“I do not know.” Coravel Tio shrugged his shoulders. “But it is well to know what might have to be done, eh? Ah, yes.”
The morning wore on. Mrs. Crump retired to her own shack to cook luncheon, with much grumbling about the way the country was getting crowded up, and if many more folks came in she’d have to seek other quarters, and so on. Secretly, she was much pleased to exhibit her culinary skill, which was considerable.
At length she energetically hammered a pie pan, and the four men assembled. Gilbert was the last to come in from the mine over the flank of the hogback.
“Looks like some puncher is headed this way,” he announced, eagerly. “Feller comin’ on hossback, looks like he’s headin’ down from that big cañon north of here.”
“My land!” ejaculated Mrs. Crump in dismay. “Wait till I get another plate set.”
“No hurry,” returned Gilbert. “I seen him top a rise four mile north. Ain’t no rush, ma’am. He’ll be quite a spell gettin’ here. Lots o’ bad land in between and no trail.”
They sat down to the meal.
Outside, the sun was beating down in waves of heat. It was a pitiless, insufferable sun. Few things could stand that beating, merciless sun and still enjoy it. Out among the stones, what was left of the big diamond-back was withered and scorched. Some distance away, the head of the rattler lay among the rocks, dead jaws wide agape, white fangs gleaming like needles in the beating sunlight.
Inside the shack, the heat was intense; it filled the cañon as heat fills an oven, and here was no cool adobe walls to break its force. The heat had odd and curious effects upon the five people gathered there. It did not seem to touch Coravel Tio or the two miners in the least. Mackintavers it coarsened and reddened and thickened with pitiless breath. Mrs. Crump it softened; flushed and perspiring from cooking, she seemed to have become less harsh, more feminine, altogether transformed.
Suddenly, while they were eating, Coravel Tio looked up sharply and appeared to be listening. Then, one after another, the others glanced up, surprise in their eyes. The sharp and staccato pulse of an approaching automobile was to be heard. Another car!