Finally he pocketed the papers and went back into the cave, where he dragged the old man’s body farther away from the entrance.
‘Mebby you’ll be a mummy by the time yuh get out of here, old-timer,’ he said. ‘I’d take yuh out, if I could; but I can’t. So-long.’
Hashknife went back down the slope, where he found the track of a horse, going down the cañon. It went down past the old waterfall, where the tracks were plainly outlined in the sand.
‘Must be a way out the lower end,’ he decided. ‘If I can get Ghost down into this danged place, I’ll try my luck. It can’t be any worse than the way I came in—and it must be shorter.’
He managed to pick out a possible place to get down, and went back for the gray horse.
CHAPTER XIX: HASHKNIFE WRITES A NOTE
The shadows from the mesquite clumps were growing long on the mesa below the mouth of Coyote Cañon. Farther to the south was the blue haze over the flat land toward Cañonville. Blue quail were calling to one another from the brushy slopes, their plaintive, ca cuckoo, ca cuckoo, being the only sound to break the silence.
A lean coyote, like a gray shadow, came limping along past a mesquite, where he stopped in the shade, his ears cocked toward the sound of feeding quail. A brush rabbit rustled in the mesquite, and the coyote shifted his head quickly. Suddenly he lifted his nose. Down the wind came a scent which he quickly associated with men who carried gun and lariat ropes. More like a shadow than before, the coyote seemed to fade out of sight through a convenient cover, while from a spot upwind came the soft crackling of brush.
First came the masked man, leading the bay horse, with Nan in the saddle. Behind them—quite a way behind them—came Rex Morgan, staggering along, looking like a rag-man, or rather a man of rags.
The masked man stopped the horse and allowed Rex to join them.