“THAT CAT AIN’T HUMAN!”
Monty rode rather anxiously into Johnnywater Cañon, determined to
take whatever means he found necessary to persuade Gary to return to
Los Angeles and “make it up with his girl.” With three weeks’ wages
in his pocket Monty felt sufficiently affluent to buy the pigs and
chickens if Gary used them for a point in his argument against
going.
Monty had spent a lot of time during those three weeks in mulling
over in his mind the peculiar chain of circumstances that had
dragged Gary to Johnnywater. What bond it was that held him there,
Monty would have given much to know. He was sure that Gary disliked
the place, and that he hated to stay there alone. It seemed
unreasonable that any normal young man would punish himself like
that from sheer stubbornness; yet Gary would have had Monty believe
that he was staying to spite Patricia.
Monty did not believe it. Gary had shown himself to be too
intelligent, too level-headed and safely humorous in his viewpoints
to harbor that peculiar form of egotism. Monty was shrewd enough to
recognize the fact that “cutting off the nose to spite the face” is
a sport indulged in only by weak natures who own an exaggerated ego.
Wherefore, Gary failed to convince him that he was of that type of
individual.
At the same time, he could think of no other reason that could
possibly hold a man like Gary Marshall at Johnnywater. Monty had a
good memory for details. Certain trivial incidents he remembered
vividly: Gary’s stealthy approach around the corner of the cabin
with the upraised pitchfork in his hands; Gary’s forced gayety
afterwards, and the strained look in his eyes--the lines beside the
mouth; Gary’s reluctance to speak of the uncanny, nameless
_something_ that clung to Johnnywater Cañon; the incomprehensible
behavior of the spotted cat. And always Monty brought up short with
a question which he asked himself but could not answer.
Why had Gary Marshall described Steven Carson--who had dropped from
sight of mortal eyes five years and more ago?--why had Gary described
Steve Carson and asked if that description fitted Waddell?
“Gary never saw Steve Carson--not when he was alive, anyway. He says
the Indians never told him how Steve looked. I reckon he really
thought Waddell was that kind uh lookin’ man. But how in thunder did
he _get the idea_?” Monty frequently found himself mentally asking
that question, but he never attempted to put an answer into words.
He couldn’t. He didn’t know the answer.
So here he was, peering anxiously at the cabin squatted between the
two great piñon trees in the grove and hoping that Gary was still
all right. He had consciously put aside an incipient dread of James
Blaine Hawkins and his possible vengefulness toward Gary. Monty told
himself that there was no use in crossing that bridge until he came
to it. He had come over for the express purpose of offering to take
the Walking X cattle on shares and look after them with his own. He
would manage somehow to take charge of the pigs and chickens as
well. He decided that he could kill the pigs and pack the meat over
on his horse. And he could carry the chickens on a pack horse in a
couple of crates. There would be nothing then to give Gary any
excuse for staying.
Remembering how he had startled Gary before with calling, Monty did
not dismount at the cabin. Instead, he rode close to the front
window, leaned and peered in like an Indian; and finding the cabin
empty, he went on through the grove to the corral. Jazz was there,
standing hip-shot in a shady corner next the creek, his head nodding
jerkily while he dozed. Monty’s horse whinnied a greeting and Jazz
awoke with a start and came trotting across the corral to slide his
nose over the top rail nearest them.
Monty rode on past the potato patch and the alfalfa meadow where a
second crop was already growing apace. There was no sign of Gary,
and Monty rode on to the very head of the cañon and back to the
cabin.
A vague uneasiness seized Monty in spite of his efforts to throw it
off. Gary should be somewhere in the cañon, since he would not leave
it afoot, not while he had a horse doing nothing in the corral. Of
course, if anything were wrong with Jazz----Monty turned and rode back
to the corral, where he dismounted by the gate. He went in and
walked up to Jazz, and examined him with the practiced palms of the
expert horseman. He slapped Jazz on the rump and shooed him around
the corral at a lope.
“There ain’t a thing in the world the matter with _you_,” he told
the horse, after a watchful minute or two. Then he rolled a
cigarette, lighted and smoked it while he waited and meditated upon
the probable whereabouts of Gary.
He went out into the open and studied the steep bluff sides, foot by
foot. The entire width of the cañon was no more than a long
rifle-shot. If Gary were climbing anywhere along its sides, Monty
would be able to see him. But there was no sign of movement
anywhere, though he took half an hour for the examination.
He returned to the cabin, leaving his horse in the corral with
saddle and bridle off and a forkful of hay under his eager nose. He
shouted Gary’s name.
“Hey, _Gary! Oh-h-h_, Gary!” he called, over and over, careful to
enunciate the words.
From high up on the bluff somewhere the Voice answered him
mockingly, shouting again and again a monotonous, eerie call. There
was no other sound for a time, and Monty went into the cabin to see
if he could find there some clue to Gary’s absence.
Little things bear a message plain as print to those dwellers of the
wilderness who depend much upon their eyes and their ears. The cabin
told Monty with absolute certainty that Gary had not planned an
absence of more than a few hours at most. Nor had he left in any
great haste. He had been gone, Monty judged, since breakfast. Of the
cooked food set away in the cupboard, two pancakes lay on top of a
plate containing three slices of fried bacon. To Monty that meant
breakfast cleared away and no later meal prepared. He looked at his
watch. He had taken an early start from Kawich, and it was now two
o’clock.
He lifted the lid of the stove and reached in, feeling the ashes.
There had been no fire since morning; he was sure of that. He stood
in the middle of the room and studied the whole interior
questioningly. Gary’s good clothes--which were not nearly so good as
they had been when Monty first saw him--hung against the wall
farthest from the stove, the coat neatly spread over a makeshift
hanger. Gary’s good hat was in the cupboard nailed to the wall. A
corner of his suit case protruded from under the bunk. Gary was in
the rough clothes he had gleaned from Waddell’s leavings.
Monty could not find any canteen, but that told him nothing at all.
He could not remember whether Waddell had canteens or not. The vague
uneasiness which he had at first smothered under his natural
optimism grew to a definite anxiety. He knew the ways of the desert.
And he could think of no plausible reason why Gary should have left
the cañon afoot.
He went out and began looking for tracks. The dry soil still held
the imprint of automobile tires, but it was impossible to tell just
how long ago they had been made. Several days, at least, he judged
after a careful inspection. He heard a noise in the bushes across
the little creek and turned that way expectantly.
The spotted cat came out of the brush, jumped the tiny stream and
approached him, meowing dolefully. Monty stood stock still, watching
her advance. She came directly toward him, her tail drooping and
waving nervously from side to side. She looked straight up into his
face and yowled four or five times without stopping.
“Get out, damn yuh!” cried Monty and motioned threateningly with his
foot. “Yuh can’t stand there and yowl at _me_--I got enough on my
mind right now.”
The mottled cat ducked and started back to the creek, stopping now
and then to look over her shoulder and yowl at Monty. Monty picked
up a pebble and shied it after her. The cat gave a final squall and
ran into a clump of bushes a few yards up-stream from where Monty
had first seen her.
“That damned cat ain’t human!” Monty ejaculated uncomfortably.
“That’s the way she yowled around when Steve Carson----” He lifted his
shoulders impatiently at the thought.
After a minute or two spent in resisting the impulse, Monty yielded
and started out to see where the cat had gone. Beyond the clump of
bushes lay an open space along the bank of the creek. On the farther
side he saw the mottled cat picking her way through weeds and small
bushes, still going up the creek and yowling mournfully as she went.
Monty walked slowly after her. He noticed, while he was crossing the
open space, a man’s footprints going that way and another set coming
back. The soil was too loose to hold a clear imprint, so that Monty
could not tell whose tracks they were; though he believed them to
have been made by Gary.
The cat looked back and yowled at Monty, then went on. At a point
nearly opposite the potato patch the cat stopped near a bushy little
juniper tree that stood by itself where the creek bank rounded up to
a tiny knoll. As Monty neared the spot the cat leaped behind the
juniper and disappeared.
Monty went closer, stopped with a jerk and stood staring. He felt
his knees quiver with a distinct tendency to buckle under him. The
blood seeped slowly away from his face, leaving it sallow under the
tan.
Monty was standing at the very edge of a narrow mound of earth that
still bore the marks of a shovel where the mound had been smoothed
and patted into symmetrical form. A grave, the length of a man.
Here again were the blurred footprints in the loose soil. Who had
made them, what lay buried beneath that narrow ridge of heaped sand,
Monty shrank from conjecturing.
With an involuntary movement, of which Monty was wholly unconscious,
his right hand went up to his hat brim. He stood there for a space
without moving. Then he turned and almost ran to the corral. It was
not until he reached to open the gate that Monty discovered his hat
in his hand.
He was thinking swiftly now, holding his thoughts rigidly to the
details of what he must do. The name Hawkins obtruded itself
frequently upon his mind, but he pushed the thought of Hawkins from
him. Beyond the details of his own part, which he knew he must play
unfalteringly from now on, he would not think--he could not bear to
think. He saddled Jazz, mounted and led his own horse down to the
cabin. Working swiftly, he packed a few blankets, food for three
days and his own refilled canteens upon the led horse.
Then with a last shrinking glance around the cañon walls, he mounted
Jazz. He remembered then something that he must do, something that
Gary would wish to have him do. He rode back to the stone pen and
opened the gate so that the pigs could run free and look after
themselves.
He remounted, then half-turned in the saddle and took up the slack
in the lead rope, got the led horse straightened out behind him and
kicked Jazz into a trot. In his mental stress he loped the horses
all the way down to the cañon’s mouth. And then, striking into the
dim trail, he went racking away over the small ridges and into the
hollows, heading straight for the road most likely to be traveled in
this big, empty land; the road that stretched its long, long miles
between Goldfield and Las Vegas.