This next letter appeared on pages 171-172 of the October, 1947 issue of AMAZING STORIES:
“Sirs: Norman Finley, a neighbor of a good friend of mine, told me about an experience he had which was rather unusual. He and a couple of other fellows were hunting down in the Big Bend country. I don’t know whether you are familiar with the Big Bend or not, but there is no more wild or desolate area in the country. Rugged, mountainous, cut by canyons, there are innumerable parts of it which have never known the foot of man.
“It was in one of the most desolate areas that Finley and his companions found themselves. They had driven about ninety miles southwest of Marathon, Texas, a little town of about 700 people, at the foot of the Del Norte Mountains, 4000 feet high, and had then gone on afoot. The dirt road just petered out and they couldn’t get their car further. They were hunting deer but had had no luck. Just as they were about to call it a day, Finley spotted a mountain lion. He snapped a shot at it and knocked it over. But the lion just rolled over on his feet and started to leave those parts.
Finley and the other fellows took after him, since it was obvious that he was wounded and not making very good time. They managed to keep him in sight for about a mile and were sure they had him when he ran into a box canyon. The lion, however, started up a faint trail up one side of the canyon to a small cave they could see about a hundred feet from the floor of the canyon. They followed him up this trail, but when they got to the cave – there was no lion!
The cave was one of those dished out affairs that are so common in the south-west. Eroded out of the face of a cliff and cup-shaped. The only access to it was by that trail. But this cave was a bit queer. It had a sand floor and was just big enough to park twenty cars in it. On the cliff edge was a low stone wall. This in itself was not too unusual, because such caves had sheltered Indians for thousands of years.
The thing that did make it unusual was that in the rear of it was a perfectly round hole. It was obvious that the lion had ducked into this.
They approached it rather cautiously and tossed some stones in it to see if they could stir him up. But there was no response. They could hear the stones rolling and bouncing down an incline and the sound just got fainter and fainter until it died away altogether.
They then approached the hole and peered down into it. It was perfectly round–also it was about four or five feet in diameter. They couldn’t see very far down it, but it appeared to descend rather sharply and at a steady gradient. The fellows gathered some dry grass from the canyon floor and made some torches. The incline of the bore was too steep for them to climb down so they tossed the torches down it. They just slid down further and further and disappeared into the gloom. They never did see or hear of the lion again. At first they thought they had stumbled onto some old Spanish mine workings. But there was no sign anywhere of a dump that always goes with a mine. By all rights there should have been some sign of the earth and rock that had come out of that hole–but there wasn’t.
When they inspected the hole itself more closely, they were amazed at its symmetry and of the constancy of the section of the bore as far as they could see down it. The fact that the bore was perfectly round puzzled them, too.
If it was a mine shaft, it most certainly wouldn’t have been round, but instead would have been flat on the bottom. The fact that the shaft extended straight and unwavering as a rigid pipe was cause for further amazement. Since the fellows had no rope with them, which would have been needed to descend the shaft, as well as lights, they scratched their heads awhile and then left.
Finley wanted to go back with equipment and see how far down the shaft went and what was at the bottom of it. But ranchers are busy people and he never went back. In the meantime he got pretty well broken up when a horse threw him and he now lives in Fort Worth while he has someone else run the ranch. We talked rather idly about having a look at his cave someday. He says he knows exactly where it is and could find that box canyon with his eyes shut. So far we haven’t done anything about it. But we may either this summer or next when we can get time to go down to Big Bend.
Finley told me this story about a year before even you heard of Shaver so you can be sure he wasn’t influenced by the “Shaver ‘Mystery” …In fact, I don’t believe he has ever heard of the “Shaver Mystery,” even to this day. — E. Stanton
Brown., 4931 Bryce Ave., Fort Worth 7, Texas
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