The Secret of the Stones by Ernest Dempsey (reading fiction .TXT) 📕

For a brief second, Sean took his eyes off the two men, bracing himself by bending his knees slightly. His gun, though, stayed pointed at them. The entire group took a few steps back, not sure what was happening.

The seven smaller poles began to move slowly. To the left, all the rods were sinking into the ground. On the right, they were rising but the post in the center never moved. The bizarre event lasted for only a minute, but when the pillars had stopped moving, their heights had changed to a more staggered look, like a staircase.

All five witnesses stood in silent awe for a minute, gazing at the oddity.

“So, what now, Schultzie?” Sean broke the silence.

Tommy looked perplexed. “That should have been it. Something‘s wrong.”

“Maybe you didn’t do it right,” Joe chimed in.

“No. Pretty sure that was it and that had to be the key.” He looked around as if expecting some kind of sign from Heaven to point the way to their goal. None came. “I don’t understand.”

The two captives stood silently while the others attempted to solve the problem; Ulrich’s eyes locked on Joe like a rattlesnake eyeing its prey.

Sean looked curiously at the scene. “Mac, keep an eye on those two.”

“What is it?” Tommy asked.

Tossing the gun to Tommy, Sean ignored his friend’s question for a moment and walked over to the totem that had lowered to where the top was only about four feet high. “They’re steps,” he finally answered. “The ancient Natives had a ritual for new warriors. It was the final test they had to pass. They had to stand on top of a pole like one of these for an entire night. If they could accomplish this without falling off, they would be initiated.”

“Realization came to Tommy. Of course. How did I forget that?”

“Beats me,” Sean said, hopping up onto the short log. “You’re the expert on Indians.” He grinned cynically down at his friend.

“Hope you know what you’re doing.”

“It’s only about five or six feet in between them. The problem isn’t the jumping, though. It’s the landing. The gradual escalation isn’t going to help either.”

He steadied himself on the two-foot-wide platform and leaped to the next one, making it look easy enough. Below, Tommy rejoined Joe and their new prisoners, still watching as Sean jumped to the third pole.

He made it to the center pole with relative ease. Again, he repeated the maneuver up to the fifth. The platform was up about fifteen feet at this point, and the jumping was becoming riskier each time. Thinking ahead, the final leap would be to a height around twenty-five feet, a point at which the danger would be broken bones or worse. He tried to shake the fear from his mind, but it was still in front of him as he made the next two leaps. The lack of concentration nearly cost him on the seventh as he shorted the distance by about a foot. His fingers caught the front lip of the stone, gripping tight, and his feet dangled below. Tommy made a quick movement to get below him in case he fell.

Struggling to keep his hold on the top, Sean hung over the ground, kicking his legs in an effort to worm his way up. With his right foot, he found the nose of a wolf’s face sticking out of the front of the tall facade and used it to brace himself while he hugged his way onto the platform.

His allies below exhaled a breath of relief as Sean hoisted himself up and readied for the last jump. “I’m okay,” he assured them. “Just lost my concentration for a second there.”

He let his eyes search the surroundings for a brief second, hoping that the location would be revealed from his current vantage point. It wasn’t. So, with trepidation, he moved to the very edge of the pole. He was surprised at how much his legs were burning at this point. Sean took pride in the fact that he exercised regularly and had very high endurance for physical activities. This routine must have been working out muscles that he was unaccustomed to using.

With every last ounce of leg power he could muster, Sean launched himself across the void. This time, adrenaline must have taken over because he almost overshot the thing, landing on the very back edge and waving his arms like a gymnast on a balance beam to keep from toppling over.

Steadying his weight back on the center of the beam, he gazed out across the landscape. Rolling forests lay out before his eyes. He couldn’t help being a little surprised at how such a small elevation could improve one’s view of things.

Sean’s eyes passed across the horizon as he turned around a full 360 degrees.

“You see anything?” Tommy shouted from below.

“Just a bunch of woods, the road…” Then his gaze locked onto something. “Wait a minute. There is something.” He pointed over toward what, to the group on the bottom, appeared to only be a thick growth of trees.

“What is it?”

“I don’t think you can see it from down there. But I see another totem, sticking up from the trees on that small hill, over in that direction.”

Tommy stood on his tiptoes in an attempt to locate what his friend had found.

Allyson, too, took a few steps closer to the row of stone faces to see if she could glimpse what Sean was pointing at.

For one second, Joe took his eyes off of the blond and Flattop to take a glance toward the forest. A second was all Ulrich needed to pull the hidden gun from his back and fire off three quick shots.

Joe stumbled and dropped his