Tilting the lamp so that the light shone on the floor, he went forward, following the boot tracks in the dust. Through winding passages they led him--Abington might have become lost again had not those footprints pointed the way--and so into a chamber where was piled a little heap of things which Abington recognized as a part of his own outfit and the things Bill had declared were stolen from his cave across the valley. The treachery of the act stabbed through Abington’s weary consciousness and merged into a malicious satisfaction. At any rate the spot had been well chosen, for here was water trickling down a rift in the wall, tinkling into a tiny basin hewn out of the rock by some other hands than Bill’s. Abington sank to his knees and drank thirstily, then clawed at the pile of stuff, found a tin of corned beef and cut it open with his knife. It was not what he would have chosen for a meal, but it would serve. There was plenty of water at hand. He ate all of the corned beef, drank again and withdrew to a sandy niche where he felt fairly sure of hearing Bill if he returned; laid himself down under a shelving projection of rock, put out his lamp and went thankfully to sleep. CHAPTER XI--ROARING GUNS Refreshed, Abington awoke with a sunbeam shining fair in his eyes. Just at first he failed to orient himself and thought he was in the cave with Bill. But this cavern was larger and the crevices high up on the wall, between the broken masses of rock, let in a westering sun and a breeze straight off the desert. He was hungry again and the salt beef had given him a burning thirst. He wondered if Bill had returned while he slept. It was quite likely, he thought, and having no wish to be discovered just yet, he crept very slowly from his place of concealment, careful to keep in the shadows beneath the jutting wall. For some time he waited and listened, but the only sounds he heard were the tinkling of the little spring and the shrill chirping of a few cedar birds that had made their home in the crannies of the roof and were very busy with their own small affairs. Abington grinned to himself as he cautiously approached the little pile of supplies and began a more careful investigation than he had attempted that morning. Two pounds of chewing tobacco--most convincingly had Bill bewailed the loss of those plugs, he remembered. He counted half a dozen cans of corned beef, one of the variations in diet which had been made possible by having three pack burros. Had Bill really imagined he could make Abington believe that the gosh-awful had carried off chewing tobacco and corned beef in cans? In the face of their loss of the burros Abington had not given much thought to the missing articles from Bill’s outfit. He had visited the cave, viewed the apparent aimlessness of the demolition, had looked for tracks, and, having found the giant sheep tracks in the bottom of the cañon, paid no more attention to the wreckage.