On the Cowboy's Trail: Western Boxed-Set. Coolidge Dane
water, and the barren mesa had already claimed its dead from thirst. He was also hardly in his right mind, and though his horse knew the way home he might easily have arrived there without his master. José Garcia was the first to mention the matter to Old Crit, and received a hearty cursing for his pains. Another week passed by, making three, and still the cowboy did not come in for his mail. The bunch of dissipated punchers who lingered around the bunk-house under pretence of riding the range finally worked up quite a hectic interest in the affair, but none of them volunteered to make a search. The chances were that Mr. Dalhart, if still alive, was in an ugly mood—perhaps locoed by Crit's well-known brand of whiskey—and it would be dangerous for an IC man to ride in on him. As for Crit, his asperity wore down a little as the days of absence lengthened away; he retracted several statements which he had made to the effect that he hoped the blankety-blank was dead, and when one of Boone Morgan's deputies finally rode in to investigate the rumor he told him he was afraid the poor fellow had wandered out across the desert and perished of hunger and thirst.
Bill Todhunter was Boone Morgan's regular mountain deputy—sent out to look into all such affairs as this, and incidentally to get evidence which would come handy in the big tax-collecting that was being planned for the fall. He asked a few questions, whistled through his teeth and pondered the matter for a while, meanwhile scrutinizing the hard countenance of his informant with the speculative cynicism of his profession. This was not the first sad case that he had looked into where a man who was not really needed in the community had mysteriously disappeared, and in one desert tragedy which he had in mind the corpse had assayed more than a trace of lead.
"Did this man Dalhart ever fill out that assessor's blank I left for 'im?" he inquired, after a long pause, meanwhile squatting down and drawing cattle brands in the dirt.
"Don't know," replied Crit, shortly.
"Let's see, his brand was a Wine-glass, wasn't it?"
"Nope—Monkey-wrench."
"Oh, yes! Sure! I knew they was two new irons in there, but I got 'em mixed. The Wine-glass is yourn, ain't it?"
Crittenden nodded sullenly. It was the particular phase of his relations with Pecos Dalhart which he would rather not discuss with an officer. As for the deputy, he spun the wheel in his spur, whistled "Paloma," and looked out toward the east.
"Has he got any mail here waitin' for 'im?" he asked, rising slowly from his heels. "Well, you better give it to me, then—and a little grub. I've always wanted to take a look at that Lost Dog country, anyway."
It was a long trail and the tracks were a month old, but Pecos's had been the last shod horse to travel it and what few cattle there were in the country had not been able to obscure the shoe-marks. Following those ancient signs Bill Todhunter worked his way gradually into what had been up to that time, No Man's Land, not forgetting to count the Wine-glass cattle as he passed the water holes. Not so many years before the Apaches had held full sway over all the Tonto and Verde country and when the first settlers came in they had naturally located along the rivers, leaving the barren mountains to the last. It was a long way from nowhere, that mysterious little Lost Dog Cañon, and when the deputy rode into it looking for a man whose trail was a month old he felt the sobering influence of its funereal cliffs. Black and forbidding, they bent bodingly over the tiny valley with its grove of cottonwoods and wild walnuts, and upon the western rim a squalid group of buzzards dozed as if they had made a feast. At the edge of the stream Todhunter reined in his horse, but though his flanks were gaunted the animal would not drink. Instead he raised his head and snuffed the air, curiously. It looked ominous, for they were at the end of the trail and the tracks still pointed in. The deputy spurred nervously across the stream, still with his eye out for signs, and fetched up with a jerk. There, fresh and clean in the moist sand, were the imprints of a man's boots, coming down to the water—and not once or twice, but a dozen times.
"Ahem," coughed Todhunter, turning into the path, "stan' up hyar, bronc—what's the matter with you!" He jerked his unoffending horse out of the trail and clattered him over the rocks, for your true officer does not crowd in with drawn pistol on a man he cannot see. The deputy was strictly a man of peace—and he tried to look the part. His badge was pinned carefully to the inside flap of his vest and if he had a gun anywhere it did not show. He swung his quirt in one hand, idly slapping it against his chaps, and then, having offered every sign that he came openly and as a friend, he rode cautiously up to the camp.
There was a fire smouldering upon a stone-walled mound at the entrance to the cave and beside it, reclining in a rustic chair, sat Pecos Dalhart—watchful, silent, alert. In one hand he held a cigarette and the other supported a grimy newspaper which he had been reading. Behind him on tall poles were boxes filled with food, protected by tin cans, mushroomed out around the posts to keep the rats from climbing. His saddle was hung up carefully on a rack and his carbine leaned against the chair where he was sitting, but though he had seen no one for a month Pecos barely glanced up from his paper as the stranger drew near.
"How'd do," observed the deputy, sitting at ease in his saddle.
"Howdy," Pecos grunted, and languidly touching his dead cigarette to a coal he proceeded with his reading. Todhunter looked his camp over critically, took note of the amount of food stored in the rat-proof boxes and of the ingenious workmanship on the rustic chair; then his eyes wandered back and fixed themselves on Pecos. Instead of the roistering boy he had expected he beheld a full-grown man with a month's growth of curly beard and his jaw set like a steel-trap, as if, after all, he was not unprepared for trouble. His hat, however, was shoved back carelessly on his bushy head, his legs crossed, and his pose was that of elegant and luxurious ease. To the left arm of his chair he had attached a horse's hoof, bottom up, in the frog of which he laid his cigarettes; to the right was fastened a little box filled with tobacco and brown papers, and the fire, smouldering upon its altar, was just close enough to provide a light. Evidently the lone inhabitant of the cañon had made every endeavor to be comfortable and was not above doing a little play-acting to convey the idea of unconcern, but the deputy sheriff did not fail to notice the carbine, close at hand, and the pistol by his side. It seemed to him also that while his man was apparently deeply immersed in his month-old paper, his eyes, staring and intent, looked past it and watched his every move. The conversation having ceased, then, and his curiosity having been satisfied, Bill Todhunter leaned slowly back to his saddle bags and began to untie a package.
"Are you Mr. Dalhart?" he inquired, as the cowboy met his eye.
"That's my name," replied Pecos, stiffly.
"Well, I've got s'm' papers for you," observed the deputy, enigmatically, and if he had been in two minds as to the way Pecos would take this statement his doubts were instantly set at rest. At the word "papers"—the same being used for "warrants" by most officers of the law—the cowboy rose up in his chair and laid one hand on the butt of his revolver.
"Not for me!" he said, a cold, steely-blue look comin' into his eyes. "It'll take a better man than you to serve 'em!"
"These are newspapers," corrected the deputy, quietly. "Yore friends down on the Verde, not havin' seen you for some time, asked me to take out yore mail and see if you was all right."
"Oh!" grunted Pecos, suspiciously.
"And, bein' as you seem to be all O. K.," continued Todhunter, pacifically, "I'll jest turn 'em over to you and be on my way." He threw the bundle at his feet, wheeled his horse and without another word rode soberly down the trail.
"Hey!" shouted Pecos, as the stranger plunged through the creek, but if Todhunter heard him he made no sign. There are some people who never know when to go, but Bill Todhunter was not that kind.
"No, you bet that feller ain't dead," he observed, when Crittenden and the chance residents of Verde Crossing gathered about him to hear the news. "He's sure up an' comin', and on the prod bigger 'n a wolf. I wouldn't like to say whether he's quite right in the head or not but I reckon it'll pay to humor 'im a little. He'll be down here for grub in about another week, too."
The week passed, but not without its happenings to Verde Crossing. The first event was the return of Angevine Thorne from Geronimo, after a prolonged stay in the city Bastile.