A squat, bandy-legged man with a face of tanned leather presently answered. “No, Tim, I expect not. The way I size him up Mr. Richard Bellamy wouldn’t know Dry Sandy from an irrigation ditch. Mr. R. B. hopes he’s hittin’ the high spots for Sonora, but he ain’t anyways sure. Right about now he’s ridin’ the grub line, unless he’s made a strike somewhere.”
The third member of the party, a lean, wide-shouldered, sinewy youth, blue silk kerchief knotted loosely around his neck, broke in with a gesture that swept the sky. “Funny about all them buzzards. What are they doing here, sheriff?”
The squat man opened his mouth to answer, but Tim took the word out of his mouth.
“Look!” His arm had shot straight out toward the cañon. A coyote was disappearing on the lope. 16 “Something lying there in the wash at the bend, Burke.”
Sheriff Burke slid his rifle from its scabbard. “We’ll not take any chances, boys. Spread out far as you can. Tim, ride close to the left wall. You keep along the right one, Flatray. Me, I’ll take the center. That’s right.”
They rode forward cautiously. Once Flatray spoke.
“By the tracks there has been a lot of cattle down here on the jump recently.”
“That’s what,” Tim agreed.
Flatray swung from his saddle and stooped over the body lying at the bend of the wash.
“Crushed to death in a cattle stampede, looks like,” he called to the sheriff.