He turned the palomino into a trail that looked as if it might find a way to the top of one of the higher slopes from which there should be a fair panorama of Valmon’s property. As they climbed, the wild brush-pocked hills opened and spread below them, pushing back the rugged horizon to let broad tablelands press up to the north-west. The trail, if it had ever really been a trail, petered out unobtrusively, until the Saint was breaking new ground all the time and his eyes were kept busy in search of ways to circumvent steeper slopes and increasing obstacles of tumbled rock. Presently he was on a spoon-shaped ledge from which at first sight all progress seemed to be blocked by a precipitous mass of broken boulders.
He reined his horse there and turned cross-saddle to estimate the view, as Jean Morland urged the pinto’s nose up to his knee. Below and to the left, near the foot of the hills which they were climbing, he could now see some of the scattered buildings of the J-Bar-B, looking like toy models at the distance of two miles or more. There was one section of shallow canyon behind him where he could see a stretch of water sparkling in the sun, but he couldn’t locate the rest of its course.
Then something said BOOM! in a thick throaty cough like the bursting of a giant drum, and the sound went echoing and rippling through the hills in a thinner diminuendo of repetitions. The horses started and moved nervously, their ears rigidly cocked, and Simon’s face hardened.
“Max isn’t wasting any time,” he said.
But Jean Morland was frowning at the settling cloud of dust that had mushroomed from behind one of the rock castles some way to the north.
“The stream doesn’t go there,” she said.
“Maybe that’s where Max is planning for it to go,” said the Saint. “He’d get his new channel ready in advance, but he won’t set off the last blast that would turn the stream until his ultimatum has run out.”
The girl turned to him with her lips and eyes divided between fight and pleading.
“But why do we have to let him do it — get everything so that he only has to press one button to ruin us?”
“It won’t hurt him or his men to put in an honest day’s hard work,” said the Saint calmly. “They haven’t pressed that last button yet, and what makes you think that we’re going to let them?” He reached for her hand, and took her fingers lightly into his. “Let’s go on a bit and see if we can’t see some more.”