CHAPTER THIRTY
“SOMEBODY HOLLERED UP ON THE BLUFF”
The left front tire of the town Ford persisted in going flat with a slow valve leak. The driver, a heedless young fellow, had neglected to bring extra valves; so that the tire needed pumping every ten miles or such a matter. Then the Ford began heating on the long, uphill pull between the Pintwater Mountains and the Spotted Range, and some time was lost during the heat of the day because of the necessity for cooling the motor. Delays such as these eat away the hours on a long trip; wherefore it was nearly dusk when Patricia got her first glimpse of Johnnywater Cañon.
Up in the crosscut, Gary heard the rumbling throb of the motor, and shouted until he was exhausted. Which did not take long, even with the nourishment of the broiled dove to refresh his failing strength.
He consoled himself afterward with the thought that it was James Blaine Hawkins come sneaking back, and that he would like nothing better than to find Gary hopelessly caged in the crosscut. Gary was rather glad that James Blaine Hawkins had failed to hear him shout. At any rate, the secret of Patricia’s mine was safe from him, and Gary would be spared the misery of being taunted by Hawkins. It was a crazy notion, for it was not at all likely that even James Blaine Hawkins would have let him die so grisly a death. But Gary was harboring strange notions at times during the last forty-eight hours. And the body of one wild dove was pitifully inadequate for the needs of a starving man.
Monty had not meant to be cruel. Now that he was on the spot, he tried his best to soften the shock of what he knew Patricia must discover. That morning he had purposely avoided speaking of his reasons for fearing the worst. Then Patricia’s manner—assumed merely to hide her real emotion—had chilled Monty to silence on the whole subject. With the driver present they had not discussed the matter at all during the trip, so that Patricia was still ignorant of what Monty believed to be the real, tragic state of affairs.
Monty looked up from lighting a fire in the stove and saw Patricia go over to Gary’s coat and smooth it caressingly with her hand. Then and there he forgave Patricia for her tone at breakfast. She took Gary’s hat from the cupboard and held it in her hands, her eyes questioning Monty.
“Gary was saving that hat till he went to town again,” Monty informed her in his gentle drawl. “He was wearing an old hat of Waddell’s, and some old clothes Waddell left here when he pulled out. You see now, Miss Connolly, one reason why I don’t believe Gary went to Tonopah. His suit case is there, too, under the bunk. But don’t yuh-all worry—we’ll find him.”
He turned back to his fire-building, and Patricia sat down on the edge of the bunk and stared wide-eyed around the cabin.
So this was why she had failed to hear from Gary in all these weeks! He had come over here to Johnnywater after all, because she wished it. She had never dreamed the place would be so lonely. And Gary had lived here all alone!
“Is this all there is to the house—just this one room?” she asked Monty abruptly, in her prim, colorless tone.
“Yes, ma’am, this is the size of it,” Monty replied cheerfully. “Folks don’t generally waste much time on buildin’ fancy houses, out here. Most generally they’re mighty thankful if the walls keep out the wind and the roof don’t leak. If it’s dry and warm, they don’t care if it ain’t stylish.”
“Is this the way Gary left it?” she asked next, glancing down at the rough board floor that gave evidence of having been lately scrubbed.
“Yes, ma’am, except for the dust on things. Gary Marshall was a right neat housekeeper, Miss Connolly.”
“Was?” Patricia stood up and came toward him. “Do you think he’s—what makes you say was?”
Monty hedged. “Well, he ain’t been keepin’ house here for a week, anyway. It’s a week ago yesterday I rode over here from my camp. Things are just as they was then.”
“You have something else on your mind, Mr. Girard. What was it that made you wire about foul play? I’ll have to know anyway, and I wish you’d tell me now, before that boy comes in from fussing with the car.”
Monty was filling the coffeepot. He set it on the hottest part of the stove and turned toward her commiseratingly.
“I reckon I had better tell yuh-all,” he said gently. “The thing that scared me was that this man, Hawkins, come here and made his brags about how he got the best of yuh-all in that agreement. Him and Gary had some words over it, the way I got it, and they like to have had a fight—only Hawkins didn’t have the nerve. He beat it out of here and Gary rode over to my place that same day and was tellin’ me about it.
“I told him then to look out for Hawkins. He sounded to me like a bad man to have trouble with; or dealin’s of any kind. That was three weeks ago, Miss Connolly—four weeks now, it is. I was away for three weeks, and when I got back I rode over here and found the place deserted. Gary’s hawse was in the corral and the two pigs was shut up in the pen, so it looked like he ought to be around somewheres close. Only he wasn’t. I hunts the place over, from one end to the other. But there wasn’t no sign of him, except——”
“Except what? I want to know all that you know about it, Mr. Girard.”
Monty hesitated, and when he spoke his reluctance was perfectly apparent to Patricia.
“Well, there’s something else I didn’t like the looks of. Up the creek here a piece, there’s a grave that wasn’t there the last time I was over here. I’m pretty sure about that, because I recollect I led my hawse down to the creek right about there, to water him. It’s about straight down from the corral, and I’d have noticed it.”
“I don’t believe a word of it—that it has anything to do with Gary!” cried Patricia vehemently, and she went over and pressed her face against Gary’s coat.
Monty took a step toward her but reconsidered and went on with his preparations for supper. Instinctively he felt that he would do Patricia the greatest possible service if he made her physically comfortable and refrained from intruding upon the sacred ground of her thoughts concerning Gary.
The boy who had driven the car out came in, and Monty sent him to the creek for a bucket of fresh water. The boy came back with the water and a look of concern on his face.
“I thought I heard somebody holler, up on the bluff,” he said to Monty. “Do you think we’d better go see——?”
Monty shook his head at him, checking the sentence. But Patricia had turned quickly and caught him at it. She came forward anxiously.
“Certainly we ought to go and see!” she said with characteristic decision. “It’s probably Mr. Marshall. He may be hurt, up there.” She started for the door, but Monty took one long step and laid a detaining hand upon her arm.
“That Voice has been hollerin’ off and on for five years,” he told her gravely. “I’ve heard it myself more than once. Gary used to hear it—often. Yuh can’t get an Injun past the mouth of the cañon on account of it. It was that Voice hollerin’ that made Waddell sell out and quit the country.”
Patricia looked at him uncomprehendingly. “What is it?” she demanded. “I don’t understand what you mean.”
“Neither can anybody else understand it—that I ever heard of,” Monty retorted dryly, and gently urged her toward the one homemade chair. “Supper’s about ready, Miss Connolly. I guess you’re pretty hungry, after that long ride.” Then he added in his convincing drawl—which this time was absolutely sincere—“I love Gary Marshall like I would my own brother, Miss Connolly. Yuh-all needn’t think I’d leave a stone unturned to find him. But that Voice—it ain’t anything human. It—it scares folks, but nobody has ever been able to locate it. You can’t pay any attention to it. You set up here to the table and let me pour yuh-all a cup of coffee. And here’s some bacon and some fresh eggs I fried for yuh-all. And that bread was warm when I bought it off the baker this morning.”
Patricia’s lips quivered, but she did her best to steady them. And because she appreciated Monty’s kindness and his chivalrous attempts to serve her in the best way he knew, she ate as much of the supper as she could possibly swallow, and discovered that she was hungry enough to relish the fried eggs and bacon, though she was not in the habit of eating either.
The boy—Monty called him Joe—gave Patricia the creeps with his wide-eyed uneasiness; staring from one to the other and suspending mastication now and then while he listened frankly for the Voice. Patricia tried not to notice him and was grateful to Monty for his continuous stream of inconsequential talk on any subject that came into his mind, except the one subject that filled the minds of both.
The boy, Joe, helped Monty afterward with the dishes, Patricia having been commanded to rest; a command impossible for her to obey, though she sat quiet with her hands clasped tightly in her lap. Too tightly, Monty thought, whenever he looked her way.
Monty was a painstaking young man, and he had learned from long experience in the wilderness to provide for possible emergencies as well as present needs. He wiped out the dishpan, hung it on its nail and spread the dishcloth over it, and then took a small, round box from his pocket. He opened it and took out a tablet with his thumb and finger. He dropped the tablet into a jelly glass—the same which Gary had used to hold his gold dust—and added a little water. He stood watching it, shaking it gently until the tablet was dissolved.
“We-all are going to spread our bed out in the grove, Miss Connolly,” he drawled easily, approaching Patricia with the glass. “I reckoned likely yuh-all would be mighty tired to-night, and maybe kinda nervous and upset. So I asked the doctor what I could bring along that would give yuh-all a night’s rest without doin’ any harm. He sent this out and said it would quiet your nerves so yuh-all could sleep. Don’t be afraid of it—I made sure it wasn’t anything harmful.”
Patricia looked at him for a minute, then put out her hand for the glass and drank the contents to the last dregs.
“Thank you very much, Mr. Girard,” she said simply. “I was wondering how I’d get through this night.”