The full significance of his loss was telegraphing itself to the inner strongholds of Gard’s consciousness.
“Sandy!” He sprang to his feet. “I’ve got to find it—in a hurry, too!”
He was outside, now, looking for his horse, which had been turned in to feed with the others.
“We’ll rustle a couple more,” Sandy said.
“Lord!” he thought, “Something’s eatin’ him. I never thought I’d see him in a flurry.”
They were ready in a moment, and riding back to the ground they had gone over in the forenoon.
“You kin bet your hat you let it go overboard when you reached fer that blasted Chink,” Sandy said, and they made for the spot where Gard had rescued Wing Chang.
But no brown packet rewarded their scrutiny of the ground. They paced the desert on to where Gard had set the Chinaman on his feet, and found nothing but the hole of a Gila monster. Sandy kicked it open with his heel, and the occupant came up, hissing hideously, but that was all.
They circled the whole ground of the morning’s operations, but without result, and at last they returned to the shack. Gard’s face was drawn in haggard lines, but he had recovered his poise.
“I reckon that thing’s got tromped down into the ground,” Sandy said, by way of consolation. “I didn’t see none of the boys pick up nothin’. They’d a’ hollered if they had, an’ we was all together.”