“I don’t reckon,” Shayne said curtly. “I want to take a look.”
He started across the street.
Strenk loped ahead of him, past a gasoline pump and down the sharp slope to the bottom of the ravine where the wooden flume emptied into the gulch east of town.
Their shoes thumped hollowly on the flume, mingling with the rushing sound of water that snarled downward; then they were following a narrow path angling up the rocky, precipitous incline.
The old miner went steadily, bent forward at the waist, as sure-footed and long-winded as a mountain goat. Shayne strained to keep pace with him. His heart pounded mightily and his lungs worked like bellows, striving to draw in enough of the rarefied atmosphere to keep him going.
They were halfway up the hill when the sharp report of a pistol spanged through the high stillness from the cabin above them.
Cal Strenk stopped abruptly and Shayne stumbled into him. The echo of the single shot continued to reverberate between the rocky walls of the gulch for a long time. There was no light in the cabin now. It was cloaked in darkness and in silence.
Chapter ten
“SOUNDED LIKE A PISTOL SHOT,” Cal Strenk faltered. His hunched figure looked shrunken.
Shayne demanded, “Is there another trail away from the cabin?”