Halting, hating to set down in plain words the full extent of his
guilt, driven to it by the relentless promptings of Bill, Jack
Huntley wrote three precious pages, that would make interesting
reading for the county officials, before he signed his name.
Abington saw the teary warning of the pen going dry and dropping
blots on the book, and signed his name as a witness before all the
ink ran out. The thing was done.
Bill threw back his shoulders with an unconscious gesture of relief,
and stepped away. “Now, die and be damned to you!” he said as he
turned his back and walked off.
Abington looked after him grinning. “This is where he holes up,
Bill. He should have a pretty fair equipment. Better explore around
a little. I have carbide tied up in my handkerchief, if you need the
lamp. But the place seems well lighted from above.”
“Yeah, I’m sure goin’ to look around. I believe he’s the one
poisoned our burros. I bet--”
Abington looked up, got to his feet and started toward Bill, who had
given a sudden bellowing whoop.
“Well, the hound!” Bill was balancing two large mescal stalks in his
hands. Light they were as cork, tough as bamboo, large at the base
as Bill’s muscular leg above the knee. Three feet from the base of
each was a foot rest, lashed securely to the stalk.
“There’s the gosh-awful!” Bill said in the incredulous tone of one
who can scarcely believe his own eyes. “Look at how them sticks is
cut on the bottom, professor! Sheep hoofs to a T. Stilts! And that’s
how the thing took such long steps and got over the country so
almighty mysterious!”
“Ingenious!” Abington declared, balancing the stilts in his hands
before he stood them against the wall of the cave. “Simple, too. I
had a suspicion of some such thing, but dismissed it as impractical
in so rough a country.”
“I dunno. They’re light as paper. They could be carried easy enough
on rocky ground, and just used for sand and gravel.” He paused. “Now
I know he poisoned the burros. He seen your camp set up in plain
sight, and come straddlin’ over there. A feller can cover a lot of
country on stilts, once he gets used to walking on them. I used to
when I was a kid.”
Abington, however, was not quite satisfied. There lacked the motive
and he spoke of it. “If he had raided camps and carried off the
supplies, I could understand it. But this attempt at terrorization,
and the insane destruction of good food, does not come within the
bounds of logic.”
“Yeah, but you don’t know that bird like I do,” returned Bill. “He’s
what God used for a pattern when He made the first drove of hogs.
You mind all that talk last night? That about having millions in
carnetite, and being richer than Rockefeller? Jack thinks he’s got
hold of something in here and he’s been trying to scare everybody
off. Maybe he’s got something worth holdin’ on to and maybe he
ain’t. If he has, I sure feel I’m entitled to grab it!”
Abington was walking around the roomy chamber, flicking this thing
and that thing with a glance, overlooking nothing. He stooped over a
pile of whitish rock stained thickly with great blobs of bright
yellow, selected a lump and looked up, seeking an opening where the
strongest light fell through. He went over and stood under the
light, turning the rock this way and that while he examined it
through a miner’s glass.
“So this is his millions in carnetite!” he said contemptuously at
last, tossing the sample to Bill, who caught it dexterously as a
catcher cups palms for a ball. “More than one poor devil has been
fooled by limonite. That’s what this is, if I am not badly mistaken,
a yellow ocher, resembling carnetite. There’s your revenge. Bill. Go
tell him his millions in carnetite are just a dream. Tell him it’s
limonite. If he’s greedy as you say, that will be punishment
enough.”
“Not when he thinks he’s dying,” Bill grumbled. “He won’t give a
darn. What’s he flopping around like that for?” he asked sharply.
“Something bite him, do you s’pose? If it did, it’ll die,” he went
on sententiously.
* * * * *
Abington ran over to where Jack Huntley lay on the ground. He could
do nothing, with the primitive means at hand. Huntley had indeed
been bitten--by death. Whether the wound had been more serious than
Abington diagnosed it, or whether he had injured himself in crawling
to the cave, they could not of course do more than guess. Within
half an hour Jack Huntley lay dead on the floor of the cave.
“This means that I must go in and have a talk with the sheriff,”
Abington observed. “A mere formality, but one I prefer not to
neglect. Want to come along, Bill? I’ll pay them for the car, far as
that goes.”
“Yeah, I guess maybe I better go in and have it over with. I’ll pay
you back in work, professor, if you’ll go ahead and settle for that
darn car I wrecked. But don’t let ’em stick you on the price of it.
It wasn’t worth more’n two or three hundred dollars.”
“I’m a fair judge of cars,” Abington remarked. “It will be all
right, Bill.”
“Yeah. And when we come back in here with a fresh outfit, professor,
we better bring along a couple of good muckers and some powder. I
believe I can maybe locate the hole into that cave, if I can take my
time and have some help. Or maybe we can find another way in there.
We sure oughta come fixed to spend the whole winter in here. I found
a lot more carvings than I’d ever saw before.”
Abington laughed to himself, and clapped a hand down on Bill’s
shoulder. “Bill, my lad, that’s the true scientific spirit! You’ll
be an Adam chaser as long as you live, now you’ve started.”
“Yeah,” said Bill, staring around him at the encircling red hills.
“They’re in here somewhere, professor. Eight feet tall and big
accordin’. No foolin’. I seen ’em myself. Well, let’s bury the dead
and get ready and beat it. We want to get back in here while the
good weather holds.”