“We get you, boss,” Weary sang out cheerfully, and went to work
gathering up the breakfast things and putting them into two little piles
for the packs. Pink led up the black and the sorrel, and helped to pack
them with bedding and supplies for four, as Luck had ordered, while Lite
and Applehead saddled their horses and then came up to help throw the
diamond hitches on the packs.
A couple of rods nearer the rock wall Happy Jack was grumbling, across
the canvas pack of a little bay, at Big Medicine, who was warning
him against leaving his hair so long as a direct temptation to
scalp-lifting. Luck bad already mounted and ridden out a little way,
where he could view the country behind them with his field glasses,
to make sure that in the darkness they had not passed by anything that
deserved a closer inspection. He came back at a lope and motioned to
Andy and the Native Son.
“That red automobile is standing back about half a mile,” he announced
hurriedly. “Empty and deserted, looks like. We'll go back and take a
look at it. The rest of you can finish packing and wait here till we
come back. No use making extra travel for your horses. They'll get all
they need, the chances are.”
The red automobile was empty of everything but the upholstering and a
jack in the toolbox. The state license number was gone, and the serial
number on the engine had been hammered into illegibility. What tracks
there were had been blown nearly full of the white sand of that
particular locality There was nothing to be learned there, except the
very patent fact that the machine bad been abandoned for some reason.
Luck took a look at the engine and saw nothing wrong with it. There was
oil and there was “gas”--a whole tank full. Andy and Miguel, riding
an ever-widening circle around the machine while Luck was looking for
evidence of a breakdown, ran across a lot of hoofprints that seemed to
head straight away past the rim-rock and on to the hills.
They picked up the trail of the hoofprints and followed it. When they
returned to the others they found the boys all mounted and waiting
impatiently like hounds on the leash eager to get away on the chase. Six
horses there were, and even old Applehead, who was in a bad humor that
morning and seemed to hate agreeing with anyone, admitted that probably
the four who had committed the robbery and left town in the machine had
been met out here by a man who brought horses for them and one extra
pack horse. This explained the number in the most plausible manner, and
satisfied everyone that they were on the right trail.
Riding together--since they were on a plain trail and there was nothing
to be gained by separating--they climbed to the higher mesa, crossed the
ridge of the three barren hills that none of them but Applehead had ever
passed, and went on and on and on as the hoofprints led them, straight
toward the reservation.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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