And the sun was still high up in the sky. But he controlled himself when the panic reached his mind. A man ought to be able to go two days without water, no matter what the heat. The prime necessity was to keep the nerves in hand.
That was easily said, not so easily done. As he sat there, broiling, he felt that the only thing that saved his stability was sight of a light green lizard with yellow markings along the back, that slid out on the surface of a rock and paused there, with its body still curved for the next whiplike movement and its head raised. It was so close that he could see the dim red flicker of the tongue now and then, and the glittering of the little eyes. The rock was hot enough to singe ordinary flesh, but that lizard was a true salamander. There was no hurry about it. If a day or two passed for it between insects—if a month or two intervened between drinks—what difference did it make?
Wayland began to smile and to forget about his own troubles.
That was how the afternoon sloped off into twilight. For all his spying, he had sight of nothing of interest except the two saddle horses, now grazing busily far up the floor of the canyon.
He made up his mind by this time. He would wait not only until it was dark, but until the night had worn along for several hours. Then he would try to slip down among the boulders and get away. There would be no moon for some time to come.
In the meantime, the sky turned dim. A thin white cloud rolled into the west, the fires caught it, it blazed up and gave a false promise of a returning day. Then all went darker than ever. Suddenly the night was only a step away.
Wayland stood up to stretch himself. He stuck his arms up above his head, strained every muscle and tendon to the full, and heard the deep voice of Phil Bray saying, from behind:
“Keep ‘em there!”
Wayland “kept them there.”
As he stood with his hands high, suddenly it seemed to him that he had been the biggest fool in the world. He should have known in the beginning that one Wayland, with a burro, had no chance to escape from three accomplished desperadoes, well armed and mounted.
He heard Bray say: “All right, boys. I’ve got him here. Come up and get him for me. Wayland, don’t stir none. Don’t budge.”
There were noises among the rocks. Then the lean, handsome face of Joe Mantry appeared. He stared at Wayland, full in the eyes, and remarked:
“Tag him out, chief. What’s the use of weighing ourselves down with him?”
“I dunno,” said Bray. “I don’t care much. How do you vote, Dave?”
Dave Lister got to the spot, breathing hard in his turn. He rested a sharp elbow against the side of a boulder as he murmured:
“Well, I dunno. We’ll see what part of the loot he’s got, first.”
Bray said: “Open that saddlebag, Joe. Wayland, put your hands down behind your back. Put them down both at once, and keep still. I’d plug you for a nickel and a half.”
Wayland believed him devoutly, and moved the hands with exceeding care until they were in the small of his back, where they were grabbed and tied together by Bray. His gun was taken from him, too.
In the meantime, the other pair had opened the saddlebag and spilled out the contents. Joe Mantry was careful to a degree, counting. Dave Lister seemed able to note the contents with a glance.
He said suddenly: “Chief, it looks to me like we’re not two hundred dollars short. And that’s a fact!”
Bray sat on a rock, smoking a cigarette.
“It’s getting pretty dark,” he declared. “We’d better move on. What about our friend before we start?”
“Plug him,” urged Mantry.
“There’s a little reason in what you say,” answered Bray. “This hombre seems to have a brain and a pair of hands about him. Listen, Wayland,” he added. “How did you get this stuff?”
“I met your fourth man,” answered Wayland. “I stuck him up with a gun. He got at me and started to work with his knife as I went down. He was slippery, but I managed to tap him on the right spot, and he went out. That’s how I got hold of the money.”
“What were you doing with it?” asked Bray.
“Well, I was heading back toward Elkdale.”
“Elkdale? Why?”
“That’s where the bank is, of course. I wanted to get it back into the safe.”
“Hello!” murmured Bray. And he began to chuckle. “You would ‘a’ passed the wad all back to Old Man William Rucker, would you?”
“Sure he would. He’s a nut, but he’s no fool,” observed Joe Mantry. “He had brains enough to get that slippery little devil of a Jimmy Lovell; he may have brains enough to stick to our trail, after we get the stuff, and keep up long enough to give us away to a sheriff’s posse.”
“He may have the brains,” commented Bray. “Boys, I don’t care much. Only, we got the whole wad of the money back through this hombre. I say that it’s too bad to look a gift horse in the face.”
Dave Lister began to laugh softly. He picked up several of the thick wads of greenbacks and held them out to the faint evening light.
“There’s enough to put the lot of us on Easy Street for a long time,” he said. “Sure, chief. Get this hombre, this Wayland, out of the way. You know how it is. A crook is as weak as the weakest link in the chain, but an honest man is as strong as the strongest part of the chain.”
Lister paused and laughed again to indicate that the words were not a belief with him. They were simply something that he had heard, and, therefore, that he was willing to repeat. People of his sort never really trust folklore or folk sayings, but they are always unwilling to close their ears to proverbial wisdom.
“Look,” said Joe Mantry eagerly. “This fellow had the brains to snag Lovell. The rest of us couldn’t wrangle that. He had the nerve to go and freeze himself to death above timber line, hunting for Lovell. And at last he got him. Make up your mind. You want him on our trail?”
“What makes you hate him so much? What’s he done to you?” asked Bray.
The first dark of the night was doubly thick and close. Through it Mantry stepped close to the prisoner, until his face was only inches away.
“I hate his long, lean mug, if you want to know,” said Mantry. “That’s what I hate about him. Any objections, anybody?”
He looked about him for a reply.
“You’re going to get yourself a knife through you some day,” said Phil Bray.
“Yeah? Who’ll use the knife, then? Know his name?” asked Mantry in his most offensive manner.
“Maybe I’ll use it myself,” said Bray.
There was a sudden silence at this. The silence continued until it appeared that even the savage eagerness of Joe Mantry was not quite prepared to match itself against his leader.
Then Bray went on: “We gotta make up our minds. What about Wayland?”
“Well,” said Mantry, “I’ve said my say. Speak the word, and I’ll do the rest of it. I ain’t afraid of ghosts.”
Wayland’s soul grew small in his breast. He waited. There was the voice of big Dave Lister to be heard, and Dave said:
“Well, the quicker the job, the sooner we’ll have him off our hands, as far as I see it.”
At that, Phil Bray answered suddenly: “I dunno. You don’t want to look a gift horse in the mouth; anybody knows that. It spoils your luck for you. Anybody here that wants to be out of luck?”
There was no answer.
“We’re not going to run all day and all night with him,” went on Bray. “We gotta camp somewhere and plan things out. He could stay with us a while, and we wouldn’t be losing time. How about that?”
“If you come across a whole orphanage,” said bitter young Joe Mantry, “you’d take the whole shooting match along with you to rob a bird’s nest. You’ve made up your mind. You’ll take Wayland along with you. But mind you —hell is going to pop!”