wallace espied a tomb, and heralded his discovery with a victorious whoop.

Digging in old ruins roused in him much the same spirit that digging in old books roused in me.

Before we reached him, he had a big bowie-knife buried deep in the red, sandy floor of the tomb.
This one-time sealed house of the dead had been constructed of small stones, held together by a cement, the nature of which, Wallace explained, had never become clear to civilization.