We watched all mornin’; but not a sign, not a bit o’ smoke from the cook-house, just the ranch buildin’s settin’ there as deserted as the Garden of Eden. The Simpsons were workin’ their stunts across the crick; so about ten in the mornin’, Slim and Dutch rode over to tell ’em to come in, as they would look mighty foolish, providin’ they were makin’ signals to one of the hills where the Cross-branders themselves were hid.
After eatin’ dinner, the rest of us went down to the lookout, Horace shoulderin’ his elephant exterminator, and lookin’ peevish and fretful, ’cause the’ was nothin’ to shoot at. “Boys,” sez I, “do ya suppose ’at poor old Promotheus has been goin’ all this time on nothin’ but water.”
“He’s gone longer ’n this on nothing but water,” sez Horace; “and so have I. Over in Africa, once, we sent a tribe o’ blacks around to beat some lions out for us; but they fell in with another tribe who were not friendly, and they just kept on goin’. Promotheus and I were lost from everything, and we got into a desert before we found a way out. We went for I don’t know how long without water. Anyway, we went long enough to get into that numb condition when the earth becomes molten copper, and the sky a sun glass, and a man himself feels like another man’s nightmare. That tender old Promotheus you’re sympathizin’ with, carried me the best part of a day, or a century—time had melted entirely away—and when we came back to our senses we lay beside a pool of water. He’s tough, Promotheus is.”
“At the same time,” sez Tank, “settin’ cooped up in a log hut with nothin’ to cheer ya but water, isn’t my idy of havin’ high jinks.”
“Perhaps, too,” sez Spider Kelley, who didn’t have enough sense of fitness to change a nickel, “those mongrel coyotes lynched both him an’ the Friar before they vamosed.”
“They wouldn’t do that,” sez Olaf; “but I wish we knew what they had done.”
“Let’s go and shoot at the old cabin or the bunk-shack,” sez Oscar.
“I move we wait, and raid ’em to-night,” sez I, and this was what we decided to do.
The rest of us lolled about purty patient—as active men, an’ beasts too, are likely to do when the’s nothin’ on hand—but Horace who had lived in a room most of his life, hadn’t quite learned to turn off his steam when he hadn’t any use for it; so he kept bobbin’ up and fussin’ about. All of a sudden, he gave a sort of gasp, and pointed up the slope.
We looked and saw one man crouched over and runnin’ along where the south trail to our camp swung around a crag; and we sprang to our feet, and looked up at the camp. As we looked, the face of Ty Jones with a grin on it, poked up over a stone and leered down at us most exasperatin’.