The night was growing cold, and Casey had no coat. At least he could
go down and tell Barney what he had discovered and had failed to
discover, and get something to eat. Barney would probably be worrying
about him, though there was a chance that a bullet had found Barney
before dark. Casey was uneasy, and once he was down the fissure again,
he hurried as much as possible.
He managed to reach the camp by the little spring without being shot at
and without breaking a leg. But Barney was not there. Just at first
Casey believed he was dead; but a brief search told Casey that two of
the largest canteens were gone, together with a side of bacon, some
flour and all of the tobacco. White assassins would have made a more
thorough job of robbing the camp. Barney, it was evident, had fled the
fate of the burros.
Casey told the stars what he thought of a partner like Barney.
Afterward he ate what was easiest to swallow without cooking,
overhauled what was left of their outfit, cached the remainder in a
clump of bushes, and wearily climbed the bluff again under a capacity
load. He concealed himself in the bottom of the fissure to sleep,
since he could search no farther.
If he thought wistfully of the palled comfort of his apartment in Los
Angeles, and of the Little Woman there, he still did not think strongly
enough to send him back to them. For with a canteen or two of water,
some food and his two capable legs to carry him, Casey Ryan could have
made it to Barstow easily enough. But because he was Casey Ryan, and
Irish, and because he was always on the hunt for trouble without
recognizing it when he met it in the trail, it never occurred to him to
follow Barney down to safer country.
"That there Joshuay tree meant a lot more'n what it let on, pointin' up
this way!" Casey muttered, staring down upon a somnolent wilderness
blanketed with hushed midnight. "If it thinks it's got Casey whipped,
it better think agin and think quick. I'll give it somethin' to point
at, 'fore I leave this here butte.
"Funny, the way it kept pointin' up this way. I've saw Joshuays
before--miles of 'em. But I never seen one that looked so kinda human
and so kinda like it was tryin' to talk. Seems kinda funny; an' that
old lady rockin' an' lookin'--seems like her an' the Joshuay has kinda
throwed in together, hopin' somebody might come along with savvy enough
to kinda--aw, hell!" So did Casey and his Irish belief in the
supernatural fall plump against the limitations of his vocabulary.
Against the limitations proscribed by his material predicament,
however, Casey Ryan set his face with a grin. Somebody was going to
get the big jolt of his life before long, he told himself over a
careful breakfast fire built cunningly far back in the crevice where a
current of air sucked into the rock capping of the butte. Something was
going on up here that shouldn't go on. He did not know what it was,
but he meant to stop it. He did not know who was making Indian war on
peaceful prospectors, but Casey felt that they were already as good as
licked, since he was here with breakfast under his belt and his
six-shooter tucked handily inside his waistband.
He squinted up the crack in the ledge, made certain mental alterations
in its narrow, jagged walls, and reached for the tough-handled,
efficient prospector's pick he had thoughtfully included in his meagre
equipment. Slowly and methodically he worked up the crevice, knocking
off certain sharp points of rock, and knowing all the while what would
probably happen to him if he were overheard.
He was not discovered, however. When he laid elbows on the upper level
of the rim and pulled himself up, his coat was on his back where it
belonged, and even Barney could have followed him. Yet the top showed
no evidence of a widening of the fissure. The bushy junipers hid him
completely while he reconnoitred and considered what he should do.
Because the place was close and the invisible call was strong, Casey
went first to the rock hut, circled it carefully and found that it was
exactly what it had seemed at first sight; a hidden place with no
evident opening save that high, small window under the eaves. There
was no sign of pathway leading to it, no trace of life outside its
wall. But when he crept close and peeked in again, there sat the old
woman rocking back and forth. But to-day she stared at the wall before
her.
Casey felt a distinct sensation of relief just in knowing that she was,
after all, capable of moving. Now her head was not bent, but rested
against the back of her chair. She was rocking steadily, quietly, with
never a halt.
Casey rapped on the window and waited, fighting a nameless dread of the
mystery of her. But she continued to rock and to stare at the wall; if
she heard the tapping she gave no sign whatever. So presently he turned
away and set himself to the work of finding the man with the rifle.
To that end he first of all climbed the tallest pinon tree in sight; a
tree that stood on a rise of ground apart from its brothers. From the
concealment of its branches, he surveyed his surroundings carefully,
noting especially the notched unevenness of the butte's rim and how
just behind him it narrowed unexpectedly to a thin ridge not more than
a couple of hundred yards in breadth. A jagged outcropping cut
straight across and Casey saw how yesterday he had mistaken that ledge
for the rim of the butte. His man must have been out on the point
beyond him all the while. He was out there now, very likely; there, or
down in the camp he had watched yesterday like a vulture.
His search having narrowed to an area easily covered in an hour or two,
Casey turned his head and examined as well as he could the deep canyon
that had bitten into the butte and caused that narrow peak. Trees
blocked his view there, and he was feeling about for a lower foothold
so that he could make the descent when a voice from the ground startled
him considerably.
"Come down outa there, before I shoot yuh down!"
Casey looked down and saw what he afterwards declared was the meanest
looking man on earth, pointing straight at him the widest muzzled
shotgun he had ever seen in his life.
Casey came down. The last ten feet of the distance he made in a clean
jump, planting his feet full in the old man's stomach. The meanest
looking man on earth gave a grunt and crumpled, with Casey's fingers
digging into his throat.
Whether Casey would have killed him or not will never be known. For
just as the man was falling limp in his hands, another heavy body
landed upon Casey's back. Casey felt a hard, chill circle pressed
against his perspiring temple. His hands relaxed and fall away from
the throat, leaving finger marks there in the flesh.
"Git up off'n him!" a new voice commanded harshly, and Casey obeyed.
His captor shifted the gun muzzle to the back of Casey's neck and poked
the gasping, bearded old man with his toe.
"Git up, Paw, you old fool, you! What'd you let 'im light on yuh fer?
Why couldn't you a stood back a piece, outa reach? You like to got
croaked."
Casey found it prudent to hold his head rather still, as a man does
when he carries a boil on his neck. The muzzle of a six-shooter has a
quieting effect, when applied to the person by an unfriendly hand.
Casey did not at once see the intruder. But presently "Paw" recovered
himself and his shotgun, and swung it menacingly toward Casey.
Whereupon the cold circle left Casey's medulla oblongata and a
long-faced, long-legged youth stepped somewhat hastily to one side.
"Paw, you ol' fool, you, get your finger off'n that trigger whilst
you're aimin' at me!" he exclaimed pettishly.
"I wa'n't aimin' at you. I was aimin' at this 'ere--" Casey heard
himself called many names, any one of which was good for a fight when
Casey was free.
"Aw, you shut up, Paw. You ain't gittin' nobody nowhere," the son
interrupted. "You can't cuss 'im t' death--he looks like he could cut
loose a few of them pet names hisself if he got a chancet. Yuh might
tell us what you was doin' up that there tree, mister. An' what you're
doin' on this here butte, anyhow."
Casey looked at him. Knowing Casey, I should say that his eyes were
not pleasant. "Talk to Paw," he advised contemptuously. "The two of
yuh may possibly be able to stand each other without gittin' sick; but
me, I never did git used to skunks!"
That remark very nearly got him a through ticket to Land Beyond. But,
being very nearly what Casey had called them, they contented themselves
with mouthing vile epithets.
"Better take 'im down to the mine an' keep 'im till Mart gets back,
Paw," the long-jawed youth suggested, when he ran short of
objurgations. "Mart'll fix 'im when he comes."
"I'd fix 'im, here an', now," threatened Paw, "but Mart, he's so damned
techy lately--what we oughta do is bust 'is head with a rock an' pitch
'im over the rim. That'd fix 'im."
They wrangled over the suggestion, and finally decided to take him down
and turn him over to one whom they called Joe. Casey went along
peaceably, hopeful that he would later have a chance to fight back. He
told himself that they both had heads like peanuts, and whenever they
moved, he swore, he could hear their brains rattle in their skulls. It
doesn't take brains to shoot straight, and he decided that the lanky
young man was the one who had shot from the rim-rock. They drove him
down into the narrow, deep gulch, following a steep trail that Casey
had not seen the day before. The trail led them to the mouth of a
tunnel; and by the size of the dump Casey judged that the workings were
of a considerable extent. They were getting out silver ore, he
guessed, after a glance or two at stray pieces of rock.
Joe was a big, glum-looking individual with his left hand bandaged. He
chewed tobacco industriously and maintained a complete silence while
Hank, frequently telling Paw to shut up, told how and where they had
found Casey spying up on the butte.
"We don't fancy stray desert rats prowlin' around without no reason,"
said Joe. "Our boss that we're workin' for ain't at home. We're
lookin' for 'im back any day now, an' we'll just hold yuh till he
comes. He can do as he likes about yuh. You'll have to work fer your
board--c'm on an' I'll show yuh how."
Hank followed Casey and Joe into the tunnel. Casey made no objections
whatever to going. The tunnel was a fairly long one, he noticed, with
drifts opening out of it to left and right. At the end of the main
tunnel, Joe turned, took Casey's candle from him and stuck it into a
seam in the wall, as he had done with his own.
"Ever drill in rock?" he asked shortly.
"Mebbe I have an' mebbe I ain't," Casey returned defiantly.
"Here's a drill, an' here's your single-jack. Now git t' work. There
ain't any loafin' around this camp, and spies never meant good to
nobody. Yuh needn't expect to be popular with us--but you'll git your
grub if yuh earn it."
Casey looked at the drill, took the double-headed, four-pound hammer
and hesitated. He has said that it was pretty hard to resist braining
the two of them at once. But there would still be the old man with the
shotgun, and he admitted that he was curious about the old woman who
rocked and rocked. He decided to wait awhile and see, why these miners
found it necessary to shoot harmless prospectors who came near the
butte. So he spat into the dust of the tunnel floor, squinted at Joe
for a minute and went to work.
That day Casey was kept underground except during the short interval of
"shooting" and waiting for the dynamite smoke to clear out of the
tunnel; which process Casey assisted by operating a hand blower much
against his will. Joe remained always on guard, eyeing Casey
suspiciously. When at last he was permitted to pick up his coat and
leave the tunnel, night had fallen so that the gulch was dim and
shadowy. Casey was conducted to a dugout cabin where bacon was frying
too fast and smoking suffocatingly. Paw was there, in a vile temper
which seemed to be directed toward the three impartially and to have
been caused chiefly by his temporary occupation as camp cook.
Casey watched the old man place food for one person in little dishes
which he set in a bake pan for want of a tray. He added a small tin
teapot of tea and disappeared from the dugout.
"Two of us waitin' to see your boss, huh?" Casey inquired boldly of
Joe. "Can't we eat together?"
"You can call yourself lucky if you eat at all," Joe retorted glumly.
"The old man's pretty sore at the way you handled him. He's runnin'
this camp; I ain't."
Casey let it go at that, chiefly because he was hungry and tired and
did not want to risk losing his supper altogether. Hounds like these,
he told himself bitterly, were capable of any crime--from smashing a
man's skull and throwing him off the rim-rock to starving him to death.
He was Casey Ryan, ready always to fight whether his chance of winning
was even or merely microscopical; but even so, Casey was not inclined
toward suicide.
When the old man presently returned and the three sat down to the
table, Casey obeyed a gesture and sat down with them. In spite of
Joe's six-shooter laid handily upon the table beside his plate, Casey
ate heartily, though the food was neither well cooked nor over
plentiful.
After supper he rose and filled his pipe which they had permitted him
to keep. A stranger coming into the cabin might not have guessed that
Casey was a prisoner. When the table was cleared and Hank set about
washing the dishes, Casey picked up a grimy dish towel branded black in
places where it had rubbed sooty kettles, and grinned cheerfully at Paw
while he dried a tin plate. Paw eyed him dubiously over a stinking
pipe, spat reflectively into the woodbox and crossed his legs the other
way, loosely swinging an ill-shod foot.
"Y'ain't told us yet what brung yuh up on the butte," Paw observed
suddenly. "Yuh wa'n't lost--yuh ain't got the mark uh no tenderfoot.
What was yuh doin' up in that tree?"
"Mebbe I mighta been huntin' mountain sheep," Casey retorted calmly.
"Huntin' mountain sheep up a tree is a new one," tittered Hank. "Wish
you'd give me a swaller uh that brand. Must have a kick like a brindle
mule."
"More likely 'White Mule.'" Casey cocked a knowing eye at Hank. "You're
too late, young feller. I chewed the cork day before yesterday," he
declared.
While he fished another plate out of the pan, Casey observed that Paw
looked at Joe inquiringly, and that Joe moved his head sidewise a
careful inch, and back again.
"Moonshine, huh?" Paw hazarded hopefully. "Yuh peddlin' it, er makin'
it?"
Casey grinned secretively. "A man can't be pinched without the goods,"
he observed shrewdly. "I was raised in a country where they took fools
out an' brained 'em with an axe. You fellers ain't been none too
friendly, recollect. When's your boss expected home, did yuh say? I'd
kinda like to meet 'im."
"He'll kinda like to meet you," Joe returned darkly. "Your actions has
been plumb suspicious.
"Nothin' suspicious about MY actions," Casey stated truculently,
throwing discretion behind him. "The suspiciousness lays up here
somewheres on this butte. If yuh want to know what brung me up here,
Casey Ryan's the man that can tell yuh to your faces. I come up here
to find out who's been gittin' busy with a high-power on my camp down
below. Ain't it natural a man'd want to know who'd shot his two
burros--an' 'is pardner?" Casey had impulsively decided to throw in
Barney for good measure. "Casey Ryan ain't the man to set under a bush
an' be shot at like a rabbit. You can ask anybody if Casey ever backed
up fer man er beast. I come up here huntin'. Shore I did. It wasn't
sheep I was after--that there's my mistake. It was goats."
"Guess I got yourn," Hank leered "when stuck my gun in your back hair."
"If any one's 'been usin' a high-power it wasn't on this butte," Joe
growled. "None uh this bunch done any shootin'. Pap an' Hank, they
was up here huntin' burros an I caught yuh up a tree spyin'. We got a
little band uh antelope up here we're pertectin'. Our boss got himself
made a deppity fer just such cases as yourn appears t' be--pervidin'
your case ain't worse.
"Now you say your pardner was shot down below in your camp. That shore
looks bad fer you, old-timer. The boss'll shore have t' look into it
when he gits here. Lucky we made up our minds t' hold yuh--a murderer,
like as not." He filled his pipe with deliberation, while Casey, his
jaw sagging, stared from one to the other.
Casey had meant to accuse them to their faces of shooting Barney and
the burros from the rim-rock. It had occurred to him that if they
believed Barney dead, they might reveal something of their purpose in
the attack. Concealment, he felt vaguely, would serve merely to
sharpen their suspicion of him. It had seemed very important to Casey
that these three should not know that Barney was probably well on his
way to Barstow by now.
Barney in Barstow would mean Barney bearing news that Casey Ryan was
undoubtedly murdered by outlaws in the Panamints; which would mean a
few officers on the trail, with Barney to guide them to the spot. Paw
and Hank and Joe--outlaws all, he would have sworn would get what Casey
called their needin's. His jaw muscles tightened when he thought of
that, and the prospect held him quiet under Joe's injustice.
"I can prove anything I'm asked to prove when the time comes," he said
sourly, and began to roll himself a cigarette, since his pipe had gone
out. "But I ain't in any courtroom yet, an' you fellers ain't any
judge an' jury."
"We got to hold ye," Paw spoke up unctiously, as if the decision had
been his. "Ef a crime's been committed, like you say it has, we got to
do our duty an' hold ye. The boss'll know what to do with ye--like I
said all along; when I hauled ye down outa that tree, for instance.
"Aw, shut up, Paw, you ol' fool, you," Hank commanded again with filial
gentleness. "He had yore tongue hangin' out a foot when I come along
an' captured 'im. Don't go takin' no credit to yourself--you ain't got
none comin'. Mart'll know what to do with 'im, all right. But yuh
needn't go an' try to let on to Mart that you was the one that caught
'im. He had you caught. An' he'd a killed yuh if I hadn't showed up
an' pulled 'im off'n yuh."
"Well now, when it comes to KILLIN'," Casey interjected spitefully, "I
guess I coulda put the two of yuh away if I'd a wanted to right bad.
Casey Ryan ain't no killer, because he don't have to be. G'wan an'
hold me if yuh feel that way. Grub ain't none too good, but I can
stand it till your boss comes. I want a man-to-man talk with him,
anyway."