Rathburn rolled himself another cigarette with a grin as he watched the truck driver stand for some moments uncertainly in the road and then start rapidly down the slope toward his disabled machine.
“C’mon, hoss,” said the erstwhile spectator, turning his dun-colored mount again into the trail. “So far’s I can make out, this is the only way down out of these tall mountains to the east, so we might as well get going. We ain’t got no business south or 101 west. We’ll be just in time to get blamed for what’s happened down there.”
Whatever there might be in the prospect, the rider did not permit it to have any influence on his cheerful mood. He drew in long breaths of the stimulating air and sniffed joyously at the fragrance of the murmuring forests which clothed the higher hills. Far below the timber would dwindle, the ridges would flatten into round knolls and lose their verdure; then would come the dust and lava slopes, and beyond––the desert.
A wistful light came into the horseman’s eyes. “Home, Juniper, hoss,” he said softly. “We’ve just got to have cactus an’ water holes an’ danged blistering heat in ours; and I don’t care so much as the faded label off an empty tomato can if it’s in California, or Arizona, or Nevada, so long as it’s desert!”
The trail he was following wound tortuously around ridges, through the timber, into ravines and cañons; now treading close upon the bank of a swift-running mountain stream in a narrow valley, and again seeking the higher places where there were rocks and fallen trees and other obstructions. An observer would have gleaned at once that the rider was not familiar with the trail or territory he traversed.
So it was past noon when he finally reached the hogback where the outstanding event of the morning had taken place. The rider looked back up toward the divide and grinned as he rested his horse just above the scene of the holdup.
“Don’t reckon they’d have heard me if I’d hollered, or seen me if I’d waved,” he mused. “They picked out a good spot for the dirty work,” he concluded, looking about.
Shortly afterward, as he was staring down at the tracks in the road, he smothered an exclamation. Then he dismounted, picked up two small objects 102 from the dust at the point where the trio had started on their get-away, examined them with a puzzled expression, and thrust them into a pocket.
“Queer,” he ruminated; “mighty queer. If those silly things had been laying there in the road before the rumpus they’d have been tracked into the dust. But they was on top of a perfectly good hoss track. An’ it don’t look like there’s been anybody along here since.”
He continued down the road, descending the steep slope, and came to the overturned truck. At a glance he saw it had been used for hauling supplies, doubtless to the mine he had glimpsed on the slope of the high mountain to southward. Several kegs of nails, some hardware, and some sacks of cement were scattered in the road. He remembered that the man who had climbed on the truck had only searched the driver and the cab. Anything he might have taken must have been in a small package or it would have been discernible even at that long distance.