*****
You've hiked through Snake Canyon once before while visiting your Uncle Howard at Red Creek Ranch, but you never noticed any cave entrance.  It looks as though a recent rock slide has uncovered it.

Though the late afternoon sun is striking the opening of the cave, the interior remains in total darkness.  You step inside a few feet, trying to get an idea of how big it is.  As your eyes become used to the dark, you see what looks like a tunnel ahead, dimly lit by some kind of phosphorescent material on its walls.  The tunnel walls are smooth, as if they were shaped by running water.  After twenty feet or so, the tunnel curves.  You wonder where it leads.  You venture in a bit further, but you feel nervous being alone in such a strange place.  You turn and hurry out.

A thunderstorm may be coming, judging by how dark it looks outside.  Suddenly you realize the sun has long since set, and the landscape is lit only by the pale light of the full moon.  You must have fallen asleep and woken up hours later.  But then you remember something even more strange.  Just last evening, the moon was only a slim crescent in the sky.

You wonder how long you've been in the cave.  You are not hungry.  You don't feel you have been sleeping.  you wonder whether to try to walk back home by moonlight or whether to wait for dawn, rather than risk losing your footing on the steep and rocky trail.

[If you decide to start back home, turn to page 4.]

As you start walking back toward the ranch, you notice the trail seems very different than you remember it, though of course moonlight can play tricks on your eyes.  But you suddenly realize you are not walking on the trail at all, but on what seems to be a dried-up river bed.  You hurry back to the cave entrance.  You look around you and realize the whole landscape has changed.  While you were in the cave, torrents of water have washed out the trail; yet there is not so much as a puddle left.  You shiver.  It is cold, much colder than it should be at this time of year.  You take a jacket out of your backpack and put it on, but you are still freezing.

At least the world about you seems brighter.  It's getting light in the east.  The sun will soon be up.  You look at your watch.  It has run down, though you wound it only a few hours ago.  Nothing seems to make sense anymore.

You know you should get back to the ranch as quickly as possible, yet somehow you feel the only way to change things back to the way there were is to re-enter the cave.

[If you continue toward the ranch, turn to page 8.]

As it gets lighter, you realize you can't be on the right track.  The canyon seems shallower than it was.  The river bed is strewn with boulders that were never there before.  The cold wind chills you to the bone; yet it's the middle of summer.  As you climb to higher ground to get a better view, you notice patches of snow.  From the top of a ridge you survey a barren plain, frozen lakes, and, in the distance, a massive range of snow-covered mountains.  You begin to realize you are not merely lost -- you are lost in time, and you have somehow been transported to an Ice Age that occurred many thousands of years ago.

You walk toward one of the cliffs that borders the canyon, seeking shelter from the wind, and notice an entrance to another cave.  You are tempted to go inside, but you feel you should keep moving in hopes of somehow reaching familiar country.

[If you continue on, turn to page 18.]

You continue on, following a trail leading up a steep incline.  You hear loud, trumpeting sounds from a nearby ravine -- the sounds of a large animal.  You climb over some rocks and find yourself looking down on one of the largest land mammals that ever lived -- the wooly mammoth.  Huge as the creature is, its size is exaggerated even more by is thick coat of wool.

You are cold, desperate, and tired.  From your rock ledge, only a few feet over the mammoth, you could drop down on its back, burrow into its warm wool, and ride where it takes you!

[If you continue on foot, turn to page 30.]

Riding on a mammoth might be fun if you were not cold and hungry and lost, but where would it take you?  You continue walking, your spirits singing.  Just as you feel ready to sit down and cry, you see an opening in the ground.  you crawl in on your hands and knees.  It might provide some warmth, and it might lead back to the Cave of Time.

You find yourself in a tunnel.  There are other tunnels branching off.  You feel sure now you are in the Cave of Time.  You are eager to take the next tunnel to the surface, but you want to travel a long way forward in time.  Maybe you should take a tunnel further on.

[If you take the first tunnel that you can, turn to page 54.]

You enter the next tunnel you come to. It becomes  smaller and smaller until you must crawl. You continue this way for almost an hour. Finally, your faith is justified, for you smell a fresh breeze blowing across a field of new-mown hay. 

A moment later you are blinking your eyes in the bright sunlight, looking at a beautiful meadow nestled between gentle hills. A dozen or more cows are grazing near a meandering stream. In the distance is a dirt road. A dapple-gray horse is pulling the cart toward a big red barn in the distance. From the other direction you hear the mournful hooting of a train whistle. You turn around and see that you are only a few hundred feet from the railroad tracks. A train is chugging around the bend, puffs of black smoke rising from its coal-fired steam engine. You are out of the Ice Age, all right, but not exactly in your own time.

The train slows down as it approaches you, and you smile as you see the reason why -- a cow is standing on the tracks just ahead, looking as if it would not move for anything. The train pulls to a stop, and a man jumps down from the cab, waving a coal shovel at the cow, which waits almost until the man is upon her before strolling back into the pasture. At that moment you realize you could easily climb onto the back of the train.

[If you go back into the tunnel in hopes of finding your way back to your own time, turn to page 101.]

With considerable trepidation you slide down the tunnel. You mean to turn off at one of the side passageways that might take you back to your own time, but you are too exhausted to search for the entrance. You half slide, half climb down the tunnel -- further back into time -- then you lose your balance. You fall a great distance, land in deep water, and sink a long ways. 

You are barely able to surface and, when you do, you find that the air is filled with dense fog. The water is warm, but the fog is so thick you can hardly breathe. The air smells slightly of sulphur. Gasping for breath, you realize you must be several billion years in the past and that oxygen has not yet been released into the atmosphere.

The End