While Scott was still absorbed in the view there was a scrambling sound in the cañon trail and a horseman came bobbing up, followed at some distance by a patient pack horse. The new arrival greeted Mr. Dawson and Mr. Ramsey rather casually and hardly nodded to Scott. He was evidently more interested in the black horse than in any of the men.
He was not a prepossessing looking man. Rather small and very dirty, with a decidedly peaked face and a shifting eye; he gave Scott the impression of a weazel. Whenever you looked at Heth he was looking some place else, but whenever you looked in another direction you felt that he was staring at you. He did not say anything about the horse and yet Scott felt sure that he knew all about it. On the whole he did not look like a very congenial companion with whom to share a twelve by sixteen cabin on a lonely mountain.
Dawson, who had been watching Scott sharply, seemed to guess his thoughts. “Heth will be stationed here with you as a guard,” he explained. “You probably will not like him much at first, but he is a good fellow; he knows all about sheep and you will find him a big help.”
Mr. Ramsey turned Jed into the corral and took over his own horse. “Well,” he said, “I must be going down. Thanks for the ride, Burton. You have a wonderful horse there. Watch Jed Clark and don’t let him slip anything over on you. So long and luck to you.”
“Call me up in the morning and I’ll give you your instructions,” said Dawson and he disappeared down the cañon trail after the supervisor, leaving Scott standing near the door of the shack with the blanket roll still lying at his feet.
CHAPTER IV
SOMETHING ABOUT A HORSE THIEF
Scott stood gazing dreamily down the cañon trail ’til the sound of the horses’ hoofs had died away in the distance. He was thinking that two men had escorted him up there to his shack, a duty which they had apparently considered very important, and had left him without any instructions and wholly dependent upon a subordinate. He had not yet learned that it is usually up to a man to work up his own job, but he was learning.
“Well,” he thought, “maybe I should have asked them about the details of this work while I had the chance, but hanged if I ever let that rat-faced guard find out that I do not know anything.”
He had taken an instinctive dislike to his guard, the dislike of a straightforward man to the shifty-eyed.