Marcus reached Keeler on the afternoon of that same day. Half a mile from the town his pony fell and died from exhaustion. Marcus did not stop even to remove the saddle. He arrived in the barroom of the hotel in Keeler just after the posse had been made up. The sheriff, who had come down from Independence that morning, at first refused his offer of assistance. He had enough men already—too many, in fact. The country traveled through would be hard, and it would be difficult to find water for so many men and horses.
“But none of you fellers have ever seen um,” vociferated Marcus, quivering with excitement and wrath. “I know um well. I could pick um out in a million. I can identify um, and you fellers can’t. And I knew—I knew—good God! I knew that girl—his wife—in Frisco. She’s a cousin of mine, she is—she was—I thought once of—. This thing’s a personal matter of mine—an’ that money he got away with, that five thousand, belongs to me by rights. Oh, never mind, I’m going along. Do you hear?” he shouted, his fists raised, “I’m going along, I tell you. There ain’t a man of you big enough to stop me. Let’s see you try and stop me going. Let’s see you once, any two of you.” He filled the barroom with his clamor.
“Lord love you, come along, then,” said the sheriff.
The posse rode out of Keeler that same night. The keeper of the general merchandise store, from whom Marcus had borrowed a second pony, had informed them that Cribbens and his partner, whose description tallied exactly with that given in the notice of reward, had outfitted at his place with a view to prospecting in the Panamint hills. The posse trailed them at once to their first camp at the head of the valley. It was an easy matter. It was only necessary to inquire of the cowboys and range-riders of the valley if they had seen and noted the passage of two men, one of whom carried a bird-cage.
Beyond this first camp the trail was lost, and a week was wasted in a bootless search around the mine at Gold Gulch, whither it seemed probable the partners had gone. Then a traveling peddler, who included Gold Gulch in his route, brought in the news of a wonderful strike of gold-bearing quartz some ten miles to the south on the western slope of the range. Two men from Keeler had made a strike, the peddler had said, and added the curious detail that one of the men had a canary bird in a cage with him.
The posse made Cribbens’ camp three days after the unaccountable disappearance of his partner. Their man was gone, but the narrow hoof-prints of a mule, mixed with those of huge hob-nailed boots, could be plainly followed in the sand. Here they picked up the trail and held to it steadily till the point was reached where, instead of tending southward, it swerved abruptly to the east. The men could hardly believe their eyes.
“It ain’t reason,” exclaimed the sheriff. “What in thunder is he up to? This beats me! Cutting out into Death Valley at this time of year!”
“He’s heading for Gold Mountain over in the Armagosa, sure.”
The men decided that this conjecture was true. It was the only inhabited locality in that direction. A discussion began as to the further movements of the posse.