As McAllister headed down into the basin, he knew that he was constrained in a number of ways. He was wounded for one thing and that would curtail his speed and scope on foot. This was serious, for what lay ahead of him most likely would demand fast work on foot. His only animal was a mule, which could mean that with his quarry mounted on the mare McAllister would be left standing. Yet if the affair once more became a flight across the desert the mule would be some kind of an asset, for a mule would go on without water after the best horse had dropped.
His greatest limitation was that he had no concrete idea of where the man could be.
So he gambled. Wounded, the man would need a position which would offer him security and a good sight of the surrounding country. He not only wanted to be out of sight, but he needed to be in a position of being forewarned of anybody approaching him. The nest of rocks where McAllister and Ana had stopped would provide both. The situation called for a kind of mental double-bluff. It was an obvious place to be; therefore the man would not be there. If McAllister thought the place too obvious, he would dismiss it from his mind and not search there.
What interested McAllister was where the man would conceal his horses. They would need to be on grass, but if he hobbled them on the shelf-land, they would be plain to the view of anybody below in the basin. McAllister in a like position would have hobbled one animal on grass at a good distance from the hiding place and kept the other among the rocks to be let out to graze under cover of darkness.
As soon as he was down off the pass, McAllister turned the mule south and made his way first across a wide prairieland and then into deep timber. He rode with the greatest caution, rifle in hand, eyes skinned and ready to shoot at a moving shadow. In the middle of the afternoon he stumbled quite by accident on a hobbled horse. It was the quarry’s own horse, roughly hobbled with rawhide lines which looked as if they had been cut from a lariat. He had sidelined the horse and it was moving quite contentedly as it grazed. It greeted McAllister cheerfully and tried to follow the mule when McAllister started to back-track him. These tracks took him back into timber again, going north, and as McAllister expected were wiped out carefully after a while. McAllister did not waste time hunting tracks again, but continued on north until he came to the edge of timber and looked along the line of the escarpment which was the eastern edge of the shelf upon which the rock shelter stood. From where he had halted he could see distantly the rocks, a small dark smudge in the great sloping stretch of grass.
Now he looked at the sky and assessed how much daylight he had left at his disposal. He debated with himself. Was it best to wait for dawn and do what he had to do in daylight? Or should he not risk the quarry getting away under cover of dark and start his move now?
He decided upon now. The quarry might take flight and that was the last thing McAllister wanted. With the mare to ride, the man could stretch this chase out to another six weeks. The throbbing pain in McAllister’s leg dissuaded him from leaving his action till daylight.
He rode openly from the trees and headed across the grassland below the escarpment so that anybody in the rocks could not fail to see him. As he went he did a pretty good act of a man who was nervous and expecting a bullet at any moment. In fact he did half-expect one, but no more than that. If the man was wounded and he was safely in the rocks, he would be sensible and wait to see if McAllister would ride on past.
McAllister’s memory and feel for terrain now proved invaluable. He remembered clearly the goat-track below the spot where he had waved to Ana up in the rocks. The mule attacked this steep and at times dangerous climb with all the sure-footed confidence of his breed and deposited McAllister safe and sound amid the thickets and rocks which stood there at the bottom of the sloping bench. McAllister dismounted, performed a ritual cursing of the pain in his leg and made a long inspection of the rocks on the slope above.
He saw nothing that could suggest a man and horse hidden there. Just the same, he was starting to get confident over the hunting of this elusive man. Now patiently he started his simple ploy. Taking his fifty-foot reata, he fastened each end of it to a couple of stakes. Then he used his knife to push the stakes down deep so they could not easily be withdrawn. That done, he looped one of the mule’s lines to the rope, so that the animal could move along the rope to graze. With his pegging-strings, he tied two sticks to the mule’s saddle and fixed his hat firmly on top. The dummy was of sufficient height to be seen occasionally through the gaps in the thickets and rocks by the man above as the mule moved. If the man was up above, that was, and not below watching McAllister sardonically. McAllister told himself that chances had to be taken and that was one of them.
Now, Henry in hand, McAllister wormed his way through the thickets until he had a clear view of the rocks. Taking out his glass he examined the rocks with a patient thoroughness. After about five minutes, he picked up the reflection of light on a small smooth surface and knew that he was looking at the eyeball of a man lying in deep shadow. This discovery gave him enormous satisfaction. Knowing now that there was a man concealed there, he could map out his immediate actions. He folded the glass, slipped it into a pocket and picked up the Henry. Knowing the interior of the natural fortress as he did, he could picture to himself almost the exact position in which the man was lying. He reckoned that the man had spotted his movements and possibly was at that moment curiously watching the movements of the mule-supported hat.
McAllister quickly brought the Henry to his shoulder, aimed and fired, driving the bullet into the break in the rocks which was the quarry’s loophole. Immediately he fired, he flung himself down and bellied his way to a new position. Two shots now came from the rocks, widely spaced, showing that the man was shooting with due care and without panic. McAllister rolled away from the rocks, crawled back through the thicket and slid below the edge of the escarpment. The mule continued to graze contentedly as if nothing had happened. McAllister now gained his feet and went as fast as his injured leg would allow along the line of the escarpment edge, going north until he came to the faint break in the deep grass above him which denoted the start of the curving gully. He wormed his way into this and started to crawl west, going up the slope of the bench, knowing that he was concealed from the man above him. As he crawled he heard two more shots from the quarry and was relieved that the man’s attention was still being held. McAllister could not expect that the simple trick of the moving hat would work for any length of time, but he prayed that the man would not venture from the shelter of the rocks before he could carry out his plan. All would depend on how badly hurt the man was.
Only once during that fast and seemingly unending crawl did McAllister pause to rest his leg. It was desperately hot in the grassy tunnel. He found that the dust and particles of grass in there were getting up his nose and giving him an overpowering desire to sneeze. Frequently now he had to make brief stops to press a forefinger to the base of his nose to stop a sneeze coming. Before long, however, the tunnel abruptly turned left and he found himself crawling in towards the rear of the rocks. The quarry fired once more, proving to McAllister that he was still in the desired position. McAllister could not believe his luck. His respect for the man’s cunning and resourcefulness prompted him still to believe that the fellow must be aware of his presence and would produce something to counter his move. However, when he reached the rocks and reached out to touch the flat rock which he had placed to block off the entrance to the tunnel, the quarry’s rifle sounded again and McAllister knew that he was comparatively safe.
Gingerly he removed the flat rock from the entrance and laid it carefully and silently on the ground. Peering out into the bright sunlight he saw the soles of the man’s boots. The fellow lay face downwards and was in the act of jacking a fresh round into the breech of his repeating carbine.
It was all so ridiculously simple that McAllister could scarcely believe that it was happening. He crawled silently from cover, rose to his feet and took a quick look around. The little mystery of how the man had managed to conceal Sally’s presence was at once solved. He had the mare lying on her side hogtied and helpless, her nose bound to keep her silent. The sight drove McAllister into a rage, which gave added strength to the blow he delivered to the back of the man’s head with his rifle butt.
Its deliverance gave him profound pleasure. The killer’s head dropped forward onto the stock of his rifle, his forefinger pressed against the trigger and a shot sounded.
McAllister wasted no time. He gripped the unconscious form by the scruff of its neck and hauled it away from the rocks. Tossing the rifle out of the man’s reach, he heaved off a boot, then, taking the handcuffs from a pocket, he clamped one cuff to the man’s wrist and the other over an ankle. After that he released the mare. She scrambled to her feet, looking totally disillusioned with mankind at the treatment she had received. McAllister patted her on the neck and drove her out of the rocks to grass. A moment later she was grazing contentedly, her chagrin apparently quite forgotten, and then when the mule spotted her and started braying she trotted down the shelf to satisfy her equine curiosity.
Very slowly the unconscious man recovered his senses.