“Yeah, but in the meantime we’ve got to have water,” Bill said gloomily, shaking a canteen gently before he poured a little into his makeshift coffeepot. “I don’t aim to stick around till my tongue swells up, doing fancy thinkin’ about a poisoned spring. Suit yourself, professor, but I’m going to hunt water, soon as we go through the motions of eating.”
“I suppose in time the spring will clear itself and run pure,” Abington reassured him with a twitching of his bearded lips. “If we were to stay here, we could divert the trickle from the rocks and soon have another pool. But we could never be sure that it was not poisoned again. No, Bill, we’ll have to get our belongings together and move across the valley.”
“A darn hard job,” muttered Bill, “packing everything on our backs.” And he added: “That sheep thing can travel, too; don’t overlook that fact, professor.”
CHAPTER VI
READY FOR A BLOW
The eastern rim of the valley stood crimson where the westering sun struck it full, bringing into bold relief each cañon and crag, the smallest fold and the smoothest boulder; as if a contour map had been painstakingly modeled on a gigantic scale in red sealing wax, or as if a world aflame had been paralyzed into utter silence.
Toward that garish pile of shattered hills, Abington and Bill Jonathan plodded with the low sun at their backs, which were burdened heavily with as much of their camp supplies as they had been able to retrieve and could carry.
The start that morning had been delayed until nearly noon while they searched vainly for some clew to the mystery that had in a few hours held an orgy of wanton destructiveness in two camps and had poisoned their water supply and killed three burros. Human malevolence had been displayed in that last attack, Abington was convinced.
Yet in spite of all his skill, all the careful attention to details which his scientific training had made second nature, he had failed to discover the slightest evidence of a human agency at work against them. Not a sign, not a track, save those enormous sheep tracks leaving the vicinity of the spring and going off up a narrow ravine in great strides which made it hopeless to think of overtaking it; for without water he did not dare attempt any prolonged search. Now, with a half mile of red sand to plow through before they reached the first bold hillside, their eyes clung perforce to the seamed, broken rampart they were nearing.
A dazzling light that flashed and was gone, then came again and stood motionless for a space while one might count fifteen, showed high up on a ridge as evenly serrated as a rooster’s comb, and quite as red. Abington came to a full stop which he made a rest period by slipping the heavy pack from his shoulders. Nothing loath, Bill did likewise. The two sat down on the sand beside their bundles, mopping perspiration from faces and necks.
“Bill, when I get up and stand in front of you, look past me at the sharp peak just south of the mountain—the first one on the ridge straight before us. Tell me if you see anything that might be a reflection of the sun—from a telescope, we’ll say, or more likely a pair of field glasses. No, don’t look yet. Remember that with good glasses a man could read the expression on your face, read your lips, too, if he’s had any training.”