Fritz asked what he expected to find when he got up there.

"Bones, maybe, or the ruins of their town, or pottery, or some
of their idols. There might be 'most anything up there. Anyhow,
I want to see."

"Sure nobody else has been up there, Tip?" Arthur asked.

"Dead sure. Hardly anybody ever goes down there. Some hunters
tried to cut steps in the rock once, but they didn't get higher
than a man can reach. The Bluff's all red granite, and Uncle Bill
thinks it's a boulder the glaciers left. It's a queer place,
anyhow. Nothing but cactus and desert for hundreds of miles, and
yet right under the Bluff there's good water and plenty of grass.
That's why the bison used to go down there."

Suddenly we heard a scream above our fire, and jumped up to
see a dark, slim bird floating southward far above us--a whooping
crane, we knew by her cry and her long neck. We ran to the edge of
the island, hoping we might see her alight, but she wavered
southward along the rivercourse until we lost her. The Hassler
boys declared that by the look of the heavens it must be after
midnight, so we threw more wood on our fire, put on our jackets,
and curled down in the warm sand. Several of us pretended to doze,
but I fancy we were really thinking about Tip's Bluff and the
extinct people. Over in the wood the ring doves were calling
mournfully to one another, and once we heard a dog bark, far away.
"Somebody getting into old Tommy's melon patch," Fritz murmured
sleepily, but nobody answered him. By and by Percy spoke out of