It looked to Oliver Drew as if this were not the first time that the gunman had perched himself up there to watch proceedings in the cañon. There had been no hesitancy in his selection of a tree which stood in such a position that other trees would not obstruct his view from its branches, no studying over which limb he might occupy to the best advantage.
Vaguely Oliver wondered how many times he had laboured and moved about down below, with the keen, black, Chinese eyes fixed on him. It was not a comfortable feeling, by any means.
Now, though, his thoughts were taken up by the problem of getting away unobserved by the spyglass man. Digger Foss was not a hundred feet from where Oliver lay and watched him. If he should turn for an instant he would see Oliver there, flat on his face in the excavation, for the halfbreed's perch was twenty feet above the tops of the chaparral.
Oliver had decided to make a try at crawling on up the hill as noiselessly as possible, when new and far slighter sounds came to his ears. So slight they were indeed that, if he had not been close to the earth, he might not have detected them at all.
But no bird or small animal could be responsible for them, for they were continuous and dragging. Once again he hugged the ground while he watched and waited.
The sounds came on—sounds that seemed to be the result of some one's dragging something carefully over the shattered leaves on the ground. And presently there hove into view another human being.
He was an Indian—a Showut Poche-daka. Oliver remembered his swarthy face, his inscrutable eyes. He had been pointed out to him at the fiesta by Jessamy as the champion trailer of all the Paubas, of which the Showut Poche-daka Tribe was a sort of branch. Often, Jessamy had said, this Indian, who was known by the odd and laughable name of Tommy My-Ma, had been employed by the sheriff of the county in tracking down escaped prisoners or fleeing transgressors against the law.
He wore no hat. He was barefooted. His only covering seemed to be a pair of faded-blue overalls and a colourless flannel shirt. Neither did he carry any weapon, so far as Oliver could see.
His progress was now soundless as he came from the chaparral, flat on his belly, wriggling along like a lizard with surprising speed. His black, glittering eyes were unquestionably fixed with rapt intentness on the man aloft in the digger pine; and by reason of this alone he did not see Oliver Drew.
His movements commenced to be extraordinary. He wriggled himself speedily over the unlittered earth and made no sound. There was a pile of dry brush at one edge of the clearing, the tops of the bushes that had been cut off to facilitate the sinking of the prospect holes. Toward this Tommy My-Ma glided; and when he reached it he passed out of sight on the other side.