CHAPTER XI.
DELL, OF THE “DOUBLE D.”
“Waugh! Jest lis’en ter thet, will ye? Ther pizen noise seems ter come from every which way. Trailin’ tracks ter ther place whar they goes is er heap easier than trailin’ er noise like thet ter ther place whar et comes from. Whoa, you gangle-legged ole hide-rack, y’u! Stand still fer a brace o’ shakes while I tries ter sense ther location o’ thet distressin’ whoop.”
The speaker was Nick Nomad. As was quite frequently the case when Nomad was journeying alone, he was conversing with himself.
The “gangle-legged old hide-rack” to which he referred was his horse—a rangy, ranch-bred cayuse, all leather and springs.
Horse and rider were in a high-walled basin, formed by the opening out of a gulch through which ran the wagon-trail from McGowan’s mine, to the town of Phœnix, in Arizona.
At its widest, the basin would measure probably an eighth of a mile across. Its bottom was level as a floor and overgrown with mesquit, greasewood, and thorn.
Nomad, entering the basin from the gulch on the north, was crossing to the gulch on the south. He was close to the center of the basin when he heard a prolonged:
“Whoo-yah-h-h!”
The walls of the basin caught up the sound and sent it echoing and reechoing across the intervening spaces, the result being a bewildering clamor coming from everywhere at once, and from nowhere in particular.