“Me, alone?” he asked. “Gimme Dick Compos, there.”
A tall, silent half-breed stepped forward and without another word the two began to scan the walls, the floors, the heaps of rotted rock, the loose and tumbled boulders, not yet decomposed, that lined the cut on both sides.
They stood in their tracks and looked, and the concentration in their eyes was akin to that in the eyes of a wild animal, hiding, hard-pressed, and looking for a loophole for life.
The Vigilantes watched them in silence.
Presently Dick Compos stepped forward, leaned down and searched the wall at the left. Then he went forward, bent over, scanning each inch. He looked above and below, the height of a man’s shoulders, his hips, his knees.
Then he crept back, stopped at a particular upstanding piece of stone, searched it closely––stepped in behind.
When he came out he looked over at Tharon Last standing at the head of her people.
“Some one went along th’ Wall here,” he waved a slender brown hand at the cañon face. “Three signs––here––here––here.”
He indicated the heights he had scanned. They stepped a bit nearer and looked. Several pairs of Valley eyes saw what Dick Compos had seen, a sign so fine that few would have called it that––merely a brushing, a smoothing of the fine-sandstone 203 surface where a man’s shoulders, his hips, his knees might have pressed had he stood waiting there.