"I get you!" he told her quickly. "Joe's as ready for food and lodging as we are, and Joe, unless we're wrong all along, is hiking ahead of us. Who knows but we'll invite ourselves to dine with Señor Joe before the day's done!... Is that it?"
"I don't know how it may work out.... I hadn't gotten that far yet.... But if Joe is headed toward his secret, and if he does have a provision cache somewhere in the mountains ... a few items in tinned goods and, maybe, even coffee and sugar and canned milk...."
"Let's go!" broke in Deveril, half in laughter and half in eagerness. "You make my mouth water with your surmisings."
Here in these steep-walled narrow gorges the shadows lengthened swiftly after the sun had passed the zenith, and already, when now and then they looked searchingly at what lay ahead, it was difficult to distinguish the shadows from the substance. They must come close to Joe if they meant to see him, and, by the same token, if a man followed them, he was confronted by the same difficulty. So they hurried on, walking more freely, keeping in the trail, climbing at times along the ridge flank, frequently dipping down into the lower cañon. Babe Deveril cut himself a green cudgel from a scrub-oak, trimming off the twigs as he walked on. If it came to argument with Mexicali Joe, a club like that might bring persuasion. And he fully meant that the Mexican should show himself generous, even to the division of a last crust. Always buoyed up by optimism, he was counting strongly on Joe's provision cache.
When they dropped down into the cañon again, they saw the first star. Lynette looked up at it; it trembled in its field of deep blue. She was faint, almost dizzy; her muscles ached; fatigue bore hard upon her spirit; she was footsore. But, most of all, like Deveril before her, she was concerned with imaginings of supper. She pictured bacon and a tin of tomatoes and shoe-string potatoes sizzling in the bacon grease ... and coffee. Whether with milk or sugar, or without both, no longer mattered. Then she sighed wearily, and had no other physical nor mental occupation than that which had to do with the putting of one foot before the other, plodding on and on and on. And all the while the shadows deepened and thickened in the cañons, and the stars multiplied, and the little evening breeze sharpened; she began to shiver.
She could mark no trail underfoot; always Deveril, before her, was breaking through a tangle, always at his heels, she kept his form in sight; but she began to think that he had lost the way, and a new fear gripped her. Instead of dining with Joe, they were losing him, and now, with the utter dark already on the way, they would see no sign of him. And in the dark they would not be able to snare a trout or anything else that might be eaten. She got into the habit of breaking off twigs and chewing at them....
And all the while Deveril was rushing on, faster and faster. It was hard work keeping up with him.
"We've got him! Stay with it, Lynette; we've got him!"
It was Deveril's whisper, sharp and eager; there was Deveril himself just ahead of her, pausing briefly.
"Come on. As fast and as quiet as you can."