It was somewhere in the dread hours of the dead of night when the dog Blaze whined softly and Sid could see that he was peering downward, his ears cocked to alert attention. Sid followed the line of his gaze as best he could. Over there near the base of the mountain there was—something! No man in his senses would attempt to climb over that mountain in the dark through all its bristly cactus and choyas, Sid reflected. The only practicable route would be along its base, where the sand would deaden hoofbeats and a man could approach unseen.
But an Airedale can see in the dark far better than humans, better even than a hound. Ruler had given no sign below, but Blaze had evidently become suspicious. Nature had not given him the hound’s nose, but she had compensated by an eyesight equal to a cat’s.
A faint grunt came from Big John as his hand crept down to the rifle below the cot. “Watch yoreself, Sid! Blazie boy, he sees somethin’ out thar an’ don’t ye ferget it!” he warned. “That Vasquez is comin’, shore as shootin’.”
Sid strained his eyes. The blackness of the valley was impenetrable. Once a shock of alarm thrilled through him as a low humped object, half discerned in the black shadows of the mountain base, seemed not where it was when he had last tried to make it out but nearer. But as he looked the blurred form appeared stationary, immovable as one of the boulders. Yet, after a time, when his eyes grew fatigued with the strain, it was gone!
Instantly he raised his rifle and an impulse to give the alarm overpowered him. But he stifled it, peering with all his might. Better let Vasquez come nearer than frighten him off now, otherwise, it would all have to be repeated later.
A brooding stillness kept up. The far-off howls of coyotes came from over the mountains where they were no doubt fighting over the carcasses of those slaughtered sheep. None were around here, with that ghastly feast spread. Sid waited for he know not what to develop, finger on trigger, hand on Blaze’s back to quiet the eager dog.
Then a hoarse growl rumbled in Blaze’s furry throat! He rose unsteadily to his feet and a bitter snarl bared his teeth. Some unfamiliar taint in the air had now come to his nostrils. Sid looked down alert, finger on trigger. A movement on the cot told him that Big John, too, had picked up the .35 and was peering keenly below. But they could see nothing. Nothing moved. All the slope and the sands below it was as silent and inscrutable as death.
Then a throaty bellow came from Ruler below. A bow twanged in the darkness, and there came the noise of a sudden rush of blurred forms in the night. Big John turned half on his side and his rifle rose.
“Gosh, fer a light!” Sid heard him mutter.
Ruler’s challenging bark was roaring out now. The dog had rushed down the slope. And, as if to answer Big John, the sudden flare of a watch-fire sprang up.