Snake pondered this theory thoughtfully. “Yuh may be right at that,” he admitted, an expression of wonder passing over his features. “But yuh been to see her? What she say about it?”
“Huh! She was askin’ me if I knowed where it was. But that was just a blind to put me off’n the track—an’ she probably wanted to make sure no one else had found it. She was quizzin’ that Pettis girl, too, makin’ sure Ike hadn’t told her nothin’.”
“Yuh may be right,” admitted Snake again. “God-dlemighty! Yuh reckon she’ll find it?”
Jim leered evilly at him. “No, I don’t reckon she will. But she might help me find it.”
“Howzzat?” Snake was startled.
“I gotta have a grubstake, Snake. How about it?”
“Jest outline this here project, Jim. Let me git the slant on it.”
The two heads, one slick and black, though with streaks of gray, the other shaggy, colorless, and unkempt, came together and a growl of hoarse and carefully guarded whispers murmured at that end of the bar. After ten minutes’ talk, Snake went to the safe and returned with a roll of bills and a piece of paper, pen, and ink. He laboriously made out a document, which Banker as laboriously signed. Then 158 Snake surrendered the money and the two rascals shook hands.
Banker at once became all furtive activity. For a few hours he slunk from store to store, buying necessaries for his trip. By nighttime he was ready, and before the moon had risen in the cold November sky he was hazing his burros southward toward the Nevada line.
Although he was mounted on a fairly good horse, his progress was necessarily slow, as he had to accommodate his pace to that of the sedate burros. He was in no hurry, however. With true, desert-born patience, he plodded along, making camp that night about ten miles from Sulphur Falls. The following day he resumed his snaillike pace, crawling out of the fertile valley to the grasslands beyond, and so on and on until the night found him in the salt pan and the alkali. He passed the Brandon ranch at Three Creek, long since sold and now occupied by a couple of Basques who had built up from sheep-herding for wages until they now owned and ran a fair flock of sheep. Here he did not stop, hazing his burros past as though he had suddenly acquired a reason for haste. When Twin Forks was a couple of miles to the rear he reverted to his former sluggish pace.