Monty could not find any canteen, but that told him nothing at all.
He could not remember whether Waddell had canteens or not. The vague
uneasiness which he had at first smothered under his natural
optimism grew to a definite anxiety. He knew the ways of the desert.
And he could think of no plausible reason why Gary should have left
the cañon afoot.
He went out and began looking for tracks. The dry soil still held
the imprint of automobile tires, but it was impossible to tell just
how long ago they had been made. Several days, at least, he judged
after a careful inspection. He heard a noise in the bushes across
the little creek and turned that way expectantly.
The spotted cat came out of the brush, jumped the tiny stream and
approached him, meowing dolefully. Monty stood stock still, watching
her advance. She came directly toward him, her tail drooping and
waving nervously from side to side. She looked straight up into his
face and yowled four or five times without stopping.
“Get out, damn yuh!” cried Monty and motioned threateningly with his
foot. “Yuh can’t stand there and yowl at _me_--I got enough on my
mind right now.”
The mottled cat ducked and started back to the creek, stopping now
and then to look over her shoulder and yowl at Monty. Monty picked
up a pebble and shied it after her. The cat gave a final squall and
ran into a clump of bushes a few yards up-stream from where Monty
had first seen her.
“That damned cat ain’t human!” Monty ejaculated uncomfortably.
“That’s the way she yowled around when Steve Carson----” He lifted his
shoulders impatiently at the thought.
After a minute or two spent in resisting the impulse, Monty yielded
and started out to see where the cat had gone. Beyond the clump of
bushes lay an open space along the bank of the creek. On the farther
side he saw the mottled cat picking her way through weeds and small
bushes, still going up the creek and yowling mournfully as she went.
Monty walked slowly after her. He noticed, while he was crossing the
open space, a man’s footprints going that way and another set coming
back. The soil was too loose to hold a clear imprint, so that Monty
could not tell whose tracks they were; though he believed them to
have been made by Gary.
The cat looked back and yowled at Monty, then went on. At a point
nearly opposite the potato patch the cat stopped near a bushy little
juniper tree that stood by itself where the creek bank rounded up to
a tiny knoll. As Monty neared the spot the cat leaped behind the
juniper and disappeared.
Monty went closer, stopped with a jerk and stood staring. He felt
his knees quiver with a distinct tendency to buckle under him. The
blood seeped slowly away from his face, leaving it sallow under the
tan.
Monty was standing at the very edge of a narrow mound of earth that
still bore the marks of a shovel where the mound had been smoothed
and patted into symmetrical form. A grave, the length of a man.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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