“What for?”
“To keep me from blowing the top of your head off,” answered Jack quietly.
Without further discussion, the man sat down. His captor stood behind him, one hand on the shoulder of his prisoner, his eyes watching the point of the gulch at which the enemy would appear.
Two mounted men showed presently in silhouette. Almost opposite the grove they drew up.
“Mighty queer what has become of Hank,” one of them said. “But I don’t reckon there’s any use looking any farther. You don’t figure he’s aiming to throw us down—do you, Buck?”
“Nope. He’ll stick, Hank will. But it sure looks darned strange. Here’s him a-ridin’ along with us, and suddenly he’s missin’. We hear a yell, and go back to look for him. Nothin’ doin’. You don’t allow the devil could have come for him sudden—do you, Jeff?”
It was said with a laugh, defiantly, but none the less Jack read uneasiness in the manner of the man. It seemed to him that both were eager to turn back. Giant boulders, carved to grotesque and ghostly shapes by a million years’ wind and water, reared themselves aloft and threw shadows in the moonlight. 215 The wind, caught in the gulch, rose and fell in unearthly, sibilant sounds. If ever fiends from below walk the earth, this time and place was a fitting one for them. Jack curved a hand around his mouth, and emitted a strange, mournful, low cry, which might have been the scream of a lost soul.
Jeff clutched at the arm of his companion. “Did you hear that, Buck?”
“What—what do you reckon it was, Jeff?”
Again Jack let his cry curdle the night.