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!"