He hitched forward again, more rapidly, and gained three feet before he stopped to peer about him. At last he came to the sand patch, which lay between a bowlder and a clump of dry, dead, and rustly brush; which accounted for its having a story to tell. It was the only way a cautious man could have proceeded; and the print of the heel of a hand and the five little dots where the tips of thumb and fingers had rested was well to one side of it. Furthermore, there was a smooth streak across it which contained two other streaks along the outer edges of the first one. The story was plain: a stomach, followed by two legs, had been dragged across the little patch of sand. Luke raised his educated eyes and looked around him, but now his field of vision was considerably constricted, for he paid attention only to those few spaces in the brush and among the rocks which a clever man would be likely to use; and being a clever man himself, he unerringly picked certain openings and almost instantly riveted his gaze on a sign: a toe print at his left. Close to it was another, and the way in which the sand had been pushed up told him that the first had been made by a man crawling west; and the other announced to him that it had been made by a man moving east. Luke deduced that the same man, returning over his own trail, had made the second as well as the first. Luke was relieved, and, havin' a safe trail to follow, he pushed on rapidly but silently, soon reaching the place where it ended; and in plain sight of him, through the thin growth of brush, was Fleming's body. One glance at it and Luke turned, following the trail back as he had come; and an hour later, having learned a great deal, he ran and crept, leaped and wriggled up to the place where his friend lay and petulantly cursed the flies. "Ijut Number Two," said Luke pleasantly, "where are you?" "Talkin' to hisself again," grumbled a low voice from the mysterious passages under a great, tumbled mass of bowlders. "If a body meet a body, reachin' for th' rye," continued the vexed voice, "whose treat is it?" "Depends on who can't keep still," answered Luke brightly. "We are two ijuts," he said positively and flatly. "Well, I allus like a man that speaks his mind, even if he _is_ a liar," commented the mysterious voice. "D--n these flies! I crawled in here to get rid of 'em; but they come right along. An' a little while back I smelled a striped kitty-cat. I knowed what it was because th' wind wasn't blowin' from yore direction." "Cuss his impudence!" said Luke. "He takes me for a wild flower! A rose, mebby. An' me comin' out here to save his worthless life!" "You didn't do nothin' of th' kind," contradicted the sepulchral voice. "You come out here to practice with Colonel Bowie! I can prove it before any fool jury. D--n th' flies!" "What flies?" innocently demanded Luke, his voice suggesting a hot curiosity and a thirsty yearning for knowledge.