I didn’t see any man tracks until I was within fifty yards of the spring; then I picked up the tracks of booted feet again. As nearly as I could tell, they were the same tracks that I had seen following along behind the horse tracks.
I searched around the spring, and found horse tracks. These didn’t look like the same horse tracks that I had seen earlier in the day. They were the tracks of a bigger horse, and they seemed to be fresher. I went over to the trail which led into the spring, and I could see where the horse had come in along this trail and gone out along it.
I kept poking along, looking in the sagebrush, and finally I found a hole dug in the side of the mountain. It was about a foot deep by two feet long. I poked around in the hole. It wasn’t a hole that had been dug with a shovel, but something that had been scooped in the side of the mountain, and half filled in with slag from the side of the bank above. There wasn’t anything in the hole.
I went down and followed the tracks of the horse. They went down the trail, evenly spaced and at regular intervals.
I turned back from that trail and went back up the ridges the way I had come into the spring. It was hot now, and the sun was beating down with steady, eye-dazzling fury.
I managed to get back up to the last place where I had found the horse tracks, and started tracking the horse. That was comparatively easy. The horse had worked over toward the west and north, following down a ridge which wasn’t quite so rocky, and on which there was a more dusty soil to hold the tracks.
I knew that my burros were trained in the ways of the desert and could shift for themselves until I got back; but I was in need of food, and the inside of my mouth felt raw from drinking the alkali water at the little spring. Nevertheless I kept pushing on, working against time, and at length I found where the horse had started wandering back and forth from a direct line, as though looking for something to graze on.
I followed the tracks until it got dark, and then I built a little fire and huddled over it, keeping warm until the moon came up. Then I began my tracking once more. It was slow work, but I took no chances of getting off the trail. I just worked slowly along the trail, following it along the sides of the ridges; and finally I came to something black lying on the ground.
I saw that it was a saddle, and feeling the tie in the latigo, I could tell that the saddle had been bucked off. The horn was smashed, and there were places where the iron hoofs had cut the leather of the saddle. The horse had evidently bucked and twisted, and had walked out from under the saddle. The blankets were off to one side. Rocks were pushed loose from the indentations in the earth which had held them, as though the horse had been standing on his head and striking out with all four feet.
I marked the place where the saddle was, and kept on working down the slope.
It was still dark when I heard a horse whinny.
I called to him. Then I heard his shod feet ringing on the rocks as he came up to me. He was glad to see me. Right then, a man represented food and water to him, and he was eager for human companionship. There wasn’t any rope around his neck, but I didn’t need any. I twisted my fingers in his mane, and he followed along with me like a dog. When I came back to the place where the saddle lay, I got it back on him, and climbed into it.
He had lost his bridle, but I cut off the strings from the saddle, roped them together and made a rough hackamore.
The horse was weak, thirsty and tired; but he was glad to yield to human direction once more, and he carried me back over the ridges.
It was two hours past daylight when I came to the spring, where the horse drank greedily. I let him rest for half or three quarters of an hour, and gave him a chance to browse on some of the greenery which grew around the edges of the water. Then I sent him down the trail and found my burros, standing with full stomachs and closed eyes, their long ears drooping forward.
I got a rope from my pack, slipped it around the neck of the horse, and started along the trail which led up the east slope of the mountains on the side of the cañon. When I got to the top I poked around, looking for a camp, and after a while I saw the glint of the sun on something white. A man rolled over in the sunlight, pulled a blanket around his nude figure, and got to his feet. He stood grinning at me sheepishly.
I rode over to him. “You’re Ernest Peterman?” I asked.
He nodded. He was getting back his health there in the high places of the desert, I knew. That much could be seen in the bronzed skin, the clear eye, and the poise of his head.
Man has devised many different methods for combating various ills, but he has never yet devised anything which is superior to the healing hand of nature in the desert. Let a man get into the high places of the dry desert atmosphere, where the sun beats down from a cloudless sky; let him live a simple life, bathing in sunshine, and resting with the cold night air fresh in his nostrils, and there is nothing which is incurable.
“I wanted you to take a little ride with me,” I told him.
“How far?” he asked.
“Just up to the top of the ridge.”
“All right. In an hour or so?”
“No,” I told him. “Now. I want to get there about a certain time in the afternoon.”
“What time?” he asked.
“The same time that you saw Sam Blake go down into Sidewinder Cañon,” I told him.
He shrugged his shoulders and shook his head, as though trying to shake loose some disagreeable memory.
“I didn’t want to do it,” he said.
“Do what?” I asked.
“Testify,” he told me.
“I didn’t say you did.”
“I know,” he said. “It isn’t that. It’s just the thoughts that have been worrying me lately. Have you seen his daughter?”
I nodded.
“A wonderful girl,” he said. “I don’t think her father could be a murderer.”
“He went down there with a gun, didn’t he?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“You don’t suppose he just went down there to pay a social call, do you?”
“I don’t know. He’d been robbed. Everybody seems to think that Skinner really robbed him.”
“Did you know Skinner at all well?” I asked.
He shook his head.
“Ever get up to the top of the ridge much?”
“I’ve been up there once or twice in the morning.”
“How did you happen to be up there on that particular afternoon?”
“I don’t know. I was restless, and I just started walking up there. It was a hot day. I took it easy.”
“And the shadows were just beginning to form on the western rim of the mountains?” I asked.
He nodded.
“And you could look down on Skinner’s little shack?” He nodded again.
“All right,” I said, “I’d like to have you take a ride up there with me.”
I let him ride the horse, and he seemed to feel a lot easier when I had a rope around the horse’s neck, leading him. I took it that Peterman was pretty much of a tenderfoot in the desert.
“How did you happen to come to the desert country?” I asked him.
“I’ve tried everything else.”
“Are you afraid of it?”
“Yes,” he said, “I was dreadfully afraid at first. And then I got so I wasn’t afraid.”
“How did that happen?” I wanted to know. “Usually when a man sees the desert he either loves it or he hates it. If he hates it his hatred is founded on fear.”
“I know,” he said. “I hated it at first, and I hated it because I was afraid of it. I’m willing to admit it.”