"One thing sure," said Eric: "there's no such mine as that on Fishhook.
I've prospected every foot of it."
"They'll noon at Sweetwater," said Zurich. "You boys go on up to Hardscrabble. Take my horse. I'll go over to Sweetwater and hide out in the rocks to see what I can find out. There's a stony place where I can get across without leaving any trail.
"Unsaddle and water. Leave the pack here, you'd better, and my saddle. They are not coming here—nothing to come for. You can sleep, turn about, one watching the horses, and come on down when you see me coming back."
It was five hours later when the watchers on Hardscrabble saw the Johnson party turn south, up the valley between barb and shank of the mountain; an hour after that Zurich rejoined them, as they repacked at the trail foot, and made his report:
"I couldn't hear where they're going; but it is somewhere west or westerly, and it's a day farther on. Say, it's a good thing I went over there. What do you suppose that fiend Johnson is going to do? You wouldn't guess it in ten years. You fellows all know there's only one way to get out of that Fishhook Valley—unless you turn round and come back the way you go in?"
"I don't," said Bill. "I've never been down this way before."
"You can get out through Horse-Thief Gap, 'way in the southwest. There's a place near the top where there's just barely room for a horse to get through between the cliffs. You can ride a quarter mile and touch the rocks on each side with your hands. Johnson's afraid some one will see those tracks they're makin' and follow 'em up. I heard him tellin' it. So the damned old fool has lugged dynamite all the way from Tucson, and after they get through he's going to stuff the powder behind some of those chimneys and plug Horse-Thief so damn full of rock that a goat can't get over," said Zurich indignantly. "Now what do you think of that? Most suspicious old idiot I ever did see!"
"I call it good news. That copper must be something extraordinary, or he'd never take such a precaution," said Eric.
Zurich answered as they saddled:
"If we had followed them in there, we would have lost forty miles. As it is, they gain twenty miles on us while we ride back round the north end of the mountain, besides an hour I lost hoofing it back."