“Shore, I know thet. So does everybody in the Tonto. You were just meat for thet Beam gang. They had played the trick before. But accordin’ to what I hear thet trick was the last fer Madge Beam. She never came back to this country. An’ Jake Beam, when he was drunk, owned up thet she’d left him in California. Some hint at worse. Fer Jake Beam came back a harder man. Even his gang said thet.”
“Is he in the Tonto now?” queried Tappan, with a thrill of fire along his veins.
“Yep, thar fer keeps,” replied Blade, grimly. “Somebody shot him.”
“Ahuh!” exclaimed Tappan with a deep breath of relief. There came a sudden cooling of the heat of his blood.
After that there was a long silence. Tappan dreamed of the woman who had loved him. Blade brooded over the camp fire. The wind moaned fitfully in the lofty pines on the slope. A wolf mourned as if in hunger. The stars appeared to obscure their radiance in haze.
“Reckon thet wind sounds like storm,” observed Blade, presently.
“I’ve heard it for weeks now,” replied Tappan.
“Are you a woodsman?”
“No, I’m a desert man.”
“Wal, you take my hunch an’ hit the trail fer low country.”