The first touch of dawn saw Gard awake and stirring. He went softly about the glade, feeding Jinny in her little corral off at one side, and preparing his own breakfast. The meal finished, he left food where his guest could find it, and made his way up the cañon. He had settled in his own mind that if Broome was able to travel they should leave the glade on the following day; but there was first something that he must do.
The forenoon was well advanced when Broome stirred, opened his eyes and sat up with a start. He was a moment or two realizing his surroundings and recalling the events that had brought him to this place.
He sat staring at the cabin; at the rough mud-and-stone walls; the primitive fireplace; the rude furnishings, and finally summed up his impressions in a phrase:
“Hell! What a layout!”
Then, remembering Gard’s probable proximity, he went heavily to the door.
There was no one in sight. In the big outer fireplace an “Indian” fire smoldered, guarded on one side by the earthen coffee-pot, on the other by the big kettle of beans. On the table were a bowl and a plate; the former upside down over some cakes of oat bread. Broome welcomed the sight, for he was hungry.
“Wonder where the patron got to so early,” he muttered as he fell upon the food.
He ate swinishly, standing before the fire, and had nearly completed his meal when he caught sight of the inscription Gard had put upon the cup from which he was drinking. His little shifty eyes studied it curiously as he turned the cup about.
“What in tunk is that for?” he muttered, perplexed, and when he had managed to decipher the words he nearly dropped the little vessel in his surprise.
“T-h-e c-u-p o-f f-o-r-g-i-v-e-n-e-s-s,” he spelled again, holding the cup up to the light and feeling the sunken letters with one hard finger. “Rummy kind o’ cup that’d be.”
He stooped to refill it with “coffee” from the blackened pot in the embers and, as he straightened up, his eye met another inscription, on a broad stone beside the door of the cabin. He read it aloud, laboriously:
“Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on Thee.”
“‘Peace’—‘peace.’” Broome looked about him, half dazed, groping in the void of his own spiritual habitation for an explanation of what he saw.
“There’s sure peace good an’ plenty in these diggings,” he muttered, “if that’s what a man’s aimin’ to locate; peace enough to drive him loco. Guess that’s what ails him. He must be a jumpin’ luny to go scratchin’ round like this.... There’s another one!”
He espied it on the wall over the pallet where he had slept.
“I will both lay me down in peace and sleep; for Thou Lord only, makest me dwell in safety.”
Gard had written that the day after the night of terror when storm had devastated the glade; written it remembering how his mother had taught it to him, an imaginative little chap, afraid of the dark. He had been saying his prayers one night, beside his cot in the shed-chamber, when he became afraid the SOMETHING was coming through the gloom to grab him from behind as he knelt. His mother, coming to tuck him up, found him cowering under the blankets and winning from him the secret of his fright, sat down beside him and taught him the beautiful verse. Broome, reading it now, experienced a feeling of dread.
“Peace again,” he growled, “I hope he gets peace enough with all his bug-house slate-writing. The feller’s hell on religion; shouldn’t wonder if he was a preacher.”
He turned away with an awed shiver.
“Gosh!” he ejaculated, “I’m glad I didn’t see that over my head last night. I couldn’t a’ slept a wink.”
He went outside again to fill and drink another cup of acorn coffee, and when his bodily hunger was satisfied left the debris of his meal on the hearth and wandered about the glade, seeking gratification of his objective curiosity.
“Why!” he exclaimed, when he discovered Jinny, in the corral, “The patron can’t be far off: he’s left the burro!”
He surveyed Jinny thoughtfully, as she stood at the far side of the corral. Then he wandered over to Gard’s rude pottery-factory.
“I’d like to know what the cuss is doin’ here,” he thought. “He’s made his outfit from the ground up.”
He was struck by that as he continued his roving scrutiny. Gard’s bow and arrows fairly frightened him.
“That fellow’s clean dotty,” he muttered. “What in thunder kin a live man do with that?”
Presently he found the first knife Gard had fashioned, laid upon a ledge of the camp fireplace, and turned it over like one bewildered.
“Shivering spooks!” he swore, softly; “If this ain’t an outfit! He don’t look like a ‘lunger,’” he added, referring again to Gard; “nor this ain’t no prospector’s layout; nor the cuss don’t seem locoed—not altogether. It’s what I thought. He’s some kind of a preacher. He don’t cuss none, an’ he seemed sorter quiet like last night. He didn’t act just like it, though, neither.”
Born of desire, another idea assailed him. “Wonder where he keeps his whiskey,” he mused. “That was a hell of a good sample he showed last night.”
He began to search more systematically, still keeping an alert eye for Gard’s possible return.
“They ain’t no hiding-place outside,” he decided, and turned his attention once more to the cabin. He had no idea what sort of a receptacle to look for, and a scrutiny of the corners revealed nothing. He crossed the room, to the fireplace, and suddenly gave a little start. He had made what promised to be a discovery.
He tiptoed to the door: no one was in sight, but he stepped outside and again made the round of the glade. Coming back, he took the precaution to close the door when he reëntered the hut.
At the fireplace again, he stooped and put both hands upon a stone half-way up one side of the rude chimney. As he had foreseen, it came away in response to a little lift—Gard’s hiding-place for his treasure had been a most casual thing at best—and a recess lay revealed.
Again Broome listened for sounds outside, ere he lifted first one, then the other, of the two buckskin bags that lay before him.
They were not large; but they were very heavy, and a peep into one revealed the yellow gleam that he had expected.
The little eyes glittered, and the man’s fingers opened and shut, clawlike, but he closed the bag, tying its buckskin string, and put it back. There were some papers with the bags, but he would look at those later.
He fitted the stone back into place, scrutinizing it keenly afterwards, to be sure that he had left no signs of his meddling.
“The sneakin’ cuss!” he snarled, moving back from the chimney. “He’s got a mine up here! That’s what he was so sly about last night. He’s gone there now, an’ he thinks he’ll keep me out of it. I’ll bet he’s up there covering his tracks.”
He was outside, now, muttering wrathfully. “No ye don’t, my smart coyote,” he sneered, “Yer kin just bet yer sweet life Thad Broome sits in this game, sure!”
He went the rounds again, scouting eagerly, till his trained plainsman’s eyes detected a faint trail leading over the rocks at one side of the stream.
It was but the suggestion of a pathway, trodden by Gard’s moccasined feet, but it was enough for the pryer’s sharpened senses. A moment later Broome had skirted the pool, and was hot on the scent.
The trail grew clearer as he followed it, and he pressed on, a growing rage in his heart, toward the man who had found a good thing and was keeping him out of it, after all that he had suffered. Curiously enough, it was only his own part in yesterday’s adventure that he remembered. Gard’s agency in his rescue and present safety was forgotten or ignored.
Half an hour’s cautious travel, and his ear caught a sound somewhere beyond. He crept on stealthily from one sheltering boulder to another, keeping carefully out of sight, until at last, clambering upon a shelving rock, he peered down upon Gard at work below him.
The cañon was very deep here, its walls towering, bare and grim, hundreds of feet in air. A great mass of piled-up rock nearly bridged the stream, and Broome could plainly see the nature of the vein that had been laid bare. Its promise fairly made him gasp.
He could see, as well, what Gard was doing.
On the face of the rock, close beside the opening where he had worked the claim, he had scratched his location notice, roughly enough, with his inadequate tools, but in letters perfectly legible, defining clearly the boundaries of his claim as he had staked it out.
Having done this, he had gone over the letters again, with charcoal, until they stared in inerasable distinctness from the rock. Now he stood at a little distance, regarding his finished work.
“The damned, sneakin’ swine,” muttered the watcher. “I’ll git even with him; he’s staked the mother-lode.”
He leaned forward eagerly to watch, as Gard moved toward the opening in the rock. What was he going to do next?
He saw him stoop for something, and crept nearer the edge of the rock, forgetful of concealment. Attracted by some slight sound Gard suddenly glanced up and looked the spy full in the face. In an instant Broome had sprung upon him and was clutching at the mattock which the other had just picked up.
“Think yer goin’ ter kill me with that, do yer?” Broome snarled. “I’ll show yer!” He struck at Gard’s eyes, at the same time striving to wrench the tool from him.
Half blinded by the onslaught, the other clinched, instinctively, with his foe, and a grim battle began.
Back and forth it raged, across the bit of sandy floor at the base of the rocks, each man striving for possession of the tool.
Broome was powerfully built, and he had rested from the agony of the day before. He was the heavier of the two, and he fought with an insane fury that pressed his antagonist back against the cliff before Gard had well recovered from the shock of his attack.
Fiercely, silently the two struggled until Gard, momentarily securing the mattock, flung it afar upon the sand. Broome gave a shriek of savage rage, and would have sprung for it, but the other man closed upon him and caught him with one powerful arm about the neck, pressing his face earthward.
Desperately Broome grasped the other’s body, striving to break that iron hold, but Gard’s blood was up, and he “saw red,” as his free arm rained blows upon the other’s back.
Strain as he would Broome could not break free, nor trip his foe. The fellow seemed made of iron, and the hammering of that fearful fist was driving the breath from his body. He gathered his forces for a last effort, but his breath already came in gasps, and he sank in a heap upon the sand.
Gard hauled him to his feet, fiercely.
“Stand up!” he shouted, as he faced him about.
Broome would have fallen again, but Gard upheld him, forcing him forward over the rocks, back toward camp. Once he turned, as if he would strike, but a glance at that fierce, set face herded him on again, cowed and stumbling.
“What are ye goin’ ter do to me?” he demanded, at last, tortured by Gard’s silence. There was no reply.
“I’ve as good a right in the cañon as you,” Broome persisted. He was in that state of hysterical strain that could not refrain from speech.
“I wouldn’t have touched ye if ye hadn’t come at me with that pick,” he lied. Still not a word from Gard, and Broome kept quiet till they reached camp, and Gard produced a rope.
It was the same with which he had dragged the fellow from the sand the day before; the loop that had been about his body was still in one end. The cowman shrieked when he saw it.
“What are ye goin’ to do to me?” he screamed. “By God! You tell me! What’s that thing fer?”
He sprang upon Gard again, and was tossed back like a child. A moment later he was lying upon the ground, bound hand and foot, and Gard towered above him.
“What am I going to do with you?” he asked, in cold scorn; “What would you do to me, if I was where you are?”
Broome glared his hate, and fear. “Yah!” he snarled, “I’d kill yer. I’ll kill yer yet, if yer don’t look out.”
For reply the other gathered him up, dragged him into the cabin and threw him upon the bed there. Then he went outside.
Gard was in a state of amazement. He looked at his own brown hands, and rolling up a sleeve of his buckskin shirt gazed upon his own right arm, lean, sinewy, knotted with iron muscles. He contracted, then relaxed it, slowly, and finally struck himself a resounding blow on the chest. Then he laughed, under his breath.
“And all this time,” he said, in a sort of wonder, “I’ve thought I was a rather sick man.”
He walked over to the corral where Jinny’s shaggy head showed over the barrier. There was keen joy in his swift stride, and in the new sense of power, and physical well-being, that filled him.
“Jinny,” he said, tweaking one of the long ears pricked forward to welcome him, “I guess the right place for me is here in the corral.”
He regarded the little burro thoughtfully.
“I hate to break it to you, old girl,” he went on, “But you’ve got to carry that load of dirt and poison down to the desert again. It’s the only way.”
He turned again and busied himself about the camp, clearing away the debris of Broome’s meal, and putting the place to rights. He brought out the largest of his willow baskets, one that he had made to fit Jinny’s back, and proceeded to fill it from his food-stores. Broome, within the shack, watched his movements whenever he came within range, but he had learned his lesson, and asked no questions. Later in the day Gard brought him food, and released his hands that he might eat, but neither man spoke, and when Broome had finished eating his captor bound him again.
Dusk was falling when Gard next came into the cabin. He had changed his buckskin garments for those he had worn two years before. He had been saving them for such a day of need.
“I’m going to untie your feet,” he said to Broome, “and you’re coming outside.”
He did as he had said, and Broome followed him out.
Jinny stood there, equipped with a home-made bridle and a sort of saddle of deer-skin. Leaning against a rock was a hamper closely packed. Gard had put out the big camp fire and the place already wore an air of desolation.
Inside the cabin, alone, Gard looked about with poignant regret.
“It’s sure time to go,” he told himself, sorrowfully, “But I hate to.”
He turned to the hiding-place in the chimney and secured the buckskin bags, and the papers.
“There’s that to attend to, too,” he murmured, fumbling the rumpled and stained sheets.
“It’s been a good place,” he thought, as he shut the door of the shelter, and looked about outside. “To think what I was when I came here. Whatever ... yes, it’s the truth: it’s been the making of me.”
He came and stood beside Broome.
“You get on the burro,” he said.
The man demurred. “I’d rather walk,” he objected.
“I didn’t ask you what you’d rather do,” was the reply. Gard was in no mood to bandy words, and a look at his face convinced the other that obedience was best.
When he was settled Gard proceeded to blindfold him, whereat the cowman swore fiercely under his breath.
“I’ll tell you now, Broome,” Gard said, when he felt sure that the blindfold was secure, “You’ve got nothing to be afraid of long ’s you behave yourself. I won’t leave you in the desert, but I’ll run no risk of your ever finding your way back here. You wear that blind till I see fit to take it off, and that’ll be when we’re good and well away on the plain.”
He shouldered the willow hamper.
“Come along, Jinny,” he said, without looking around again, and in the gathering dusk the outfit took its way down the dry wash to the desert.
END OF BOOK ONE