Monty Girard, mounted on a lean-flanked sorrel, came jogging up the trail into Johnnywater Cañon. His eyes, that managed to see everything within their range of vision, roved questingly here and there through the grove, seeking some sign of the fastidiously tailored young man he had left there two weeks before. His horse went single-footing up to the cabin and stopped when Monty lifted his rein hand as a signal.
“Hello!” Monty shouted buoyantly, for all he had just finished a twenty-mile ride through desert heat. He waited a minute, got no reply, and dismounted.
He pushed open the door and went in, his eyes betraying a shade of anxiety. The cabin was clean, blankets spread smoothly on the bunk. He lifted a square of unbleached cloth that had once been a flour sack which covered sugar, salt, pepper, condensed milk and four tin teaspoons, lately scoured until they almost shone, leaning bowls up in an empty milk can. Also a white enameled bowl two thirds full of dried apples and raisins stewed together. Monty heaved a sigh of relief. The movie star was evidently keeping house just like a human.
Monty went out and stood at the corner of the cabin near the horse. There was nothing the matter with his lungs, but the rest of him was tired. He hunted Gary by the simplest means at his command. That is, he cupped his palms around his mouth, curved his spine inward, planted his feet rather far apart, and sent a loud “Hello!” echoing through the cañon.
The thin-flanked sorrel threw up its head violently and backed, stepped on the dragging reins and was brought up short. Monty turned, picked up the reins and drawled a reproof before he called again. Four times he shouted and proceeded then to unsaddle. If the movie star were anywhere within Johnnywater Cañon he could not fail to know that he had a caller come to see him.
Five minutes later Monty glanced up and stared with his mouth slightly open. Gary was sneaking around the corner of the cabin with raised pitchfork in his hands and a glitter in his eyes. When he saw who it was, Gary lowered the pitchfork and grinned sheepishly.
“When you holler hello in this cañon, smile!” he paraphrased whimsically, and drew his shirt sleeve across his forehead. “Thought I’d landed that trick Voice at last. Well, darn it, how are you?”
“All right,” Monty grinned slowly, “if you just put down that hay fork. What’s the matter? You gittin’ like Waddell?”
Gary leaned the pitchfork against the cabin. He pushed his hair back from his forehead with a gesture familiar to audiences the country over.
“By heck, I hope not,” he exclaimed brusquely. “I’d given up looking for you, Monty. And that cussed Voice sounded to me like it had slipped. I’ve got used to it up on the hill, but I sure as heck will take a fall out of it if it comes hollering around my humble hang-out. Where’s the Ford?”
Monty pulled saddle and blanket together from the back of the sorrel, leaving the wet imprint shining in the sun. The sorrel twitched its hide as the air struck through the moisture coldly.
“Well, now, the old Ford’s done been cremated ever since the night I left here,” Monty informed him pensively. “Yuh-all recollect we had quite a wind from the west that night. Anyway, it blowed hard over to my camp. I started a fire and never thought a word about the Ford being on the lee side of camp, so first I knew the whole top of the car was afire. I just had time to give her a start down the hill away from camp before the gas tank blowed up. So that left me afoot, except for a saddle horse or two. Then I had some ridin’ to do off over the other way. And I knew yuh had grub enough to last a month or two, so I didn’t hurry right over like I would have done if yuh-all needed anything.” His keen eyes dwelt upon Gary’s face with unobtrusive attention.
The young movie star, he thought, had changed noticeably. He was a shade browner, a shade thinner, more than a shade less immaculate. Monty observed that he was wearing a pair of Waddell’s old trousers, tucked into a pair of Waddell’s high-laced boots with the heels worn down to half their height, the result of climbing over rocks. Gary’s shirt was open with a deep V turned in at the collar, disclosing a neck which certain sentimental extra girls at the studio had likened to that of a Greek god. Gary’s sleeves were rolled up to his elbows. He looked, in short, exactly as any upstanding city chap looks when he is having the time of his life in the country, wearing old clothes—the older, the better suited to his mood—and roughing it exuberantly.
Yet there was a difference. Exuberant young fellows from the city seldom have just that look in the eyes, or those lines at the corners of the mouth. Monty unconsciously adopted a faintly solicitous tone.
“How yuh-all been making it, anyway?” he asked, watching Gary roll a cigarette.
“Finest ever!” Gary declared cheerfully, lighting a match with his thumb nail, a trick he had learned from an old range man because it lent an effective touch sometimes to his acting.
“A couple of Piutes happened along the other day, and I had them run in the horses for me. Thought I’d keep up a saddle horse so I could round up a team of work horses when I get ready to haul the hay.” He blew a mouthful of smoke and gave a short laugh. “I’m a heck of a stock hand for a gink that was born on a horse ranch.” He blew another mouthful of smoke deliberately, not at all conscious that he was making what is termed a dramatic pause, nor that he was making it with good effect. “I owe Pat Connolly,” he said slowly, “a cheap saddle horse. I’m glad Pat hadn’t learned to love that scrawny bay. Where can I get a horse for about a dollar and six bits?”
Monty eyed him dubiously. “Yuh-all mean yuh lost a hawse?”
“No-o, I didn’t exactly lose a horse. It died.” Gary sat down in the doorway and folded his arms upon his knees.
“I ought to have had more sense,” he sighed, “than to stake him out so close to the shed where the sack of grain was. I sort of knew that rolled barley is not good as an exclusive diet for horses. I had a heck of a job,” he added complainingly, “digging a hole big enough to plant him in.”
Monty swore sympathetically; and after the manner of men the world over, related sundry misfortunes of his own by way of giving comfort. Gary listened, made profane ejaculations in the proper places, and otherwise deported himself agreeably. But when Monty ceased speaking while he attended to the serious business of searching his most inaccessible pockets for a match, Gary broached a subject altogether foreign to Monty’s plaintive reminiscences.
“Say, Monty! Was Waddell tall and kind of stoop-shouldered and bald under his hat? And did he have blue eyes and a kind of sandy complexion and lips rather thin—but pleasant, you know; and did he always wear an old gray Stetson and khaki pants tucked into boots like these?”
Monty found the match, in his shirt pocket after all. A shadow flicked across his face. Perhaps even Monty Girard had an instinct for dramatic pauses and hated to see one fall flat.
“Naw. Waddell wasn’t a very tall man and he was dark complected; the sallow kind of dark. His eyes was dark, too.” He examined the match rather carefully, as if he were in some doubt as to its proper use. He decided to light it and lifted a foot deliberately, so that he might draw the match sharply across the sole.
“That description of yours,” he said, flipping the match stub away from him and watching to see just where it landed, “tallies up with Steve Carson. Yuh ain’t——” He turned his head and regarded curiously the Gary Marshall profile, which at that moment was absolutely impassive. “It was Steve cut the logs and built this cabin,” he finished lamely.
Gary unfolded his arms and stretched his legs out straight before him. “What happened to this Steve Carson?” he asked innocently. “Did he sell out to Waddell?”
Monty smoked absent-mindedly, one spurred heel digging a little trench in the dirt.
“That’s Steve’s cat,” he observed irrelevantly, glancing up as Faith came out of the bushes, picking her way carefully amongst the small rocks that littered the dooryard.
“Uh-huh.” Gary drew up his legs and clasped his hands around his knees. “If this Steve Carson didn’t sell out to Waddell, then where does Waddell come into the scene? Did Steve Carson give the darned thing away?”
Monty leaned forward, inspecting the small trench his spur had dug. Very carefully he began to rake the dirt back into it.
“It ain’t gettin’ yuh, is it?” He did not look up when he asked the question. He was painstakingly patting the dirt smooth with the toe of his boot.
“Getting me! Hell!” said Gary.
“It got Waddell—bad,” drawled Monty, biting a corner of his lip. “That’s why he sold out. It was gettin’ him. Bad.” Having filled the trench and patted the dirt smooth, Monty straightway began to dig another trench beside it.
“What is there to get a fellow?” Gary looked challengingly at Monty. “I’ve stayed with it two weeks, and I haven’t been got yet.” He laughed a little. “The Piutes told me a man disappeared here and left his Voice behind him. Of course that’s Injun talk. What’s the straight of it, Monty?”
“Well—nobody ever called me superstitious yet,” Monty grinned, “but that’s about the size of it. Steve Carson came up missing. Since then, there’s that Voice. I know it started in right away. I was over here helping hunt for him, and I heard it. Some says Steve went loco and tried to walk out. If he did, he left mighty onexpected, and he didn’t take anything at all with him. Not even a canteen, far as I could see. He had two, I know—and they was both hangin’ on the same nail beside the door. Uh course, he might a had another one—I hadn’t been over to Johnnywater for a coupla months, till I come over to see what was wrong. I was scoutin’ around the country for a week or more, tryin’ to get some trace of him.”
Having completed the second trench, Monty filled that one as carefully as he had filled the first. Abruptly he looked at Gary. “Yuh-all ain’t—seen anything, have yuh?”