"All right, mammy!" remarked Ike Anderson, somewhat irrelevantly.
CHAPTER XXVII
THE BODY OF THE CRIME
Hour after hour, in the heat of the day or the cool of the evening, the giant Mexican strode on by the side of the two horsemen, sometimes trotting like a dog, more often walking with a shambling, wide-reaching step, tireless as any wild animal. His feet, seamed and parched into the semblance rather of horn than of flesh and bone, were quite bare, though now it was a time of year when the nights at least were very cool and when freezing weather might come at any time. He was clad lightly as ever, in torn cotton garb, and carried no bedding save a narrow strip of native woollen fabric, woven of undyed wool and so loose of texture that one might thrust a finger through at any point of its scant extent. He bore no weapon save the huge knife swinging at his belt. Fastened to the same girdle was a hide bag or pouch, half full of parched corn, rudely pounded. Expressionless, mute, untiring, the colossal figure strode along, like some primordial creature in whom a human soul had not yet found home. Yet, with an intelligence and confidence which was more than human, he ran without hesitation the trail of the unshod horse across this wide, hard plain, where even the eye of the cowboy could rarely discern it. Now and then the print of the hoof might show in the soft earth of some prairie-dog burrow; then perhaps for an hour Juan would walk on, his eye fixed apparently upon some far-off point of the horizon as upon the ground, until finally they would note the same hoof-print again and know again that the instinct of the wild guide had not failed.
The Mexican was running the back trail of the horse of Cal Greathouse, the missing ranchman, and it was very early seen that the horse had not returned over the route taken by Greathouse when he started out. He had gone along the valley of the Smoky River, whereas the course of the loose animal had been along the chord of a wide arc made by the valley of that stream, a course much shorter and easier to traverse, as it evaded a part of that rough country known as the breaks of the Smoky, a series of gullies and "draws" running from the table-land down to the deep little river bed. All along the stream, at ragged intervals, grew scattered clumps of cottonwoods and other trees, so that at a long distance the winding course of the little river could be traced with ease. The afternoon of the first day brought the travellers well within, view of this timber line, but the rough country along the stream was not yet reached when they were forced to quit the trail and make their rough bivouac for the night.
There was a curious feeling of certainty in Franklin's mind, as they again took saddle for the journey, that the end of the quest was not far distant, and that its nature was predetermined. Neither he nor Curly expected to find the ranchman alive, though neither could have given letter and line for this belief. As for Juan, his face was expressionless as ever. On the morning of this second day they began to cross the great ribbon-like pathways of the northern cattle trail, these now and then blending with the paths of the vanished buffalo. The interweaving paths of the cattle trail were flat and dusty, whereas the buffalo trails were cut deep into the hard earth. Already the dust was swept and washed out of these old and unused ways, leaving them as they were to stand for many years afterward, deep furrows marking the accustomed journeyings of a now annihilated race.
All the wild animals of the plains know how to find their way to water, and the deep buffalo paths all met and headed for the water that lay ahead, and which was to be approached by the easiest possible descent from the table-land through the breaks. Along one of these old trails the horse had come up from the valley, and hence it was down this same trail that Juan eventually led the two searchers for the horse's owner. The ponies plunged down the rude path which wound among the ridges and cut banks, and at last emerged upon the flat, narrow valley traversed by the turbid stream, in that land dignified by the name of river. Down to the water the thirsty horses broke eagerly, Juan following, and lying at full length along the bank, where he lapped at the water like a hound.
"Que camina—onde, amigo?" asked Curly in cowboy patois. "Which way?"
The Mexican pointed up the stream with carelessness, and they turned thither as soon as the thirst of all had been appeased. As they resumed the march, now along the level floor of the winding little valley. Franklin was revolving a certain impression in his mind. In the mud at the bank where they had stopped he had seen the imprint of a naked foot—a foot very large and with an upturned toe, widely spreading apart from its fellows, and it seemed to him that this track was not so fresh as the ones he had just seen made before his eyes. Troubled, he said nothing, but gave a start as Curly, without introduction, remarked, as though reading his thoughts:
"Cap, I seen it, too."