Page:Allan Dunn--Dead Man's Gold.djvu/101

Rh up in a blanket. Stone could see Harvey watching him with his obsidian eyes. Then Stone got up to hobble the burros. Larkin joined him.

"Kind of rum, the w'y Diamond Dick tackled Healy, don't you think?*' he asked.

"Why?"

"I don't know w'y, but I've got a bloomin' hunch them two ain't strangers. I'm goin' to keep my heyes peeled, I am."

Stone dismissed this as fanciful. The place was full of fancies. It was more, it was sinister, mysterious. Circumstances combined to make it so. The high cliffs of this stone passage so blended with the deep purple of the sky that the rim lines could be determined only by their shutting off the stars that blazed above them. Within the walls were caves once peopled by cave-dwellers who had lived and fought and died in their primitive fastnesses. Within an hour or so's journey must be Lyman's treasure, the eroded flakes of gold upon the bars of the dried-up placer creek, the glittering wall of the Madre d'Oro, and the mummied bodies and skulls the old prospector had muttered about in his last moments. Hovering somewhere in the night were the Apaches who had made the signal smokes.

They split the watching into two-hour spells. Harvey was to take the last one, just before the dawn. That was the danger time, in case the Indians made up their minds to take a hand in the game, and Harvey was best qualified to handle the contingency. Stone's turn came just before, Healy awakening him.