“Hold on a minute,” said the other; “it ain’t too light down here. I guess I’m not going to poke around in any cavern when this cat’s mate may be about. The toms are as bad as the shes, and if it’s up there laying for us, I’d guess we should know it. We’ll come around in the morning and bring a couple of dogs.”
“Now come on, man,” said the other; “the tom’ll have hidden the kittens to-morrow morning. Finish the job, now we’re at it. Give me a leg up.”
“I guess I won’t,” said the other. “These cats blinded old ’Lije Goldschmidt. He went after ’em into a place where he couldn’t see, and they fair tore his face off him.”
“Funk!” said the other man.
“I guess I am a funk,” said his friend; “but I don’t want to sit at any street corner holding a tin pan for pennies, the way old ’Lije done, for the rest of my days. But I’ll come along to-morrow morning, and I’ll bring a shot-gun, which is a sight more use than the thing you’re using.”
“Well, if you don’t care to come,” said the other man, “I’ll do it alone. You take my rifle and hand it up to me when I’m up.”
“No,” his friend said, “I ain’t going to be a party to no such foolishness. If you want to get your eyes clawed out, you can. Even if you got your rifle up there, you couldn’t see to shoot. It’s just darned foolishness, and I’m not going to stand for it. We’ve got the she, after waiting long enough, and the whistle’s been gone this half-hour. Take what we’ve got and come on, and we’ll come again in the morning.”
The other man growled a little at his friend, but, at last, picked up the dead cat and turned homewards up the gully. They stopped every now and then to complain of the steepness of the climb, then their voices ceased to sound.
It was fast falling dark and the stars were already bright above the gully. Sard cautiously rose, wondering whether the cat’s mate were thereabouts. He was very stiff from lying still. It was cold down there among the rocks and he was faint from want of food. He scrambled down to the water and drank. After groping about for a little while, he found the woodchuck, which he brought along.
He scrambled up the cañon on the side away from the town. It was very steep, the scrub was full of prickles. Presently he reached the top and saw a wilderness of scrubby foothills stretching away for miles, as it seemed, into the Sierra. Behind him, whenever he turned, he could see the lights of the town, and hear the dull thumping of the machinery and the noise of the band playing in the Plaza. On his right was a vast sea of ghostly paleness stretching away for hundreds of miles into the sky, where crimson faded into a kind of green. In the green, here and there, the tops of mountains made jagged marks. The stars were bright in the heaven. He looked up to the eastward stars, with the thought that by rights he should be in his ship, watching these stars, four degrees to the eastward from where he was. He realised that there was no reaching the coast by the railway line.