"Which is your Casey Dunne?" asked Hess.
Clyde stared with troubled eyes.
"I—I don't see him. There's Tom McHale, and the sheriff, and Sandy McCrae, and the old Indian. Why, Tom McHale has been hurt. His arm is in a sling. How slowly they ride! It's—it's like a funeral. Surely nothing can have happened. Oh, surely——" She caught her breath sharply, her eyes dilating. "Look!" she cried. "The last pack horse!"
The load on the last horse was a shapeless thing, not compact and built up like a pack, but hanging low on either side, shrouded by a canvas. From under this cover a hand and arm dangled, swinging to and fro with each motion of the animal.
Clyde felt a great fear, cold as the clutch of a dead hand itself, close on her heart, driving the young blood from her cheeks. "It can't be!" she said to herself. "Oh—it can't be."
Hess swore beneath his breath. If it were Casey Dunne lying across that pack horse——He put a huge protective arm around Clyde's shoulders, as if to shield her from the evil they both feared.
But she slipped from beneath his arm and fled down the steps toward the party who would have passed in the direction of the stables without halting. The sheriff, seeing her, pulled up. She caught McHale's hardened paw in both her hands, searching his eyes for the truth. But McHale's face, though weary and lined with pain, and, moreover, rendered decidedly unprepossessing by a growth of stubble, contained no signs of disaster.
"Where's Casey, Tom?"
"Casey?" McHale replied. "Why, he hiked on ahead to git a medicine man to fix up this arm of mine. Arm's done busted. He ought to be here most any time now."
To Clyde it was as if the sun had shot through a lowering, ominous cloud. She was faint with the joy of relief. "Thank God! Thank God!" she murmured.