As the sun sank lower the shadow effect was beautiful, and even Johnny's practical mind was impressed by it. The color effect he had seen before—the streaks of black, gray, red, green, maroon, and white. Bits of crystal and quartz were set afire by the sun's slanting rays and some of them almost dazzled him.
To the west the sky was a blaze of color and the lengthening shadows made an ever-changing picture. Below him the dusk was beginning to shroud the bottom of the canyon, creeping higher and higher as the minutes passed. To see better, he wriggled closer to the edge, and a venomous whine passed over his head to die out swiftly in the air.
"Huh!" he grunted. "Fine target I must 'a' been for that thief down there, with such a sky behind me. I've got to remember things up here, or I'll lose my rememberer. I'm on a skyline that is a skyline. An' I ain't goin' to answer every fool that cuts loose at me, neither. I got plenty of cartridges, but I won't have if I start gettin' foolish with 'em. An' before dark I'm goin' to rustle me a blanket; it's gettin' cooler by jumps."
He made another visit to the south side of the butte for a glance down the trail of misery, and then dismissed it from his mind. In view of his experiences with it in daylight, he knew that no human being could climb it in the dark.
"It's as safe, day an' night, as if Red or Hoppy was layin' right here—an' that's plenty good enough for me," he smiled. "William, Junior's, bobcat kitten won't never grow big enough to climb that place—an' it's th' only thing on earth that he can't climb, blast him!"
Returning to his camp he had a drink and a smoke, and then, taking up a blanket and a pan of cold beans, he went to the head of the trail, there to keep a long and wearisome vigil.
Darkness had descended when he reached his chosen spot, and wrapping the blanket around him he sat down cross-legged, laid his rifle near him, and leaned back against a rock to watch the trail and wait for daylight. Faint, long-drawn, quavering, came the howl of a wolf, and from a point below him in the blackness of the canyon a cougar screamed defiance. He was surprised by the clearness with which occasional sounds came up to him, for he distinctly heard the crack of dead wood where some careless foot trod, and he heard a voice ask who had the second shift on the south side of the butte.
"Turn in," came the answer. "We ain't watchin' that side no more. You relieve me at midnight, an' don't forget it!"
For some time he had been hearing strange, dragging sounds which seemed to come from the foot of the trail; and had been fooled into believing that an attack was under way. Then several low crashes gave him the distance, and he again leaned back against the rock, slipping the Colt into its holster.
A tiny point of light sprang up in the darkness, whisked behind a bowlder as he reached for his rifle, and grew rapidly brighter. Then it soared into the air and curved toward the foot of the trail, and almost instantly became a great, leaping flame which soon lit up the trail, the towering walls of the buttes, and the glistening bowlders in the canyon.