The tracks of the six horses led down into a rock-bottomed arroyo so deep in most places that all view of the surrounding mesa was shut off completely, save where the ragged tops of a distant line of hills pushed up into the dazzling blue of the sky. The heat, down here among the rocks, was all but unbearable; and when they discovered that no tracks led out of the arroyo on the farther side, the Happy Family dismounted and walked to save their horses while they divided into two parties and hunted up and down the arroyo for the best trail.
It was just such vexatious delays as this which had kept them always a day's ride or more behind their quarry, and Luck's hand trembled with nervous irritability when he turned back and banded Applehead one of those small, shrill police whistles whose sound carries so far, and which are much used by motion-picture producers for the long-distance direction of scenes.
"I happened to have a couple in my pocket," he explained hurriedly. "You know the signals, don't you? One long, two short will mean you've picked up the trail. Three or more short, quick ones is an emergency call, for all hands to come running.""Well, they's one thing you want to keep in mind, Luck," Applehead urged from his superior trail craft. "They might be sharp enough to ride in here a ways and come out the same side they rode in at. Yuh want to hunt both sides as yuh go up.""Sure," said Luck, and hurried away up the arroyo with Pink, Big Medicine, Andy and the Native Son at his heels, leading the two pack-horses that belonged to their party. In the opposite direction went Applehead and the others, their eyes upon the ground watching for the faintest sign of hoofprints.
That blazing ball of torment, the sun, slid farther and farther down to the skyline, tempering its heat with the cool promise of dusk. Away up the arroyo, Luck stopped for breath after a sharp climb up through a narrow gash in the sheer wall of what was now a small canon, and saw that to search any farther in that direction would be useless. Across the arroyo--that had narrowed and deepened until it was a canon--Andy Green was mopping his face with his handkerchief and studying a bold hump of jumbled bowlders and ledges, evidently considering whether it was worth while toiling up to the top. Alittle below him, the Native Son was flinging rocks at a rattlesnake with the vicious precision of frank abhorrence. Down in the canon bottom Big Medicine and Pink were holding the horses on the shady side of the gorge, and the smoke of their cigarettes floated lazily upward with the jumbled monotone of their voices.
Andy, glancing across at Luck, waved his hand and sat down on a rock that was shaded by a high bowlder; reached mechanically for his "makings" and with his feet far apart and his elbows on his thighs, wearily rolled a cigarette.
"How about it, boss?" he asked, scarcely raising his voice above the ordinary conversational tone, though a hard fifteen-minutes' climb up and down separated the two; "they never came up the arroyo, if you ask ME. My side don't show a hoof track from where we left the boys down below.""Mine either," Luck replied, by the power of suggestion seating himself and reaching for his own tobacco and papers. "We might as well work back down and connect with Applehead. Wish there was some sign of water in this darn gulch.
By the time we get down where we started from, it'll be sundown." He glanced down at Bud and Pink. "Hey! You can start back any, time," he called. "Nothing up this way.""Here's the grandfather of all rattlers," Miguel called across to Luck, and held up by the tail a great snake that had not ceased its muscular writhings.
"Twelve rattles and a button. Have I got time to skin him? He tried to bite me on the leg--but I beard him and got outa reach.""We've got to be moving," Luck answered. "It's a long ways back where we started from, and we've got to locate water, if we can." He rose with the deliberateness that indicated tired muscles, and started back; and to himself be muttered exasperatedly: "A good three hours all shot to pieces--and not a mile gained on that bunch!"The Native Son, calmly pinching the rattles of the snake he had not time to skin, climbed down into the Canon and took his horse by the bridle reins.
Behind him Andy Green came scrambling; but Luck, still faintly hoping for a clue, kept to the upper rim of the arroyo, scanning every bit of soft ground where it seemed possible for a horse to climb up from below. He had always recognized the native cunning of Ramon, but he had never dreamed him as cunning as this latest ruse would seem to prove him.
As for Bill Holmes, Luck dismissed him with a shrug of contempt. Bill Holmes had been stranded in Albuquerque when the cold weather was coming on; he had been hungry and shelterless and ill-clad--one of those bits of flotsam which drift into our towns and stand dejectedly upon our street-corners when they do not prowl down alleys to the back doors of our restaurants in the hope of being permitted to wash the soiled dishes of more fortunate men for the food which diners have left beside their plates. Luck had fed Bill Holmes, and he had given him work to do and the best food and shelter he could afford; and for thanks, Bill had- as Luck believed-made sly, dishonest love to Annie-Many-Ponies, for whose physical and moral welfare Luck would be held responsible. Bill had deliberately chosen to steal rather than work for honest wages, and had preferred the unstable friendship of Ramon Chavez to the cleaner life in Luck's company. He did not credit Bill Holmes with anything stronger than a weak-souled treachery. Ramon, he told himself while he made his way down the arroyo side, was at least working out a clever scheme of his own, and it rested with Luck and his posse to see that Ramon was cheated of success.
So deeply was he engrossed that before he realized it he was down where they had left Applehead's party. There was no sign of them anywhere, so Luck went down and mounted his horse and led the way down the arroyo.
