“Why’re they tryin’ to git you?” he asked abruptly.
“They sent me to Frisco to buy a ranch—the Huntington ranch; you must know it. Anyway, I couldn’t turn the deal, and they blamed me. Say, do you suppose there’s any danger of blood-poisoning?”
The other did not reply. Lennox, propped on his elbow, waited anxiously, a new alarm creeping into his heart. Silhouetted statuelike in the rectangle of moonlight formed by the open door, stood the stranger. He stood thus, motionless, for a short interval. Then he inhaled deeply of his cigarette, tossed it away, and came over to Lennox.
“You give me an idea,” he said, with an odd chuckle. “I’ll git you to the Huntington ranch. I figger I kin hustle up a doctor who won’t talk.” He dropped to his haunches beside the other. “Here, ketch me ’round the neck. I’m packin’ you! My hoss is down the gulch a ways.”
With the wounded man clinging to his back, he padlocked the door and struck out through the brush.
“What happened to them—the four, you know?” asked Lennox, glancing about over the ground. “It isn’t possible they escaped, and——”
“Sometimes, it’s healthy to keep yore front yard clean, pardner. Folks are’ awful curious—if you know what I mean,” was the quiet reply.
The unknown’s horse stood tethered in a small draw. Helping Lennox into the saddle, the man climbed on behind. They rode on in silence for many minutes, following the deeply rutted, dusty road that wormed its way among the windrows of sand and boulders which dotted Soapweed Plains at this point. Behind them the Geerusalem hills rose into the sky—a jumbled, massive gray pile, looking like some great, nameless monster crouching in the night.
“What they want the ranch for?” said the stranger, breaking the long silence.
“It’s immensely rich—in mineral. I hear it’s the richest gold strike in the district. But they wouldn’t sell.”