It was on one of these occasions, when he had been driven into a dark and narrow cañon, that he came to a sudden halt. He was looking at an empty tomato can. Swinging down from his saddle, he picked it up without dismounting. A little juice dripped from the can to the ground.
Flatray needed no explanation. In Arizona men on the range often carry a can of tomatoes instead of a water canteen. Nothing alleviates thirst like the juice of this acid fruit. Some one had opened this can within two hours. Otherwise the sun would have dried the moisture.
Jack took his rifle from its place beneath his legs and set it across the saddle in front of him. Very carefully he continued on his way, watching every rock and bush ahead of him. Here and there in 279 the sand were printed the signs of a horse going in the same direction as his.
Up and down, in and out of a maze of crooked paths, working by ever so devious a way higher into the chain of mountains, Jack followed his leader. Now he would lose the hoofmarks; now he would pick them up again. And, at the last, they brought him to the rim of a basin, a bowl of wooded ravines, of twisted ridges, of bleak spurs jutting into late pastures almost green. It was now past sunset. Dusk was filtering down from the blue peaks. As he looked a star peeped out low on the horizon.
But was it a star? He glimpsed it between trees. The conviction grew on him that what he saw was the light of a lamp. A tangle of rough country lay between him and that beacon, but there before him lay his destination. At last he had found his way into Dead Man’s Cache.
The sheriff lost no time, for he knew that if he should get lost in the darkness on one of these forest slopes he might wander all night. A rough trail led him down into the basin. Now he would lose sight of the light. Half an hour later, pushing to the summit of a hill, he might find it. After a time there twinkled a second beside the first. He was getting close to a settlement of some kind.
Below him in the darkness lay a stretch of open meadow rising to the wooded foothills. Behind these a wall of rugged mountains encircled the valley like a gigantic crooked arm. Already he could 280 make out faintly the outlines of the huddled buildings.
Slipping from his horse, Jack went forward cautiously on foot. He was still a hundred yards from the nearest hut when dogs bayed warning of his approach. He waited, rifle in hand. No sign of human life showed except the two lights shining from as many windows. Flatray counted four other cabins as dark as Egypt.
Very slowly he crept forward, always with one eye to his retreat. Why did nobody answer the barking of the dogs? Was he being watched all the time? But how could he be, since he was completely cloaked in darkness?
So at last he came to the nearest cabin, crept to the window, and looked in. A man lay on a bed. His hands and feet were securely tied and a second rope wound round so as to bind him to the bunk.