A far crash in the forest stilled his twitching lips and stiffened every iron muscle. As he lifted his rifle, Sid Hone came into the glade.
"Yahoo! Yahoo!" he called. "Where be you, Mike?"
Clinch slowly rose, grasping his rifle, his small, grey eyes ablaze.
"Where's Quintana?" he demanded.
"H'ain't you seen nobody?"
"No."
In the intense silence other sounds broke sharply in the sunset forest;
Harvey Chase's halloo rang out from the rocks above; Blommers and the
Hastings boys came slouching through the ferns.
Byron Hastings greeted Clinch with upflung gun: "Me and Jim heard a shot away out on Drowned Valley," he announced. "Was you out that way, Mike."
"No."
One by one the men who had driven Star Peak lounged up in the red sunset light, gathering around Clinch and wiping the sweat from sun-reddened faces.