The voice at Johnnywater

by B. M. Bower

So here he was, peering anxiously at the cabin squatted between the two great piñon trees in the grove and hoping that Gary was still all right. He had consciously put aside an incipient dread of James Blaine Hawkins and his possible vengefulness toward Gary. Monty told himself that there was no use in crossing that bridge until he came to it. He had come over for the express purpose of offering to take the Walking X cattle on shares and look after them with his own. He would manage somehow to take charge of the pigs and chickens as well. He decided that he could kill the pigs and pack the meat over on his horse. And he could carry the chickens on a pack horse in a couple of crates. There would be nothing then to give Gary any excuse for staying.

Remembering how he had startled Gary before with calling, Monty did not dismount at the cabin. Instead, he rode close to the front window, leaned and peered in like an Indian; and finding the cabin empty, he went on through the grove to the corral. Jazz was there, standing hip-shot in a shady corner next the creek, his head nodding jerkily while he dozed. Monty’s horse whinnied a greeting and Jazz awoke with a start and came trotting across the corral to slide his nose over the top rail nearest them.

Monty rode on past the potato patch and the alfalfa meadow where a second crop was already growing apace. There was no sign of Gary, and Monty rode on to the very head of the cañon and back to the cabin.

A vague uneasiness seized Monty in spite of his efforts to throw it off. Gary should be somewhere in the cañon, since he would not leave it afoot, not while he had a horse doing nothing in the corral. Of course, if anything were wrong with Jazz——Monty turned and rode back to the corral, where he dismounted by the gate. He went in and walked up to Jazz, and examined him with the practiced palms of the expert horseman. He slapped Jazz on the rump and shooed him around the corral at a lope.

“There ain’t a thing in the world the matter with you,” he told the horse, after a watchful minute or two. Then he rolled a cigarette, lighted and smoked it while he waited and meditated upon the probable whereabouts of Gary.

He went out into the open and studied the steep bluff sides, foot by foot. The entire width of the cañon was no more than a long rifle-shot. If Gary were climbing anywhere along its sides, Monty would be able to see him. But there was no sign of movement anywhere, though he took half an hour for the examination.

He returned to the cabin, leaving his horse in the corral with saddle and bridle off and a forkful of hay under his eager nose. He shouted Gary’s name.

“Hey, Gary! Oh-h-h, Gary!” he called, over and over, careful to enunciate the words.

From high up on the bluff somewhere the Voice answered him mockingly, shouting again and again a monotonous, eerie call. There was no other sound for a time, and Monty went into the cabin to see if he could find there some clue to Gary’s absence.

Little things bear a message plain as print to those dwellers of the wilderness who depend much upon their eyes and their ears. The cabin told Monty with absolute certainty that Gary had not planned an absence of more than a few hours at most. Nor had he left in any great haste. He had been gone, Monty judged, since breakfast. Of the cooked food set away in the cupboard, two pancakes lay on top of a plate containing three slices of fried bacon. To Monty that meant breakfast cleared away and no later meal prepared. He looked at his watch. He had taken an early start from Kawich, and it was now two o’clock.