They picked their way carefully up the canyon, watching the gorge that lengthened beyond them and the walls that towered above their heads, listening constantly for the faintest sounds of human voice or foot, speaking rarely and always in a whisper. The floor of the canyon was strewn with boulders large and small, and its sides rose above them in rugged, barren, precipitous cliffs. Nowhere did they see the slightest sign of vegetation to relieve the wilderness of sand and rock and barren walls. Not even a single grass blade thrust a brave green head between forbidding stones. Above them was a sky of pure, brilliant blue, and around them was the gray of the everlasting granite. Except for the sound of their own footsteps, the canyon was absolutely silent. There was no call of animals one to another, or twitter of birds, or whirr of feathered wings, or piping of insects. Now and then a slender, graceful lizard darted silently out of the sunshine to hide beneath a stone, and far behind them in the canyon the buzzards wheeled in low, awkward flights above the carcass of the dead horse. But aside from these no living creature was to be seen.
The sun shone squarely down upon the canyon and the baking heat between its narrow walls would have dazed the brains and shaken the knees of men less hardy and less accustomed to the fierce, pounding sunshine of the southwest. Tuttle stole several inquiring glances at Nick’s face. Then he stopped and cast a searching look all about them, carefully scanning the canyon before and behind them and its walls above their heads. He looked at Nick again and then threw another careful glance all about. He coughed a little, came close to Nick’s side, wiped the sweat from his face, and finally spoke, hesitatingly, in a half whisper:
“Say, Nick, what do you-all think about Will Whittaker? Do you reckon Emerson killed him?”
Ellhorn shut one eye at the jagged peak which seemed to bore into the blue above them, considered a moment, and replied: “Well, I reckon if he did Will needed killin’ almighty bad.”
“You bet he did,” was Tom’s emphatic response.
They trudged on to the head of the canyon and explored most of the smaller ones opening into it. But no trace of human presence, either recent or remote, did they find anywhere. When night came on they returned to their camp somewhat disappointed that they had seen no sign of the two men. Early the next morning they started out again, and searched carefully through the remaining canyons that were tributary to the large one, climbed again to its head, and clambered over the ridge at its source. There they looked down the other side of the mountain, over a barren wilderness of jagged cliffs and yawning chasms, with here and there a little clump of scrub pines or cedars clinging and crawling along the mountain side. They examined the summit of the peak and walked a little way down the eastern slope, looking into the gorges and searching the scrub-dotted slopes until the sinking sun drove them back to their camp. But they found neither water, save some strongly alkaline springs, nor any trace of human beings. As they discussed the day’s adventures over their supper, Tom said:
“There must have been some reason why they killed that horse just where they did.”
“Yes,” said Nick, “if they had moved their camp to some other canyon higher up, or on the other side of the mountain, they might just as well have driven the beast farther up before they killed it.”
“If they had wanted the meat down here,” added Tom, “they wouldn’t have driven it so far away. They must have wanted it right there.”
They looked at each other with a sudden flash of intelligence in their puzzled eyes and Nick thwacked his knee resoundingly. Then he spoke the thought that had burst into each mind: