'Looks as if they were going back home,' Arnold said.
If so, the reason for their coming to Casa Rita was not clear. There would be no sense in driving forty miles, and after a five minute's stay heading for the place from which they had just come.
The road dipped down from the mesa to the desert stretch known as the Montoyo Flats. The moon was out, and it shone on a hillside of sahuaro to the right of them, the giant cactus looking like monuments in a ghostly graveyard. They passed this and came to the undulating floor of the valley.
'Blackout,' Hal said. 'We must be getting warm.' He stopped the car.
The lights of the sedan had gone out. They listened. Presently the light night breeze carried to them the faint sound of wheels moving.
'They are leaving the road,' Arnold remarked.
'Going where?'
'You tell me.'
To them there came the bawling of a steer.
Hal said, 'Listen.' The bellow reached them again. 'This is where we cache the car and foot it,' Hal decided, and swung the wheel sharply into the cholla growth beside the road. Somewhere in front of them, not far distant, was the rendezvous of the thieves.
'They must have pulled off another raid,' Hal guessed. 'If we are lucky, we may get the evidence we want right now.'
'And if we are unlucky?' Arnold asked dryly.
'If we are too unlucky Tick Black will sleep easier,' his friend answered. 'But I don't expect it to be that way.'
They did not return to the road, but worked their way through the cactus growth toward the bawling of the restless steers. Hal was in the lead, because he knew this outdoor life better than his companion. He moved slowly, careful to avoid stepping on any dry growth that would crackle beneath his feet. That they were too far from the scene of activity to be heard he knew, but it was possible that the rustlers had put out sentries to protect them from discovery.
The ground fell away in front of them. It was not light enough to see clearly, but Hal guessed this was the rim of a draw running down into Montoyo Flats. Judging by the noise made by the stock, the outlaws must be at work several hundred yards farther from the road. This was reasonable, since they would not want to be too near anybody traveling to or from Casa Rita.
Hal turned to the left, well back from the arroyo rim to escape likelihood of being seen. He whispered into Arnold's ear a warning against speaking or making any sound as he crept forward. They might stumble into a watcher at any time.
The bellowing of the stock was louder. A man's voice drifted to them. Stevens went down to his hands and knees, and Arnold followed suit. They edged toward the draw, taking advantage of every clump of greasewood or cactus that offered concealment. Hal scanned every dark mass as he hitched his body into greater danger. At times he lay crouched for several minutes without moving. He had to be sure that what looked like a bush was not a sitting man.
Smoke tickled his nostrils, and there was a slight luminosity in the atmosphere. Somebody had lit a fire. The moon was obscured by scudding clouds, but, when Stevens and Arnold looked into the draw from back of a heavy screen of vegetation, there was sufficient light to make out the dark forms of men against the background of the fire and the shapes of several trucks.
The night raiders had made coffee. One of them was pouring it into the cups held by others. Two or three were lounging on the ground at ease. The small glow from their cigarettes went on and off like fireflies in the night. The watchers could hear voices, though the distance was too far to understand what was said.
Hal could not see the branding irons, but he knew they were being heated to change the marks of ownership on the cattle in the trucks. He was pretty sure the steers had been stolen from some pasture in the Soledad Valley. There was a chance that they belonged to him.
'Could we get closer, so as to identify some of them?' Arnold whispered in the ear of his friend.
Hal shook his head. 'Too big a risk. We'll do better playing it safe.'
The cattleman knew from a dozen experiences this indolent ten minutes while the irons were heating before branding began. A man strolled to the fire and with a long rod raked the coals around the irons. A wave of laughter followed a remark one of the group had evidently made. Occasionally some unseen animal stretched out its head and mooed plaintively.
From a truck a roped steer was dragged down a landing ladder. Lariats snaked out and caught its feet. Taken by surprise, it fell heavily. A man sat on its head. Others drew the ropes tight. An expert applied the branding iron, careful to make sure the burn was enough and no more. It scrambled to its feet, dazed and bewildered, to be pushed and prodded up the ladder into the truck. Presently another bawling steer took the place of the first. The branding went on for hours. Even from the distance where the two watchers lay, the acrid smell of burnt hair and flesh could be savored.
When the job was done, the trucks drove away, followed by the sedan. Stevens and Arnold had not waited till the branding was finished. They had slipped away to the road and were lying behind some prickly pears when the procession passed on the way to town. The moon was under cover again as the trucks rolled by, so that it was not possible to recognize the drivers. But it slid out from a cloud before the sedan appeared. Hal did not know the man at the wheel, nor could he identify the two in the dark rear seat. But the other rider in the front seat was Brick Fenwick.
CHAPTER 27
In the Gibson Stockyards
HAL KNEW it was not necessary for them to follow the trucks closely. They would be unloaded at the packinghouse pens. As a precaution, since the thieves knew Stevens and his guest were in town, a guard of at least two men would be left with them until morning. Gibson would take no chances. This new shipment would be butchered and the hides disposed of at once. The situation boiled down to this, that any proof of brand-blotting obtained would have to be got during the night.
The difficulty of getting evidence was increased by the fact that if the outlaws caught sight of them anywhere, a battle would almost certainly be precipitated. They could not shoot down the guards left at the stockyards nor could they make an investigation in their presence.
'Looks as though we are stymied,' Arnold conceded.
'Yes,' Hal agreed. 'We'll have to be lucky to hole out.' He added with a grin: 'We're too blamed lawful in our lawlessness.'
They decided that their best chance was to go down to the pens and hang around watching for an opportunity. The bandits might make a mistake. Five minutes inside the corral would be long enough if they were not interrupted.
Hal slipped down with a torch into the basement of the hotel to find a weapon necessary for the job. He discovered one in the furnace room, an axe used for splitting firewood and kindling.
Since there was a chance that the enemy might be watching their car, they decided to go to the packing house on foot. By way of the service entrance they slipped from the building into the alley back of the hotel, then cut across a vacant lot, which brought them to a narrow, unpaved road running parallel with the main one. Along this they trudged for nearly a mile before coming to the back fence of the Gibson plant. The sky had cleared, but the moon was down. They would have to be careful to avoid being seen.
Hal scouted the terrain, leaving his companion in the brush that grew thick almost to the fence. Owing to the limited activity of the company, most of the pens were empty. Those occupied were the ones close to the building. Hugging a fence, he drew near to an enclosure in which steers were moving about restlessly, protesting by uneasy bellows the indignity they had suffered. He felt sure these must be part of the consignment just trucked to the yards, because just before dark he had circled the pens and all but one had been empty.