As they passed through the Narrows they began to climb up the east wall, at a point where an immense pile of broken stone from the ledges above had collected.  This is the doorway to Huccacode.  The entrance to the cave is a mere crack in a mighty white wall that rises a hundred feet.

Bundles and boxes were placed on a convenient ledge, candles lighted, and all made ready.  The end of the string was fastened to a shoot of sagebrush just outside the opening; and the group passed in, Shorty in the lead with an electric flashlight, and Phil bringing up the rear, trailing the string.  Far back in this wonderful cave there is a joining of passages, and parties entering without a string have often become lost, and have traveled several times around in a great circle before finding the lead out.

The cave is a series of chambers connected by what appears to be an overlapping of rooms.  The voices of the boys sounded hollow and far away, while the candles cast long, grotesque shadows on the walls.  As the column advanced, the leader shouted back now and then to “watch out to the left” or “to be careful to the right” or “to mind your footing.”  As the trail led off on the side of the Bottomless Pit they halted, and the usual ceremony was gone through.  They twisted several newspapers together into a torch and, lighting them, dropped them into the pit.  They watched as the torch went down and down and down, lighting the way for a fleeting instant into the very depths of the earth; past ugly, jagged rocks, past flat shelves of limestone, past straight, smooth walls of rock till, at last, it burned itself out, still going down into the vast, mysterious crevice.

“It’s a strange sight, to be sure,” remarked Mr. Allen.  “I have seen it a good many times now, and I have no trouble in believing the old Indian legend about it.”

“I have never heard it,” said Willis.  “Won’t you tell it to us?  This would be such a good time.  Let’s put out all the lights except mine; I’ll stick it here on this projection and we’ll sit in the end of this big room while you talk.”

The crowd suited the action to the word.  Mr. Allen pulled his hat far down over his eyes, picked up several little white pebbles from the ground and put them into his mouth to disguise his voice, then began: 

“Eagle-Foot had been for many years the mighty medicine man of the great Ute Indians, who were probably the strongest and most warlike of all the mountain tribes.  Their home was in the Middle Park at the north base of Pike’s Peak, shut in from the other tribes in a fertile and absolutely safe valley, which could be guarded by a few men at a certain point.  Here in this mountain valley the Utes grew into a strong Indian state.  During the hunting season large parties of them would ride to the plains to hunt buffalo, returning after several weeks with immense supplies of jerked meat, which is the choice steaks sun-cured, and with a goodly number of buffalo hides.  Now, Eagle-Foot was a great doctor.  He knew all about the mountain herbs and the medicinal properties of certain mineral waters as well as of the ancient sweating of disease out of the body by mud baths—­a method used by the Indians of the South.  He was so successful that the Indians began to believe him infallible as a doctor and medicine man.