The man nodded.
“How long ago?” asked the rider.
“’Bout a week.”
The man’s voice was hoarse; he seemed reluctant to talk more, and he cast furtive, dreading glances toward the base of the rock where Dolver had stood before the rider had surprised the men.
Watching the man narrowly, the rider noted his nervous glance, and his shrinking, dreading manner. Harlan’s eyes gleamed with suspicion, and in a flash he was off the black and standing before Laskar, forbidding and menacing.
“Take off your gun-belt an’ chuck it under my horse!” he directed sharply. “There’s somethin’ goin’ on here that ain’t been mentioned. I’m findin’ out what it is.”
He watched while the man unbuckled his cartridge belt and threw it—the pistol still in the holster—into the sand at Purgatory’s hoofs. Then he stepped to the man, sheathed one of his pistols, and ran the free hand over the other’s clothing in search of other weapons. Finding none, he stooped and took up Dolver’s pistol and rifle that had fallen from the man’s hands when he had tumbled off the rock, throwing them near where the cartridge belt had fallen.
“You freeze there while I take a look around this rock!” he commanded, with a cold look at the man.
Half a dozen steps took him around the base of the rock. He went boldly, though his muscles were tensed and his eyes alert for surprises. But he had not taken a dozen steps in all when he halted and stiffened, his lips setting into straight, hard lines.
For, stretched out on his left side in the sand close to the base of the rock—under the flattened summit which had afforded him protection from the bullets the man with the rifle had been sending at him—was a man.