He got up and opened the door, leaning out into the starlight, one hand pressed against the rough-hewn logs of cedar. He listened again, turning his head slightly to determine the location of the sound.
A wind from the west, flowing over the towering butte, shivered the tops of the piñons. A gust it was, that died as it had been born, suddenly. As it lessened Gary heard distinctly a far-off, faint halloo.
“Hello!” he called back, stepping down upon the flat rock that formed the doorstep. “What’s wanted? Hello!”
“’ll-oo-ooh!” cried the voice, from somewhere beyond the creek.
“Hello!” shouted Gary, megaphoning with his cupped palms. Some one was lost, probably, and had seen the light in the cabin.
Again the voice replied. It seemed to Gary that the man was shouting some message; but distance blurred the words so that only the cadence of the voice reached his ears.
Gary cupped his hands again and replied. He went down to the little creek and stood there listening, shouting now and then encouragement to the man on the bluff. He must be on the bluff, or at least far up its precipitous slope; for beyond the stream the trees gave way to bowlders, and above the bowlders rough outcroppings in ledge formation made steep scrambling. The top of the bluff was guarded by a huge rampart of solid rock; a “rim-rock” formation common throughout the desert States.
Gary tried to visualize that sheer wall of rock as he had seen it before dark. Without giving it much thought at the time, he somehow took it for granted that the cañon wall on that side was absolutely impassable. Still, there might be a trail to the top through some crevice invisible from below.
“Gosh, if a fellow’s hurt up there, I’ll have a merry heck of a time getting him down in the dark!” Gary told the mottled cat with one blue eye, that rubbed against his ankle. “There ought to be a lantern hanging somewhere. Never saw an interior cabin set in my life where a tin lantern didn’t register.”
He found the lantern, but it had no wick. Gary spent a profane fifteen minutes holding the smoky lamp in one hand and searching a high, littered shelf with the other, looking for lantern wicks. That he actually found one at last, tucked into a tomato can among some bolts and nails, seemed little short of a miracle. He had to rob the lamp of oil, because he did not know where Waddell kept his supply. Then the wick was a shade too wide, and Gary was obliged to force it through the burner with the point of his knife. When he finally got the lantern burning it was more distressingly horned than the lamp, and the globe immediately began an eclipse on one side. But Gary only swore and wiped his smeared fingers down his trousers, man-fashion.