The Adam Chaser/Chapter 13

ALTING, hating to set down in plain words the full extent of his guilt, driven to it by the relentless promptings of Bill, Jack Huntley wrote three precious pages, that would make interesting reading for the county officials, before he signed his name. Abington saw the teary waring of the pen going dry and dropping blots on the book, and signed his name as a witness before all the ink ran out. The thing was done.

Bill threw back his shoulders with an unconscious gesture of relief, and stepped away. “Now, die and be damned to you!” he said as he turned his back and walked off.

Abington looked after him grinning. “This is where he holes up, Bill. He should have a pretty fair equipment. Better explore around a little. I have carbide tied up in my handkerchief, if you need the lamp. But the place seems well lighted from above.”

“Yeah, I'm sure goin' to look around. I believe he's the one poisoned our burros. I bet”

Abington looked up, got to his feet and started toward Bill, who had given a sudden bellowing whoop.

“Well, the hound!” Bill was balancing two large mescal stalks in his hands. Light they were as cork, tough as bamboo, large at the base as Bill's muscular leg above the knee. Three feet from the base of each was a foot rest, lashed securely to the stalk.

“There's the gosh-awful!” Bill said in the incredulous tone of one who can scarcely believe his own eyes. “Look at how them sticks is cut on the bottom, professor! Sheep hoofs to a T. Stilts! And that's how the thing took such long steps and got over the country so almighty mysterious!”

“Ingenious!” Abington declared, balancing the stilts in his hands before he stood them against the wall of the cave. “Simple, too. I had a suspicion of some such thing, but dismissed it as impractical in so rough a country.”

“I dunno. They're light as paper. They could be carried easy enough on rocky ground, and just used for sand and gravel.” He paused. “Now I know he poisoned the burros. He seen your camp set up in plain sight, and come straddlin' over there. A feller can cover a lot of country on stilts, once he gets used to walking on them. I used to when I was a kid.”

Abington, however, was not quite satisfied. There lacked the motive and he spoke of it. “If he had raided camps and carried off the supplies, I could understand it. But this attempt at terrorization, and the insane destruction of good food, does not come within the bounds of logic.”

“Yeah, but you don't know that bird like I do,” returned Bill. “He's what God used for a pattern when He made the first drove of hogs. You mind all that talk last night? That about having millions in carnetite, and being richer than Rockefeller? Jack thinks he's got hold of something in here and he's been trying to scare everybody off. Maybe he's got something worth holdin' on to and maybe he ain't. If he has, I sure feel I'm entitled to grab it!”

Abington was walking around the roomy chamber, flicking this thing and that thing with a glance, overlooking nothing. He stooped over a pile of whitish rock stained thickly with great blobs of bright yellow, selected a lump and looked up, seeking an opening where the strongest light fell through. He went over and stood under the light, turning the rock this way and that while he examined it through a miner's glass.

“So this is his millions in carnetite!” he said contemptuously at last, tossing the sample to Bill, who caught it dexterously as a catcher cups palms for a ball. “More than one poor devil has been fooled by limonite. That's what this is, if I am not badly mistaken, a yellow ocher, resembling carnetite. There's your revenge, Bill. Go tell him his millions in carnetite are just a dream. Tell him it's limonite. If he's greedy as you say, that will be punishment enough.”

“Not when he thinks he's dying,” Bill grumbled. “He won't give a darn. What's he flopping around like that for?” he asked sharply. “Something bite him, do you s'pose? If it did, it'll die,” he went on sententiously.

BINGTON ran over to where Jack Huntley lay on the ground. He could do nothing, with the primitive means at hand. Huntley had indeed been bitten—by death. Whether the wound had been more serious than Abington diagnosed it, or whether he had injured himself in crawling to the cave, they could not of course do more than guess. Within half an hour Jack Huntley lay dead on the floor of the cave.

“This means that I must go in and have a talk with the sheriff,” Abington observed. “A mere formality, but one I prefer not to neglect. Want to come along, Bill? I'll pay them for the car, far as that goes.”

“Yeah, I guess maybe I better go in and have it over with. I'll pay you back in work, professor, if you'll go ahead and settle for that darn car I wrecked. But don't let 'em stick you on the price of it. It wasn't worth more'n two or three hundred dollars.”

“I'm a fair judge of cars,” Abington remarked. “It will be all right, Bill.”

“Yeah. And when we come back in here with a fresh outfit, professor, we better bring along a couple of good muckers and some powder. I believe I can maybe locate the hole into that cave, if I can take my time and have some help. Or maybe we can find another way in there. We sure oughta come fixed to spend the whole winter in here. I found a lot more carvings than I'd ever saw before.”

Abington laughed to himself, and clapped a hand down on Bill's shoulder. “Bill, my lad, that's the true scientific spirit! You'll be an Adam chaser as long as you live, now you've started.”

“Yeah,” said Bill, staring around him at the encircling red hills. “They're in here somewhere, professor. Eight feet tall and big accordin'. No foolin'. I seen em myself. Well, let's bury the dead and get ready and beat it. We want to get back in here while the good weather holds.”