There was a fire smouldering upon a stone-walled mound at the entrance to the cave and beside it, reclining in a rustic chair, sat Pecos Dalhart—watchful, silent, alert. In one hand he held a cigarette and the other supported a grimy newspaper which he had been reading. Behind him on tall poles were boxes filled with food, protected by tin cans, mushroomed out around the posts to keep the rats from climbing. His saddle was hung up carefully on a rack and his carbine leaned against the chair where he was sitting, but though he had seen no one for a month Pecos barely glanced up from his paper as the stranger drew near.
"How'd do," observed the deputy, sitting at ease in his saddle.
"Howdy," Pecos grunted, and languidly touching his dead cigarette to a coal he proceeded with his reading. Todhunter looked his camp over critically, took note of the amount of food stored in the rat-proof boxes and of the ingenious workmanship on the rustic chair; then his eyes wandered back and fixed themselves on Pecos. Instead of the roistering boy he had expected he beheld a full-grown man with a month's growth of curly beard and his jaw set like a steel-trap, as if, after all, he was not unprepared for trouble. His hat, however, was shoved back carelessly on his bushy head, his legs crossed, and his pose was that of elegant and luxurious ease. To the left arm of his chair he had attached a horse's hoof, bottom up, in the frog of which he laid his cigarettes; to the right was fastened a little box filled with tobacco and brown papers, and the fire, smouldering upon its altar, was just close enough to provide a light. Evidently the lone inhabitant of the cañon had made every endeavor to be comfortable and was not above doing a little play-acting to convey the idea of unconcern, but the deputy sheriff did not fail to notice the carbine, close at hand, and the pistol by his side. It seemed to him also that while his man was apparently deeply immersed in his month-old paper, his eyes, staring and intent, looked past it and watched his every move. The conversation having ceased, then, and his curiosity having been satisfied, Bill Todhunter leaned slowly back to his saddle bags and began to untie a package.
"Are you Mr. Dalhart?" he inquired, as the cowboy met his eye.
"That's my name," replied Pecos, stiffly.
"Well, I've got s'm' papers for you," observed the deputy, enigmatically, and if he had been in two minds as to the way Pecos would take this statement his doubts were instantly set at rest. At the word "papers"—the same being used for "warrants" by most officers of the law—the cowboy rose up in his chair and laid one hand on the butt of his revolver.
"Not for me!" he said, a cold, steely-blue look comin' into his eyes. "It'll take a better man than you to serve 'em!"
"These are newspapers," corrected the deputy, quietly. "Yore friends down on the Verde, not havin' seen you for some time, asked me to take out yore mail and see if you was all right."
"Oh!" grunted Pecos, suspiciously.