It was on one of these occasions, when he had been driven into a dark and
narrow cañon, that he came to a sudden halt. He was looking at an empty
tomato can. Swinging down from his saddle, he picked it up without
dismounting. A little juice dripped from the can to the ground.
Flatray needed no explanation. In Arizona men on the range often carry a
can of tomatoes instead of a water canteen. Nothing alleviates thirst like
the juice of this acid fruit. Some one had opened this can within two
hours. Otherwise the sun would have dried the moisture.
Jack took his rifle from its place beneath his legs and set it across the
saddle in front of him. Very carefully he continued on his way, watching
every rock and bush ahead of him. Here and there in the sand were printed
the signs of a horse going in the same direction as his.
Up and down, in and out of a maze of crooked paths, working by ever so
devious a way higher into the chain of mountains, Jack followed his
leader. Now he would lose the hoofmarks; now he would pick them up again.
And, at the last, they brought him to the rim of a basin, a bowl of wooded
ravines, of twisted ridges, of bleak spurs jutting into late pastures
almost green. It was now past sunset. Dusk was filtering down from the
blue peaks. As he looked a star peeped out low on the horizon.
But was it a star? He glimpsed it between trees. The conviction grew on
him that what he saw was the light of a lamp. A tangle of rough country
lay between him and that beacon, but there before him lay his destination.
At last he had found his way into Dead Man's Cache.
The sheriff lost no time, for he knew that if he should get lost in the
darkness on one of these forest slopes he might wander all night. A rough
trail led him down into the basin. Now he would lose sight of the light.
Half an hour later, pushing to the summit of a hill, he might find it.
After a time there twinkled a second beside the first. He was getting
close to a settlement of some kind.
Below him in the darkness lay a stretch of open meadow rising to the
wooded foothills. Behind these a wall of rugged mountains encircled the
valley like a gigantic crooked arm. Already he could make out faintly the
outlines of the huddled buildings.
Slipping from his horse, Jack went forward cautiously on foot. He was
still a hundred yards from the nearest hut when dogs bayed warning of his
approach. He waited, rifle in hand. No sign of human life showed except
the two lights shining from as many windows. Flatray counted four other
cabins as dark as Egypt.