Was he the man I must guard against? Was he a tool? Or had he merely happened along?
“You couldn’t keep up,” I told him. “I’m traveling fast and far.”
“I’ll keep up,” he promised.
“All right,” I said. “I’ll camp here to-night with you, and we’ll start early in the morning. Guess I’d better shoot a jackrabbit. Got a rifle handy? Mine’s got some trouble in the lock.”
“Thirty-thirty in my saddle scabbard,” he told me, pointing with his long arm.
I went to the scabbard and took out the rifle, sighted it.
It was a gun that had seen use, lots of it, and desert use at that.
“I’ll throw the packs and then take a turn out through the sage,” I told him.
“I ain’t seen a rabbit,” he said.
I just nodded. I knew what I was looking for and where to find it. He was watching me, so I wanted to have a mark when I fired.
Jackrabbits work their way into the middle of a sage clump and get down into a ball. Along in the afternoon, by making a noise and keeping on the east side of the bush you’re looking at you can generally make them raise their ears. The sun shines through the thin cartilage of a rabbit’s ears with a reddish color. There’s no red naturally in the sage, so all you have to do is to make plenty of noise and watch for a pinkish glow from the sage.
I spotted one inside of the first hundred yards.
I walked up toward the sagebrush, looking just below the pink bit of color for something solid. He broke cover before I found the mark I wanted. I flung down on him and he bowled over at the crack of the rifle.
He was a young one and all right for eating.
I picked up the rabbit and moved back along my back trail. When I came to the place where I’d been standing when I shot, I dropped the rabbit, stooped and picked him up, and picked up the empty cartridge as well.
It was half an hour later that I had a chance to study that cartridge. It had an impression of the firing pin that was just a bit off center, and had two little split marks in the bottle neck.
I slept that night, but not in my blankets and not until late. But the city chap seemed to hit it off regular all night. He’d given his name as Jack Melford. I was puzzled in the morning.
“How long have you had that rifle?” I asked him.
“Just about half a day,” he said. “A dark fellow named Madrone was through here, and he sold it to me.”
I nodded. Maybe — and again maybe not. I couldn’t be sure.
The third night I knew there was some one ahead of us. There were tracks, and the burros wiggled their ears at each other. We caught up to him just before making camp. We traveled in the evening moonlight. It was easier on the stock and easier on us. He had a camp fire going and he was standing back out of the circle of light.
“Hello,” he called, and his voice was the voice of a man who doesn’t welcome company.
He came in out of the darkness, a soft shadow of gliding caution, and tried to urge us onward by some excuse about the spring being muddied.
“We’re stopping,” I told the man.
“I’ll put on some tea,” was all he said, and flung some fresh wood on the fire, sage roots that flare up in crackling flames and make solid coals for cooking.
I got a look at him then. Part Mexican he was, and his eyes had that smoky tinge of dark mystery which comes from the Indian side of the Mexican blood.
“Pablo Sandoval,” he said and flashed his teeth in a smile as he thrust out a brown hand.
We unpacked, had tea and tortillas. I managed to get a look at the rifle in Sandoval’s scabbard. It was a thirty-thirty, and it was old, but it hadn’t been carried much in a saddle scabbard. The stock showed it.
I managed to work Melford off to one side.
“Melford, did you ever see this man before?”
“No, why?”
“Sure he wasn’t the man that sold you your rifle?”
“Heavens, no! It was Madrone who sold me the rifle, a black Mexican with a big stomach, fat, greasy.”
I nodded and let it go at that, but there was something in the wind, and this tenderfoot was mixed in it, either as a tool or not. City gangsters have been known to come to the desert.
I didn’t sleep until after the moon went down. That was late. Then I slept, but not in my blanket roll. Dawn found me tired, but ready to go.
I could strike the ridge where I’d found the bones of the dead burro by cutting across with a long march.
“I’m leaving you two,” I said. “You’ll be company for each other.”
“But,” said Sandoval, “I am traveling alone.”
“And I’m going east,” said Melford. “Why can’t I stay on with you?”
“Because,” I said, “I am not going east from here. I am going to the northeast.”
“Oh,” said Melford.
Sandoval said nothing.
We got on the packs. I noticed Melford studying a folded paper he surreptitiously took from his pocket. “Perhaps,” he said dubiously, “I could get where I’m going by heading northeast from here — but I’m supposed to go east for one more day, and then north. There’s a water hole east of here?”
“Yes,” I said curtly, and swung my burros to the northeast.
From back of a rock outcropping on the top of a rise I watched them go. They went east. I pushed the burros fast and far. It was ten o’clock at night when I got to the ridge of the skeleton.
In the morning I started a systematic search.
Fifty yards from camp I found a track. It was made with a moccasined foot, but not the foot of an Indian. It was a small foot, and it didn’t come down exactly in the line of travel. A line drawn through the heel and toe missed the next footprint by an inch and a half.
Some one had been over that ridge in the moonlight, after I’d made camp. It was impossible that that person hadn’t seen my camp. It was also impossible for any one to exist in that stretch of the desert without a base of supplies, a burro loaded with provisions and water.
I lost the tracks in a rocky wash. I spent the day in fruitless search, and I was worried. The desert has a code of its own, and I had deliberately flung down a challenge to a murderer. It was up to me to notice trifles.
That afternoon I watched to the south. If Jack Mel-ford found some excuse to join me again it would be almost a declaration of guilt. Paths do not cross in the desert without some reason.
Just before dusk I saw a cloud of dust. Then I made out burros and packs. I got out my rifle and saw that it was loaded with fresh shells, thoroughly oiled, and that the sights hadn’t been jiggled any.
It got as dark as it could get with the big moon hanging in the eastern heavens. I made a small camp fire, and then waited in the shadow of a cactus.
It took the burros an hour and a half to reach my camp. Melford’s voice boomed out across the desert.
“Good evening,” he said.
“Howdy,” I remarked, and slipped the rifle forward.
Then I saw there was another with him.
“Howdy,” said the voice of Pablo Sandoval, and this time the voice was placating.
“Thought you fellows were going east,” I said.
“And north,” remarked Melford.
“And north,” echoed Pablo Sandoval.
“I’ll make you tea,” I said, and walked in toward the camp fire. My rifle I left concealed back of the cactus. My six-shooter was on my hip, in plain sight, and my right hand was never far from the holster.
I made them tea, as is the code of the desert when a weary traveler comes to the camp of one who has already eaten.
Pablo Sandoval caught my eye and flickered a glance toward the desert. There was just the slightest inclination of the head, a gesture of beckoning.
“We’ve got to get some more wood,” he said, and was on his feet like a cat, melting into the shadows.