He sat up and shook the dirt out of his ear, before reaching back to get his rifle. His nose was beaded with perspiration, and the hand that reached for his cigarette-papers trembled exceedingly.
“For a moment I was what an insurance agent would call a bad r-risk,” he muttered aloud. “What a fool a man may be! And still, all I got was a dir-r-rty ear and the scare of me young life.”
He laid the rifle across his lap, lighted his cigarette and inhaled deeply.
“If ye want me,” he grinned softly, “ye know where I am.”
For the better part of fifteen minutes Scotty McKay remained motionless. He heard a locomotive whistling for Curlew Spur, and in a few minutes a freight train came along, creaking and groaning, the single engine working hard to pull the long train up the grade. Scotty pinched out the light of his second cigarette, stretched his arms, picked up his rifle and sneaked down through the brush.
Inaction had palled upon him, and he was going to try to find out who had been shooting at him. Slowly he moved ahead, most of the time on his hands and knees. It took him at least thirty minutes to cover a hundred yards, where he came out on the top of a little knoll, heaped high with boulders.
From this vantage-point he could get a good view of the surrounding country. As far as he could see, everything was serene. Farther ahead and to the right was an open swale with the railroad fence across the upper end of it. On the other side of that fence was the end of the big cut, and just beyond the swale, in a clump of brush, was Rance McCoy’s saddle horse, dead. A bullet had smashed through its head.
Scotty could not see the horse, but he knew where it was, and he was in a position to see if any one came to molest it. He squinted at the sun, estimated that it would be some time before Slim or Chuck would come to relieve him, made himself as comfortable as possible and prepared to watch.
Slim Caldwell and Chuck Ring went straight back to Red Arrow and dismounted at the depot, where the telegraph operator handed Slim a telegram, which read:
MOVE CAREFULLY FIVE THOUSAND REWARD FOR RETURN OF STOLEN PACKAGES SENDING OPERATIVE AND DETAILS
WELLS FARGO