The noose of a rope was slipped over Charlie’s feet. He was yanked along over the grass. Once a clump of prickly pear raked his cheek. Otherwise he suffered no bruise. The ground was smooth. The thick hide protected his body. Behind him the second horse plodded, dragging his burden by the saddle horn. Again Charlie heard that mysterious, slithering, whispering sound, like a huge snake scraping over dry grass. Only, now, he himself was helping to make this noise in the night.
His two horses loomed in the draw. The cavalcade stopped.
“Here’s his outfit,” said one. “What’ll we do with ’em?”
“Turn ’em loose when we’re through,” the other replied. “They’ll amble off to their own range, an’ whoever finds ’em will have to guess. Simplest.”
They moved on. The draw flattened out to the level of the plains, and the flicker of the burning lignite showed ahead. They drew up twenty yards back from the crevice.
A wind blew faintly out of the west. Charlie could smell the gas wafted from that underground furnace. A very neat incinerator. It would not be the first time that thieves, surprised red-handed, had acted on the principle that dead men tell no tales.
Yet in his shroud of green rawhide, Charlie made no protest and lifted no plea for mercy when the riders dismounted and stood over him. A wavering tongue of fire lifted above the crevice, casting a fitful glow on horses and men. They dragged the bundle of hide and offal to the rim and dumped it in. A strong odor of scorching hair and hide wafted up. They came back to Charlie.
“Take his head,” one muttered. “I’ll get him by the feet.”
They stooped.
When the head of one bent over, and his fingers touched the hide, something went pow! in his face. He fell backward, as if clouted with a hammer. Simultaneously Charlie’s arm thrust straight at the man reaching for his feet, and that outstretched hand held a six-shooter.