Monty smoked absent-mindedly, one spurred heel digging a little trench in the dirt.
“That’s Steve’s cat,” he observed irrelevantly, glancing up as Faith came out of the bushes, picking her way carefully amongst the small rocks that littered the dooryard.
“Uh-huh.” Gary drew up his legs and clasped his hands around his knees. “If this Steve Carson didn’t sell out to Waddell, then where does Waddell come into the scene? Did Steve Carson give the darned thing away?”
Monty leaned forward, inspecting the small trench his spur had dug. Very carefully he began to rake the dirt back into it.
“It ain’t gettin’ yuh, is it?” He did not look up when he asked the question. He was painstakingly patting the dirt smooth with the toe of his boot.
“Getting me! Hell!” said Gary.
“It got Waddell—bad,” drawled Monty, biting a corner of his lip. “That’s why he sold out. It was gettin’ him. Bad.” Having filled the trench and patted the dirt smooth, Monty straightway began to dig another trench beside it.
“What is there to get a fellow?” Gary looked challengingly at Monty. “I’ve stayed with it two weeks, and I haven’t been got yet.” He laughed a little. “The Piutes told me a man disappeared here and left his Voice behind him. Of course that’s Injun talk. What’s the straight of it, Monty?”
“Well—nobody ever called me superstitious yet,” Monty grinned, “but that’s about the size of it. Steve Carson came up missing. Since then, there’s that Voice. I know it started in right away. I was over here helping hunt for him, and I heard it. Some says Steve went loco and tried to walk out. If he did, he left mighty onexpected, and he didn’t take anything at all with him. Not even a canteen, far as I could see. He had two, I know—and they was both hangin’ on the same nail beside the door. Uh course, he might a had another one—I hadn’t been over to Johnnywater for a coupla months, till I come over to see what was wrong. I was scoutin’ around the country for a week or more, tryin’ to get some trace of him.”
Having completed the second trench, Monty filled that one as carefully as he had filled the first. Abruptly he looked at Gary. “Yuh-all ain’t—seen anything, have yuh?”