It was noon. A molten sun looked down from a copper sky. The rocks reflected the terrific glare. What little shade there was brought no ease from the furnacelike heat. As one man expressed it: “You roast in the sun and stew in the shade.” The water was gone, and there would be no more until evening; the men’s suffering from thirst was intense. All thought themselves beaten.
“Reckon the judge is due to get his neck stretched,” Toothpick Jarrick confided dolorously to Silent Moore.
The two were sprawled behind a boulder in the thin shade cast by a cactus. The taciturn deputy thrust out his jaw and growled:
“We sticks just the same.”
Sam Hogg wormed his way between the blistering rocks and joined them. He nudged Toothpick and pointed up toward the valley wall behind them.
“What’s the Wolf doin’ up there? He’s been lookin’ through those glasses of his for an hour and shiftin’ his position constant. Yuh reckon he’s figurin’ up somethin’?” the cattleman asked eagerly.
Allen was lying flat on a high shelf of rock. They watched him for a time. Now he vanished. A little later they saw him again, fifty yards farther along the shelf. From the shelter of some brush he focused his glasses on the long adobe building. Toothpick was puzzled as to what Allen was studying. He decided that it must be the lone window that broke the surface of the western wall in the outlaws’ fortress. The window was little more than a porthole, about three feet by two. Toothpick knew that a real purpose lay behind all of Allen’s actions; that many of his surprising victories were the result of carefully thought-out plans. But what did the little outlaw hope to gain by studying that window? Allen closed his glasses and looked down at the three watching him. He waved his hand and wiggled out of sight.
“What’s he aimin’ to do?” Sam Hogg addressed Toothpick.
The lanky cow-puncher considered a moment and shook his head.
“I dunno. But the little hellion has sure got somethin’ in his head,” he said thoughtfully.