"That's how I've felt all through," he said. "Now? Why, now I'm dead sure. This is where they murdered Jessie's father. Well, even a railroad corporation couldn't advertise it a pleasure resort. We'd best get right on down to the camp. I reckon to locate those attractions before we're through."
Leaving the plateau they passed down the seemingly endless slope. Bill cursed the foothold, and blasphemed generally. Kars remained silent. He was absorbed with the task he had set himself in approaching this murder-haunted gorge.
The return to the camp occupied the best part of an hour, and the latter part of the journey was made through a belt of pine wood, the timber of which left the human figure something so infinitesimal that its passage was incapable of disturbing the abiding silence. The scrunch of the springy carpet of needles and pine cones under heavily shod feet was completely lost. The profoundness of the gloom was tremendous.
The camp suggested secrecy. It lay in the bowels of a hollow. The hollow was crowded with spruce, a low, sparse-growing scrub, and mosquitoes. Its approach was a defile which suggested a rift in the hills at the back. Its exit was of a similar nature, except that it followed the rocky bed of a trickling mountain stream. A mile or so further on this gave on to the more gracious banks of the Bell River to the west of the gorge.
Kars had taken up a position upon some rolled blankets. He was smoking, and meditating over the remains of a small fire. Bill was stretched full-length upon the ground. His philosophic temperament seemed to render him impervious to the attacking hordes of mosquitoes. Beyond the hum of the flying pestilence the place was soundless.
Near by the Indians were slumbering restfully. It is the nature of the laboring Indian to slumber at every opportunity—slumber or eat. Peigan Charley was different from these others of his race. But the scout had long been absent from the camp on work that only the keenest of his kind could accomplish successfully. Indian spying upon Indian is like hunting the black panther. The difficulty is to decide which is the hunter.
Bill was drowsily watching a cloud of mosquitoes set into undue commotion by the smoke from his pipe. But for all that his thoughts were busy.
"Guess Charley isn't likely to take fool chances?" he suggested after a while.
Kars shook his head at the fire. His action possessed all the decision of conviction.
"Charley's slim. He's a razor edge, I guess. He's got us all beaten to death on his own play. He's got these murdering devils beaten before they start." Then he turned, and a smile lit his steady eyes as they encountered the regard of his friend. "It seems queer sending a poor darn Indian to take a big chance while we sit around."