We were jogging along on the homeward road, and were just rounding the spur of Elkhorn Mountain which divided our valley from Sulphide, when Joe suddenly laid his hand on my arm and cried: “Pull up, Phil. Stop a minute.”
“What’s the matter?”I asked.
“Get down and come back a few steps,”Joe answered; and on my joining him, he pointed out to me in a sandy patch at the mouth of a steep draw coming in from the left, some deeply-indented wheel-marks.
“Well, what of that, Joe?”said I, laughing. “Are you thinking you’ve found the trail of the ore-thief?”
“No,”Joe replied, “I’m not jumping at any such conclusion; but, at the same time, it’s possible. If the ore-thief started northward from the Pelican, and the chances are he did, for we know he carried the sacks across to the north side of Stony Gulch, this would be the natural place for him to come down into the road; for it is plain to any one that he could never get a loaded cart—or an empty one either, for that matter—over the rocky ridge which crowns this spur. If he was making his way north, he had to get into the road sooner or later, and this gully was his last chance to come down.”
“That’s true,”I assented; “and this cart—it’s a two-wheeler, you see—was heavily loaded. Look how it cuts into the sand.”
“Yes,”said Joe; “and it was drawn by one smallish horse, led by a man; a big man, too: look at his tracks.”
“But the ore-thief, Joe, had his feet wrapped up in rags, and these are the marks of a number twelve boot.”
“Well, you don’t suppose the thief would walk over this rough mountain with his feet wrapped up in rags, do you? In the dark, too. They’d be catching against everything. No; he would take off the rags as soon as he reached hard ground and throw them into the cart; for it is not to be expected either that he would leave them lying on his trail to show people which way he had gone.”
“No, of course not. But which way did he go, Joe; across the road or down it?”