.
lay heavy. “I oughta be hung for laying around the fire here instead of being out there on guard! I oughta—”
“It ain’t your fault,” Weary championed him warmly. “We all heard the bell—”
“Yes—and damn it, I heard the bell from then on till daylight!” Pink’s lips quivered perceptibly with the mortification that burned within him. “If I’d been on guard—”
“Well, I calc’late you’d a been laid out now with a knife-cut in yuh som’ers,” Applehead stopped twisting his sunburnt mustache to say bluntly. “‘S a dang lucky thing fer you, young man, ‘t you WASN’T on guard, ‘n’ the only thing’t looks queer to me is that you wasn’t potted las’ night when yuh got out away from here. Musta been only one of ‘em stayed behind, an’ he had t’ keep out in front uh yuh t’ tinkle that dang bell. Figgered on wearin’ out yer hoss, I reckon, ‘n’ didn’t skurcely dare t’ take the risk uh killin’ you off ‘nless they was a bunch around t’ handle us.” His bright blue eyes with their range squint went from one to another with a certain speculative pride in the glance. “‘N’ they shore want t’ bring a crowd along when they tie into this yere outfit, now I’m tellin’ yuh!”
Lite Avery, who had gone prowling down the draw by himself, came back to camp, tilting stiff-leggedly along in his high-heeled boots and betraying, in every step he took, just how handicapped a cowpuncher is when set afoot upon the range and forced to walk where he has always been accustomed to ride. He stopped to give Pink’s exhausted horse a sympathetic pat on the shoulder, and came on, grinning a little with the comers of his mouth tipped down.
“Here’s what’s left of the hobbles the buckskin wore,” he said, holding up the cut loops of a figure-eight rope hobble. “Kinda speaks for itself, don’t it?”
They crowded around to inspect this plain evidence of stealing. Afterwards they stood hard-eyed and with a flush on their cheek-bones, considering what was the best and wisest way to meet this emergency. As to hunting afoot for their horses, the chance of success was almost too small to be considered at all, Pink’s horse was not fit for further travel until he had rested. There was one pair of field glasses—and there were nine irate men to whom inaction was intolerable.
“One thing we can do, if we have to,” Luck said at last, with the fighting look in his face which moving-picture people had cause to remember. “We can help ourselves to any horses we run across. Applehead, how’s the best way to go about it?”
Applehead, thus pushed into leadership, chewed his mustache and eyed the mesa sourly. “Well, seein’ they’ve set us afoot, I calc’late we’re jest about entitled to any dang thing we run across that’s ridable,” he acceded. “‘N’ the way I’d do, would be to git on high groun’ with them glasses ‘n’ look fer hosses. ‘N’ then head fer ‘em ‘n’ round ‘em up afoot ‘n’ rope out what we want. They’s enough of us t’ mebby git a mount apiece, but it shore ain’t goin’ t’ be no snap, now I’m tellin’ ye. ‘N’ if yuh do that,” he added, “yuh want t’ leave a man er two in camp—‘n’ they want to keep their dang eyes peeled, lemme tell yuh! Ef we was t’ find ourselves afoot an’ our grub ‘n’ outfit stole—”
“We won’t give them that chance at us.” Luck was searching with his eyes for the nearest high point that was yet not too far from camp. “I think I’ll just take Andy up on that pinnacle there, and camp down by that pile of boulders. The rest of you stay around camp and rest yourselves while you’ve got the chance. In a couple of hours, Applehead, you and Lite come up and take our place; then Miguel and Bud, and after that Weary and Happy. Pink, you go and bed down in the shade somewhere and go to sleep—and quit worrying over last night. Nobody could have done any better than you did. It was just one put over on the bunch, and you happened to be the particular goat, that’s all.
“Now, if one of us waves his hat over his head, all of you but Happy and Bud and Pink come up with your rifles and your ropes, because we’ll have some horses sighted. If we wave from side to side, like this, about even with our belts, you boys want to look out for trouble. So one of you keep an eye on us all the time we’re up there. We’ll be up outa reach of any trouble ourselves, if I remember that little pinnacle right.” He hung the strap that held the leather case of the glasses over one shoulder, picked up his rifle and his rope and started off, with Andy similarly equipped coming close behind him.
The mesa, when they reached the pinnacle and looked down over the wide expanse of it, glimmered like clear, running water with the heat waves that rose from the sand. Away to the southward a scattered band of sheep showed in a mirage that made them look long-legged as camels and half convinced them both that they were seeing the lost horses, until the vision changed and shrunk the moving objects to mere dots upon the mesa.
Often before they had watched the fantastic air-pictures of the desert mirage, and they knew well enough that what they saw might be one mile away or twenty. But unless the atmospheric conditions happened to be just right, what was pictured in the air could not be depended upon to portray truthfully what was reflected. They sat there and saw the animals suddenly grow clearly defined and very close, and discovered at last that they were sheep, and that a man was walking beside the flock; and even while they watched it and wondered if the sheep were really as close as they seemed, the vision slowly faded into blank, wavery distance and the mesa lay empty and quivering under the sun.
“Fine chance we’ve got of locating anything,” Andy grumbled, “if it’s going to be miragy all day. We could run our fool heads off trying to get up to a bunch that would puff out into nothing. Makes a fellow think of the stories they tell about old prospectors going crazy trying to find mirage water-holes. I’m glad we didn’t get hung up at a dry camp, Luck. Yuh realize what that would be like?”
“Oh, I may have some faint idea,” Luck drawled whimsically. “Look over there, Andy over toward Albuquerque. Is that a mirage again, or do you see something moving?”
Andy, having the glasses, swung them slowly to the southeast. After a minute or two he shook his head and gave the glasses to Luck. “There was one square look I got, and I’d been willing to swear it was our saddle-bunch,” he said. “And then they got to wobbling and I couldn’t make out what they are. They might be field mice, or they might be giraffes—I’m darned if I know which.”
Luck focussed the glasses, but whatever the objects had been, they were no longer to be seen. So the two hours passed and they saw Applehead and Lite come slowly up the hill from camp bearing their rifles and their ropes and a canteen of fresh water, as the three things they might find most use for.
These two settled themselves to watch for horses—their own range horses. When they were relieved they reported nothing save a continued inclination on the part of the atmosphere to be what Andy called miragy. So, the day passed, chafing their spirits worse than any amount of active trouble would have done. Pink slept and brooded by turns, still blaming himself for the misfortune. The others moped, or took their turns on the pinnacle to strain their eyes unavailingly into the four corners of the earth—or as much as they could in those directions.
With the going of the sun Applehead and Lite, sitting out their second guard on the pinnacle, discussed seriously the desperate idea of going in the night to the nearest Navajo ranch and helping themselves to what horses they could find about the place. The biggest obstacle was their absolute ignorance of where the nearest ranch lay. Not, surely, that half-day’s ride back towards Albuquerque, where they had seen but one pony and that a poor specimen of horseflesh. Another obstacle would be the dogs, which could be quieted only with bullets.
“We might git hold of something to ride,” Applehead stated glumly, “an’ then agin the chances is we wouldn’t git nothin’ more’n a scrap on our hands. ‘N’ I’m tellin’ yuh right now, Lite, I ain’t hankerin’ fer no fuss till I git a hoss under me.”
“Me either,” Lite testified succinctly. “Say, is that something coming, away up that draw the camp’s in? Seems to me I saw something pass that line of lava, about half a mile over.”
Applehead