第70章

"Looks to me as if there aren't many wasted opportunities here," Bud answered with some irony. "Is there an honest man in the whole country, Ed? I'd just like to know."

Eddie hesitated, his eyes anxiously trying to read Bud's meaning and his mood. "Not right around the Sinks, I guess," he replied truthfully. "Up at Crater there are some, and over to Jumpoff. But I guess this valley would be called pretty tough, all right. It's so full of caves and queer places it kinda attracts the ones that want to hide out." Then he grinned. "It's lucky for you it's like that, Mr. Birnie, or I don't see how you'd get away. Now I can show you how to get clear away from here without getting caught. But I guess we ought to have breakfast first. I'm pretty hungry. Ain't you?

I can build a fire against that crack in the ledge over there, and the smoke will go away back underneath so it won't show. There's a blow-hole somewhere that draws smoke like a chimney."

Jerry came after a little, sniffing bacon. He threw himself down beside the fire and drew a long breath. "That old skunk's heavier than what you might think," he observed whimsically. "I packed him down into one of them sink holes and untied his feet and left him to scramble out best way he can. It'll take him longer'n it took me. Having the use of your hands helps quite a lot. And the use of your mouth to cuss a little. But he'll make it in an hour or two--I'm afraid." He looked at Bud, a half-shamed tenderness in his eyes." It sure was hard to leave him like I did. It was like walking on your toes past a rattler curled up asleep somewhere, afraid you might spoil his nap. Only Pop wasn't asleep." He sat up and reached his hand for a cup of coffee which Eddie was offering. "Anyway, I had the fun of telling the old devil what I thought about him," he added, and blew away the steam and took another satisfying nip.

"He'll put them on our trail, I suppose," said Bud, biting into a ragged piece of bread with a half-burned slice of hot bacon on it.

"When he gets to the ranch he will. His poison fangs was sure loaded when I left. He said he wanted to cut your heart out for robbing him, and so forth, ad swearum. We'd best not leave any trail."

"We ain't going to," Eddie assured him eagerly. "I'm glad being with the Catrockers is going to do some good, Mr. Birnie. It'll help you git away, and that'll help find Sis. I guess she hit down where you live, maybe. How far can your horse travel to-day--if he has to?"

Bud looked across to where Sunfish, having rolled in a wet spot near the spring and muddied himself to his satisfaction, was greedily at work upon a patch of grass. "If he has to, till he drops in his tracks. And that won't be for many a mile, kid. He's thoroughbred; a thoroughbred never knows when to quit."

"Well, there ain't any speedy trail ahead of us today," Eddie vouchsafed cheeringly. "There's half-a mile maybe where we can gallop, and the rest is a case of picking your footing."

"Let's begin picking it, then," said Bud, and got up, reaching for his bridle.

By devious ways it was that Eddie led them out of that sinister country surrounding the Sinks. In the beginning Bud and Jerry exchanged glances, and looked at their guns, believing that it would be through Catrock Canyon they would have to ride. Eddie, riding soberly in the lead, had yet a certain youthful sense of his importance. "They'll never think of following yuh this way, unless old Pop Truman gits back in time to tell 'em I'm travelling with yuh," he observed once when they had penetrated beyond the neighborhood of caves and blow-holes and were riding safely down a canyon that offered few chances of their being observed save from the front, which did not concern them.

"I guess you don't know old Pop is about the ringeader of the Catrockers. Er he was, till he began to git kinda childish about hoarding money, and then Dave stepped in. And Mr. Birnie, I guess you'd have been dead when you first came there, if it hadn't been that Dave and Pop wanted to give you a chance to get a lot of money off of Jeff's bunch. Lew was telling how you kept cleaning up, and he said right along that they was taking too much risk having you around. Lew said he bet you was a detective. Are you, Mr. Birnie?"

Bud was riding with his shoulders sagged forward, his thoughts with Marian--wherever she was. He had been convinced that she was not at Little Lost, that she had started for Laramie. But now that he was away from that evil spot his doubts returned. What if she were still in the neighborhood--what if they found her? Memory of Honey's vindictiveness made him shiver, Honey was the kind of woman who would kill.

"I am, from now on, kid," he said despondently. "We're going to ride till we find your sister. And if those hell-hounds got her--"

"They didn't, from the way Honey talked," Jerry comforted.

"We'll find her at Laramie, don't you ever think we won't!"