She had trapped Tuck neatly, and that wasn't easy to do. She sat down on a rock and studied them.
"So help me," said Tuck. "If you didn't have that lunch I'd leave you here."
"You can't leave me here! Besides, I'm not afraid of Asesino."
"Oh no?" snarled Tuck. "If he took a shot at you like he did at us last night you'd run like a striped bird, you would…" His voice died away. A panicky look came over his thin face. "Oh, Lord," he continued. "Now I did it."
Her eyes sparkled. "I wish I had been there!"
"So help me, Sue," breathed Tuck, "if you open your mouth around my folks — or Gary's folks— about this, I'll never talk to you again!"
She half closed her eyes. "Well, I'll consider it," she said.
Gary picked up his rifle and walked on. He would willingly have left both of them behind. He followed Lobo through the brush and to the bank of the dry watercourse. Up and down he went, then across to the far bank and up and down that. Nothing, absolutely nothing. The words of Tuck came back to him: "So we go chasing off after a wild goose to the east of the Espectros for some beat up old arrastres while Ol' Lije goes the other way."
The others joined him, and for two hours they searched every foot of the ground with no results. The sun was at its zenith when they stopped. "Hopeless," said Tuck. "I was right all the time."
They ate their lunch in gloomy silence. Sue didn't eat much; she never did. She left the spoils to Tuck, whose appetite was never spoiled by anything. It was almost a relief for the two boys to see her fade off into the brush. Gary sent Lobo after her.
"Blind alley again," said Tuck around a mouthful of cake.
"Yeh." Gary shook his head. "Maybe Sue is a hoodoo."
"Figures."
A wild shriek echoed through the quiet canyon. Gary moved like a flash, snatching up his rifle, then hurdling a rock. He dashed through the clinging brush heedless of the piercing thorns. He twisted his ankle on a loose rock footing, then burst into a clearing high on the slope. He could see a dim figure beyond the clearing, jumping up and down. It was Sue. Gary levered a round into the Winchester, then suddenly lowered it. Lobo had come out of the brush and was trotting toward Gary with what passed for a pleased look on his ugly black face. Nothing serious could be wrong with Sue. Gary walked toward her. She was dancing about like an awkward marionette on a string. "Eureka!" she shrieked. Her voice echoed through the canyon like that of a banshee.
Gary winced at the piercing sound of her voice. She was pointing down at her feet. Gary leaned his rifle against a tree after emptying the chamber. He eyed a shallow circular trough worn into the hard ground. To one side was a narrow trough that angled off toward the dry bed of the watercourse. The circular trough was rimmed with low piles of material. There was little doubt in Gary's mind as to what he was looking at.
"Is it what we're looking for?" asked Sue.
He looked up at her and smiled. "It's an arrastre all right. The circular trough was made by burros pulling a stone to crush the ore. The other trough brought in water."
Tuck came toward them. "What is it?" he called out.
"See for yourself, Tuckie!" cried Sue.
"Tuckie!" said Tuck. He rolled his eyes upward. He looked down at the arrastre. "What is it, Gary?"
"Arrastre, Tuck."
"You sure?"
Gary nodded. He looked up at the towering walls of the isolated canyon. "What else could it be?"
"Yeh," said Tuck. He looked at Sue. "Stumbled on it, eh, Susie?"
She shook her head. "Look," she said. She led the way to a rock at one side of a scarcely definable trail. There was a faint dark mark upon it. "This mark was evidently made by a mule shoe striking it. I found the trail, then found several other marks like the first one and walked right to here."
"Just like that?"
She nodded. "Just like that." She felt in a pocket of her Levi's and brought out a curved and badly rusted piece of metal. She held it up. "Found this halfway up the trail."
Gary took it from her hand. "Piece of a burro shoe," he said quietly. "Too small for a mule or a horse."
"Now what?" asked Tuck.
It was very quiet in the canyon except for the humming of the wild bees and the soft soughing of the wind that rustled the leaves. Gary walked to the west, parting the brush. Fifty feet from the first arrastre he stumbled into a hollow in the ground. It was another arrastre. There wasn't much doubt about their age. No modern miners would have made them. But Gary had seen other arrastres in other parts of the Espectros and they had led to nothing. But this was a part of the Espectros hardly visited by anyone. Gary had never heard any talk about mines in this area.
Sue and Tuck came up behind him. "Scatter," he said. "See what else we can find. Don't get too far from each other. Lobo, go with Sue."
An hour passed slowly, then Tuck came to Gary, holding another badly rusted burro shoe in his hand. The ends of the shoe had been flared out. He handed it to Gary. "Found it up the trail. Pretty rough in there. I poked around but it's impossible to see where the trail goes. What do you think of this shoe?"
"It's definitely of Spanish pattern. See the flared ends? They still make the same pattern shoe in Mexico to this day though."
"Big help, eh?" said Tuck disgustedly. "Could have been left here at most any time."
Sue came through the brush. "I don't think so, Tuck. If they don't make that type of shoe around here, it isn't likely anyone would bring up a burro or mule from Mexico to go joyriding around here in the past thirty or forty years, is it?"
"There she goes again," said Tuck.
Gary hefted the shoe. "She's got something there. With this and the arrastres we don't need much more proof that miners were in here. Spanish miners…"
"But no trail," said Tuck.
Gary nodded. He looked up at the forbidding south wall of the deep canyon. "There has to be a trail!" He walked to the south, following the faint trace of the ancient trail. When he reached the place where it petered out he could see that Tuck had been right. It just vanished completely. He got down on his hands and knees and peered through the brush trying to find a continuation of the trail. He tried the old trick of half closing his eyes and then suddenly opening them, hoping to catch an elusive glimpse of the trail, but the trail was just as elusive as the mysterious light he had seen several times up the canyon beyond The Needle. There was no trail, and yet there had to be one. If there were arrastres there must be a mine, or mines, even if they had been worked out.
It was a downhearted boy who walked back to the others. "I can't figure it out," he said.
Tuck had the field glasses, and with them he was slowly scanning the canyon wall inch by inch. "I thought perhaps we'd see a trace of another canyon opening into this one," he said, "but this country is so rough and broken up it's impossible to say whether there are any other canyons beyond this one."
"There's something else over here!" called out Sue.
They walked over to see her standing in front of what looked like tumbled walls of stonework. The walls had been formed in a small rectangle, hardly more than ten or twelve feet long by six or seven feet wide. Amidst the litter in the middle of it protruded several broken poles. "Rafters," said Gary. "The roof collapsed inside the building, whatever it was."
"There's one way to find out what it was," said Sue. She placed a long leg over the wall and began to pitch out stones and beams, heedless of the two boys. They started to help her. They uncovered several rusted pots, a broken bucket, a skillet thoroughly eaten through by rust, a pair of husk sandals and a broken pick handle. Gary sat back on his heels and shoved back his hat. "Doesn't mean much," he said. "You can't really tell how long this stuff has been in here. Might have been in the last twenty years. Nothing to show Spanish origin."