Page:Frank Spearman--Whispering Smith.djvu/432

 big wash in the shadow of the mountains. On the higher ground to the right, Kennedy and Scott were riding where they could command the gullies of the precipitous left bank of the river. High on the left bank itself, worming his way like a snake from point to point of concealment through the scanty brush of the mountainside, crawled Wickwire, commanding the pockets in the right bank. Closer to the river on the right and following the trail itself over shale and rock and between scattered bowlders, Whispering Smith, low on his horse’s neck, rode slowly.

It was almost too dark to catch the slight discolorations where pebbles had been disturbed on a flat surface or the calk of a horseshoe had slipped on the uneven face of a ledge, and he had halted under an uplift to wait for Wickwire on the distant left to advance, when, half a mile below him, a horseman crossing the river rode slowly past a gap in the rocks and disappeared below the next bend. He was followed in a moment by a second rider and a third. Whispering Smith knew he had not been seen. He had flushed the game, and, wheeling his horse, rode straight up the river-bank to high ground, where he could circle around widely below them. They had slipped between his line and Wickwire’s, and were doubling back, following the dry bed of the stream. It was im- 406