“Doubt it. That girl was crazy to find the undiscovered valley, and if they pump Henry he’ll tell ’em which way to go to find it. She’s game, that kid—be just like her to strike out this late in the season to find it. And the two men would go with her—one to watch the other. They’re both in love.”
“If that’s the case, it’ll be harder than ever to find ’em. And harder than ever to get Shonto to come. But if we can find ’em, and can get Shonto off alone, there’s a way to get him.”
“Of course,” Morley agreed pleasantly. “But it’ll cost Gus several times what he’s offered. And it might be possible to bring Doctor Shonto here by night, or blindfolded, and take him away the same, so he won’t know afterward where he was. That’ll clear Gus and us, too. And we can arrange to make a getaway by leaving Shonto somewhere on the desert without a horse, so we can ride off and be on our way to Frisco before he gets in touch with anybody.”
“Of course,” said Leach.
“Let’s put it up to Gus how difficult the job will be for us,” suggested Morley. “Confound him, he ought to pay us a thousand apiece and never miss it! And say—if we can get Shonto the way we said, we’ll get out of crawling back to those folks and making monkeys out of ourselves. That’s the best way to pull it off, anyway—and there’ll be more in it. If we can only locate the party and get Shonto off by himself. How soon d’ye think they’ll be trailing back, Omar, provided they make a try at locating the undiscovered valley?”
“They won’t be giving up yet,” thought Leach. “But they will before long, I guess. Let’s see what Gus’ll do for us, then get a couple of horses and a couple of canaries and get back into that country. We can fool ’round and pretend to be prospecting close to the trail to Shirttail Bend. They’ll likely come out that way. We can plan the rest of it when we strike ’em.
“Fine business! Let’s get to work on Gus and see how much we can separate him from.”
The morning following this dialogue Leach and Morley set off over the desert toward the trail that led to Shirttail Bend, mounted and with two packed burros.
They camped near the spring in the calico buttes, and every day they were out merely loafing about, but keeping in sight of the mouth of Henry’s trail. But many days had passed before they saw another human being; and they waylaid the first they saw coming down the trail—Shirttail Henry with Lot’s wife, on their way with sorrowful news for the Weather Bureau concerning the masticated rain gauge.
From a distance Henry looked at them doubtfully and with long strides tried to evade them. But they closed in on him because of the reluctance of Mrs. Lot to make greater speed than that prescribed for general pack travel. Henry swung flutteringly about and grinned at the prospectors through his mat of ragged whiskers.