Before he climbed down the way Watson had gone, Dick Farley again turned
his eyes along the trail which was to lead him tomorrow to the Cup of
Gold. His wandering fancies built a golden dream future. Then he turned
back and climbed slowly down to the trail.
The fire was dying upon the little rocky ledge where he had built it an
hour ago. Beyond the camp-fire, where he had flung his blanket at the
base of the cliff, Johnny Watson was already lying. Farley swept up his
own blanket from the ground and, stepping around the fire, flung it down
close to Watson’s.
“I don’t believe in your premonitions, pardner,” he said with a little
laugh. “But if they get one of us they’ll have to take two. Here’s where
I pitch my tent.”
Johnny Watson made no answer. He was already asleep. Johnny never wasted
time in wakefulness when he had turned in.
Farley straightened out his blankets, jerked off his heavy boots and
socks and lay down, his elbow close to Watson’s. And so he went to
sleep.
Something awoke him; it might have been the moon, shining full in his
face. He rolled over upon his side, shifted his wide-brimmed hat to
shield his face from the light, and still he did not go back to sleep.
He felt restless, uneasy—inexplicably uneasy. Those confounded things
Johnny had said last night wouldn’t leave him. There was no sound; not a
ripple upon the surface of the night’s silence save the murmur and
trickle of the water. He should be able to hear the horses—the chain on
old Shaggy’s halter.
He sat up. Doing so, he put his right hand on the ground beside him,
beside Johnny Watson. He felt something damp, spongy, and sticky. He
lifted his hand, staring at it in the moonlight. There was a dark stain.
He put it to his nostrils.
“Good God!” he cried aloud. “Johnny! Johnny!”
And then when Johnny Watson did not answer, he did not need to look. He
knew Johnny Watson was dead—dead at the side of his partner who had
slept!
The young man staggered to his feet and stared wildly around. Each rock
and tree and bush stood out clearly in the moonlight with its shadow
flung out very dark and very distinct. His revolver was rigid in the
tense steel of his grip. There was nothing, there was no one. And yet,
while he slept, some one had crept upon his partner.
He turned to where Watson lay. And suddenly, as he saw how the man was
lying, the way an arm lay at his side, the other arm flung out, the
truth came upon him; and without looking at the wound he knew that death
had not come upon Watson while the two men lay side by side.
It had come while Farley stood alone upon the top of the cliff staring
out into Devil’s Pocket, dreaming! For as Watson lay now, so had he lain
when Farley came down to him. He had been dead when his partner called
to him, saying they would sleep side by side!
“While I was up on the rock,” Farley muttered dully, “they got him.”
He stooped low over the prostrate body and gently, tenderly, he moved it
so that it lay face-up. The moonlight showed well how Johnny Watson’s
death had found him. At the side of his bared neck was a cut such as a
broad-bladed knife would make, a great gash, two inches long. Just one
blow had been struck, just one such blow needed.
Farley got slowly to his feet and for a little stood looking down into
the dead man’s face. And the face of the man who looked into the dead
eyes was as oddly quiet and calm.
“They got you, Johnny,” Farley was saying in a voice void of expression,
“with me in calling distance— Oh, Johnny!”
For a moment he stood, his face sunk into his two brown hands. And then
suddenly he whirled about, his head lifted, his arm dung out, shaken
with a frenzy of rage.
“My pardner—you’ve murdered my pardner!” he shouted. “And I’m going to
find you out! I’m going to kill you!”
Then he suddenly calmed as he realized that he was alone in the
mountains, a week’s travel from the nearest mining-camp, alone with his
dead partner. He moved back from the ledge and into the shadow, where he
sat down upon a broken boulder. All at once a thing which he had
forgotten swept back over him—the horses! He had missed the noise of
their crunching, he had failed to hear the jingle of old Shaggy’s
tie-chain!
He sprang to his feet and ran down into the little clearing where they
had tied the two pack-animals. They were gone, both gone. He stumbled
over one of the pack-saddles with its load. There had been no time to
take that. But the other, old Shaggy’s saddle, was missing.
Slowly he made his way back to the little ledge where Johnny Watson lay.
Again he sat down upon the bit of boulder, and lighting his pipe pulled
at it steadily, staring down into the quiet cañon. He could not follow
tracks until morning.
* * * * *
With the first glint of the new day he buried Johnny Watson.
For a moment Dick stood hat in hand, looking at the little mound of
earth which he had made and piled high with stones. And then he turned
and, walking swiftly, strode back to the spot where the horses had been
staked.
There was no difficulty in picking up the trail. Upon that rugged, rocky
mountainside the murderer, if he had taken the two horses with him, must
have moved eastward and into the Devil’s Pocket, or in a direction
leading southwesterly over the trail which Farley and Watson had come
yesterday. He could not have scaled the cliffs above, he could have made
no progress through the dense brush of the deep-cut ravine below.
For a moment Farley hesitated between going forward toward the little
mountain valley and turning back. Then the thought came to him that he
could hope to learn what he sought to know by going forward, quicker
than by swinging back toward the southwest. For if the two horses had
gone eastward, it would be easier to pick up their trail than upon the
path which they had cut up yesterday. If there should be any fresh
tracks leading into the Devil’s Pocket, that would settle it. And not
ten minutes later, having followed the stony trail until it dipped a
little into a bit of soft soil in a hollow, he found the tracks—fresh
tracks made by two shod horses.
Then he went back to last night’s camp, made himself a small pack of
bacon and coffee and flour; and taking no useless thing, no blanket even
to interfere with the free swing of his body, he turned east and struck
out swiftly.
He followed the trail for a mile, saw how it wound in and out, climbing
and dipping, worming slowly toward the pocket. And then, when he had
been assured that the two horses were ahead of him, he left the trail
and fought his way due east, up the face of a steep bank and to the
crest of the bleak mountains. He remembered Watson had told him that
following the trail they would have to go a good fifteen miles to travel
ten, and now he sought a short-cut to head off the man he followed. He
knew that he would pick up the trail again in the valley.
Hour after hour he trudged on, his face whipped by tangled brambles in
the cañons, his hands torn by the crags over which he continued to climb
toward the top of the ridge.
At last, about the middle of the forenoon, he came to the top of the
narrow divide. From an outjutting crag he looked down into the valley
before him, seeing again the winding course of the creek, the little
lake, the steep mountain walls and gorges. Here he stopped long enough
to choose the way he must go to make the best time. And then with one
long look back toward the slope where the lone cedar flung its twisted
branches over his partner, he turned again eastward and plunged down
into the steep cañon, down into the Devil’s Pocket.