The voice at Johnnywater

by B. M. Bower

Monty Girard did not return on the second day. A full week dragged itself minute by minute across Johnnywater; days began suddenly with a spurt of color over the eastern rim of the cañon, snailed it across the blue space above and after an interminable period ended in a red riot beyond the western rim, letting night flow into the cañon.

The first day went quickly enough. At sunrise Gary and the spotted cat searched the bluff where the voice had called beseechingly in the night. Gary carried a two-quart canteen filled with water, knowing that a man who has lain injured all night will have a maddening thirst by morning.

At noon he sat on a bowlder just under the rim rock, helped himself to a long drink from the canteen and stared disheartened down into the cañon. He was hoarse from shouting, but not so much as a whisper had he got in reply. The spotted cat had given up in disgust long ago and gone off on business of her own. He was willing to swear that he had covered every foot of that hillside, and probably he had, very nearly. And he had found no trace of any man, living or dead.

He slid off the bowlder and went picking his way down the steep bluff to the cabin. A humane impulse had sent him out as soon as he opened his eyes that morning. He was half-starved and more nearly exhausted than he had ever been after a hard day’s work doing “stunts” for the movies.

Now and then he looked up the cañon to where Pat’s alfalfa field lay, a sumptuous patch of deep green, like an emerald set deep in some dull metal. Nearer the cabin were the rows of potato plants which Monty had mentioned. There was a corral, too, just beyond a clump of trees behind the cabin. And from the head of the cañon to the mouth he could glimpse here and there the twisted thread of Johnnywater Creek.

By the time he had cooked and eaten breakfast and lunch together, and had fed the chickens, and located the whereabouts of two pigs whose grunting came to him from the bushes, the afternoon was well gone. And, on the whole, it had not gone so badly; except that he rather resented his fruitless search for a man who had shouted in the night and then disappeared.

“Drunk, maybe,” Gary finally dismissed the subject from his mind. “He sure as heck couldn’t be hurt so bad, if he was able to get out of the cañon in the dark. It’ll be something to tell about when I get back. I’ll ask Monty what he thinks about it, to-morrow.”

But he didn’t ask Monty. He rather expected that Monty would be along rather early in the forenoon, and he was ready by nine o’clock. He had filled the feed box for the chickens, had given the cat a farewell talk, and locked his pyjamas into his suit case. The rest of the day he spent in waiting.

One bit of movie training helped him now. By the time an actor has reached stardom, he knows how to sit and wait; doing nothing, thinking nothing in particular, gossiping a little, perhaps, but waiting always. Gary had many a time sat around killing time for hours at a stretch, that he might work for fifteen minutes on a scene. Waiting for Monty, then, was not such a hardship that second day.

But when the third day and the fourth and the fifth had gone, Gary began to register impatience and concern. He walked down the cañon and out upon the trail as far as was practical, half hoping that he might see some chance traveler. But the whole world seemed to be empty and waiting, with a still patience that placed no limit upon its quiescent expectancy.