Afterward, he halted for a smoke, this time beside the stream itself, farther along the cañon. Thady Shea had never been a boy—until to-day. At ten years he had been an accomplished actor, a child marvel, drunken and drugged with the unhealthy atmosphere of the stage. But now—now! The altitude was high, and he was drunk as with fine wine. He waded in the stony creek, he even thought of fishing with a bent pin on a string; but he had neither pin nor string. He enjoyed a truant hour. Then he went on his way anew, vowing inwardly that some day he would return to this little bubbling creek and the winding cañon amid the mountains.
Despite the altitude, weariness had left him, and he carried the seven stone gods without feeling their weight. Deeper and lonelier grew his trail, the mountains folding him in upon every side. He began to feel the infinity of distance. He was a mere tiny atom here among these great solitudes. His insignificance was borne home upon him, mellowing all his spirit.
In this chastened mood he came, suddenly and without warning, upon the tragic shack of the sheep-herder.
It was a shack of logs and hewn timbers, a rough little shack, a tragic little shack. Upon one wall was fastened a faded paper, a permit issued by the forest ranger to cut these same timbers. In the sun by the doorway sat a little brown, half-naked baby, perhaps a year of age, whimpering and chewing upon a strip of raw white bacon. There was no one else visible. Over the place, tainting the clear high air, hung a fearful odour of mortality; an odour of tragic suggestion, an odour of blood and liquor.
Seeing no one about except the baby, who stopped whimpering at sight of him, Thady Shea advanced to the doorway. He glanced inside. As he did so, cold and awful horror stiffened upon him. Even to his tyro’s eye the story was plain to read.
Upon the bare earthen floor, just inside the door, sat the sheep-herder. The effluvia of his garments told eloquently his profession. Between his outstretched feet lay a cheap revolver. His swarthy, brutal face, the face of a Mexican, the face of a barbarian drawn from mingled Indian and bastard Spanish blood, was sunken upon his chest. He was breathing stertorously, horribly. He was drunk, stupefied with liquor. Upon the floor beneath his hand had fallen an empty bottle which stank of the vilest mescal.
Only a few feet distant, sprawled under one wall of the room, was the body of a woman, a brown native woman. She had been upon her knees beneath a little crucifix. She had fallen partly forward, partly sideways; a cotton garment had been torn from her left shoulder and breast, as though in some last agony. Beneath the left breast, black with flies, a pool of black blood was coagulating. She had not been dead a long time; an hour or two, no more.
Thady Shea took a step backward. He put one hand to his eyes, as if to shut from his vision that sordid and horrible scene. For a moment he stood thus, his brain in riotous turmoil; then he started violently as a hand touched his arm.
“Hello, stranger! I been looking for you!”
Shea stared at the man who had just dismounted from a pony; a white man, grave and steady of eye. Something in the horror-smitten face of Shea drew an exclamation from this other man.