“Well, one season, following a great buffalo hunt on the plains, a strange itching skin disease broke out among the hunters, causing a great number of them to die.  Eagle-Foot could not find a satisfactory remedy, although he tried many mixtures.  At last they held long fasts, and prayed the Great Spirit to remove the curse from them.  But the next season it was worse than ever.  The big Chief himself lost his favorite son, Megaleep, and Eagle-Foot began to lose his influence among the people.

“Some thought the Great Spirit was punishing them for stealing the buffalo from their brothers of the plains; others said that the Evil Spirit had come back from the great desert to haunt them with disease and famine.  Eagle-Foot remained silent and downcast, spending much time alone in the mountains fasting.  One day as the warriors returned from the burying ground they found Eagle-Foot awaiting them at the camp, decked in his full regalia, his face painted as if for a great occasion, all his feathers hanging from his belt.  He told the chief that the Great Spirit had at last spoken to him, and that he was going on a long quest into the limestone canyons.  There the Great Spirit would reveal to him a cure for the dread disease.  He called for the swiftest runner to go with him.  Huckween, the Night Voice, volunteered, and so they started, all the warriors accompanying them to Sentinel Point, chanting prayers to the Great Spirit.

“Several days later Huckween returned to camp, haggard and weak and hungry, bearing the medicine wand of Eagle-Foot.  He took it straight to the Chief, and on bended knee told him the strange tale.  How Eagle-Foot had left him in the morning at the entrance to a mighty cavern and told him to follow in at ‘high sun.’  This he did, and when he reached this spot, the Bottomless Pit, he found Eagle-Foot’s sacred medicine wand stuck in the mud, his belt of sacred feathers fastened to the end of it, dangling down into the mouth of the pit.  From the depths he heard strange sounds, but Eagle-Foot was gone.  As he lay looking into the blackness, he seemed to realize suddenly that the wand was the promised cure, and that Eagle-Foot had given his own life in the Bottomless Pit that the sacred feathers might become a saving potion for his people.  It was the old idea of a blood sacrifice.

“Every season since that the great medicine man of the Utes came here to receive the mystic cure, bringing with him Eagle-Foot’s staff and belt.  Long strips of cedar bark were bound together into a rope.  This was soaked in deer’s grease, one end lighted, and dropped into the Pit, the other fastened to the staff, which was stuck into the ground near the edge.  The spirit of Eagle-Foot thus returned, using the flaming bark rope as a ladder, to bless the feathers of his brother, the medicine man of the Utes.”

“Do you suppose there are really bodies there at the bottom?” asked Sleepy, as the candles were relighted and the group passed on into the depths of the cave.