Chapter Ten: IN THE CANYON

It took old Picket-Stake Hendry one full day of tireless walking to get back to the canyon he had cited on the false location papers planted on the bushwhacker. The next morning, he summed up the situation. It would probably take a couple of days for the body to be discovered. It would take at least two more for the discoverer—who would undoubtedly be a partner of the bushwhacker—to find this canyon. One day had passed; that left at least three days before anyone would appear in the canyon, time enough for him to hunt and gather berries and stock his cave with provisions.

Pick had discovered this cave a long time ago. It was high up the canyon side, just a few feet below the rimrock, and from the bottom of the canyon, it was invisible. Its only entrance was by a length of rope anchored to the rimrock. He knew it would be a perfect place of concealment.

Satisfied, Pick left the canyon to go to a salt lick higher up in the Calicoes. Two days later he returned with his pack full of partially dried deer meat. The next day, he went back to the salt lick for the rest of the meat and the berries he had picked.

On the morning of the fourth day he left the cave at sunup and made his way down into the canyon. Choosing a small butte screened with thick brush, he pushed his way into it, and by full day he was on the watch, invisible to anyone in the canyon or on the rimrock. During that long day, Pick did a lot of wondering. Would the bushwhacker’s body, under the belief it was Pick’s, be turned over to Johnny? Maybe then Johnny would be the one to find the false location papers. If so, Johnny would come up here.

But Pick didn’t think so. He knew two men had been following him. Up yonder and over south where his real strike was, where the mother lode was, he knew that he had not been seen. Neither was it down here, where he had dug fruitlessly for months and sunk a dozen test pits, that the two men had picked up his tracks. It had been farther over toward the north, where he had been puttering at a couple of test pits off and on for the last two months before he moved up the mountain. There were two of them, and they were careless with their tracks, he thought. That had cost the life of one. Surely this man’s partner would be the one to find the body and to get the false papers.

Afternoon came and passed, and Pick did not see a living thing the whole day but a jack rabbit. At dark, he went back to his cave. Next morning, with the patience of an Indian, he was back in the brush.

Around nine o’clock, he saw a man enter the canyon on foot, and a dry smile of satisfaction crossed Pick’s face. The man’s movements were cautious; he had a rifle slacked under his arm and a pack of miner’s tools on his back. When he had climbed a pinnacle rock and scanned the canyon for a full half hour, he came down and pulled a paper from his Levi’s pocket. Those would be the location papers, Pick thought.

Pick lay there a long time, watching. The man paused perhaps three hundred yards away, down on the floor of the canyon, and soon was working at a shallow test pit Pick had dug. He was filling small ore sacks with a short-handled shovel. The clang of his pick and single jack were loud in the morning stillness.

Pick debated. He wanted a good look at this man. He also wanted to talk to him, but after a few minutes of watching, he knew that it would not be easy to capture him here. The pit stood in the midst of a barren space that afforded no cover at all. He would be a perfect target for the man’s rifle. Pick knew that the old trail was the only logical way out of the canyon. Why don’t I drop down there and stop him? He won’t be half so spooky if he gets his work done and thinks he’s alone.

His mind made up, Pick backed quietly out of the brush, and, keeping the big boulders of the canyon floor between himself and the man, worked his way to the canyon side. Halfway up it, he heard the ring of the single jack cease, and he hurried a little. It was a good mile to the place he had in mind. Still, the man would have to tote the heavy ore sacks, and that would slow him up. Even if he missed him, Pick thought, it wouldn’t be hard to overtake a man afoot packing forty pounds of ore on his back.

Just the same, old Pick hurried. The place he chose was so similar to the one in which he had lain in wait for the bushwhacker that a wry smile pulled up the corners of his mouth. Crouched behind a rock, gun drawn, Pick waited—and waited and waited.

When he could stand it no longer, he took to the trail and worked carefully back toward the mouth of the canyon. When he got a view of it, he saw it was empty. Dismay struck him, and immediately he searched for tracks. Back in a little rincon he saw the reason why he had missed the man. Here, in the drifted dust, were the tracks of a horse.

Pick squatted on his haunches and cursed himself with blistering venom. He had been taken in like a child, like any simple fool. Just because the man had entered the canyon afoot, it had not occurred to Pick to look for a horse. And while he was making his laborious way afoot to the trail, the man had escaped on horseback.

But Pick remained standing there only a moment. Then he started out trailing the horse. He could do it at a fast walk, but it was nerve-straining work, and when darkness fell he had to admit defeat. He could not overtake the man; but maybe he could track him to the end of his journey.

But next day, at noon, Pick knew he really was licked. The tracks petered out in the gravelly bed of a stream, and four hours spent in searching for tracks went unrewarded. Pick glared at the horizon, cursing himself and his luck and life in general.

“But hogtie me,” he swore darkly, “if this isn’t the last time I get caught.”

Next night, down at one of the foothill water holes, Pick helped himself to a Bar 33 horse. In four more days, he was over on the other side of the county, where he was sure he wouldn’t be known. He was there for a reason. He wanted to find out if Johnny Hendry was doing anything about cleaning up the mystery. To Pick, this was more important than finding the man who had tried to bushwhack him.

Pick met a puncher near Doane’s store. And, talking with him, learned many things, among them that Johnny Hendry had been elected sheriff, that he had run the hardcases out of Cosmos, and that there had been an election dance held for him last night.

The puncher, seeing Pick’s grin, said, “What’s the matter, pop? Anything funny about that?”

“Nary a thing,” Pick answered. “I was just wonderin’ when it was goin’ to happen.”

“Brother, it has,” the puncher said fervently.

And Pick, satisfied, headed back for the Calicoes, his patience a bottomless thing once again. In a few more days, if Johnny’s success in dealing with these hardcases continued, Pick could come back to life. Just a few more days.