Dick and Larry exchanged swift glances. The man who was hurt must be Blaisdell. They remembered now that it was Olsen, the young Swedish axman, who had been sent out with him as his helper and target-holder.
“That’s our man,” said Dick. “Where is he now?”
Again the news-giver seemed to be looking for something on the ground at his feet. After a little pause he said, “He’s—er—he’s up at the head-gate shack, where we get our irrigatin’ water from. It was—um—right around there somewheres that he got hurt.” He stumbled so haltingly over this simple statement that again Larry gathered the impression that Billy Jones was either awkwardly slow of speech; or else something was distracting him most curiously. And somehow, Larry fancied that the distraction came from the effort of listening for some unwelcome sound; some sound that was both expected and dreaded.
“Mr. Blaisdell is up there alone?” Dick inquired.
“Why-e-e, yes; we couldn’t tote him over to the ranch house, nohow—the Swede an’ me—an’ he couldn’t walk. So we fixed him up in the—in the bunk, and the Swede hiked back to wherever it was the hurt felluh was sendin’ him. There was—er—we allus keep some grub in the shack—me an’ Paw. Sometimes we have to stay up there over night, when the water’s high.”
Again the two scouts exchanged glances, and Dick said:
“We must go to Blaisdell, right away, Larry. He may be having a mighty bad time of it up there all alone.” Then to Jones: “Can you direct us so that we can find the place?”
The news-breaker threw down his shovel, as one only too willing to accommodate.
“I’ll do a heap better’n that; I’ll go along an’ show you,” he offered. “You felluhs pretty good on the hike? All right; le’s get a move on,” and he immediately set a long-legged pace among the hills that seemed little less than a dog-trot to the two who had already tramped five or six miles over prodigiously rough ground.
Before they had gone very far several things began to impress them, as one might say, with interrogation-points attached. Since a cloud had slipped down from the high peaks to obscure the sun, they couldn’t determine the direction in which they were going, but it seemed to both of them that their guide was taking them back nearly over the route they had so lately traversed in coming into the valley.