The Adam Chaser/Chapter 3

NTO the firelight Bill Jonathan came walking one evening, barely within the month he had given himself in the symbolic message. Face drawn and sallow, eyes staring out from under his hat brim with a glassy dullness born of hunger, fever and fatigue mingled, perhaps, with that never-sleeping fear which dogs the soul of the hunted. But none of this showed in his manner, nor in his greeting which gave the arrival a casual note.

“Hello, professor! Got my message, I see. Well, I had one merry heck of a trip, but here I am.” He dropped down where he could lean against Abington's favorite camp boulder—lean there at ease or crawl swiftly out of sight behind the broken ledge, Abington observed with that negligent, flicking glance of his. Another glance dropped briefly to Bill's ankles, and Bill laughed wryly.

“Didn't think I meant to wear them things permanent, did you, professor? Hell, I ain't no Aztec princess, going around with anklets on that'd sink a whale. No, I was up at the old Honey Boy Mine, in the blacksmith shop, setting on a bench with one foot in a vise, filing faster than a buzz saw when I heard you folks go past, down in the gulch. At least, I s'pose it was you folks, because it was a cinch nobody would pass you in the cañon, and I had it doped out you'd roll down to where you could get water, and come chasing me up. Hauled my nursemaid on into Tonopah, I'll bet!”

“I did that.” Abington smiled, tossing Bill his cigarette case before opening a can of baked beans while the coffee heated. “I really didn't think you'd make it, though. Handicap too heavy.”

Bill accepted the cigarette case, pausing to eye with prideful interest the markings. He lighted a cigarette and relishfully inhaled three gratified mouthfuls before he spoke.

“If you mean them irons, I didn't wear 'em long. Just till I could get the bus up to the old Honey Boy. Wonder you didn't spot the place where I turned off—maybe you did. It was on your side the road.” He saw Abington nod, and grinned appreciatively. “Well, it rained some that night, and that helped dim the tracks. Nobody came near the mine; not while I was there, anyhow.

“Friend Park had a fair lot of grub in the back of the car, and I rustled a little more at the mine. Waited till dark and beat it back down the cañon and over to Bishop. Made Randsburg, drove the car over a cliff into a brushy cañon just before I got there, walked in with an old bed roll I'd fixed up at the Honey Boy, as good a blanket stiff as the next one! Worked there a week and blew out again, first pay day—hit it just right, as it happened.

“Hoboed to San Berdoo, doubled back to Needles—hanging tight to my blanket roll and my time check to show I'd worked not so long ago. And I've been hoofing it up the river since then.”

Abington nodded again and pulled the coffeepot off the coals, using a crooked stick for the purpose. It may have occurred to him that crooked sticks are sometimes more useful than straight ones, for he gave Bill Jonathan an unhurried measuring look as he extended a cup of black coffee.

“That mummy sign, Bill. Did you mean by that you had discovered more ancient writings, or did you by any chance refer to skeletal remains?”

Bill took a great swallow of coffee and set down the cup. His tired eyes brightened in the fire glow. “Maybe you'd call 'em skeletons, professor—I'd say they're rock. All you want. Thought you'd like to take a look at 'em. So when we met up with you on the way to Carson I made up my mind I wouldn't wait till I was turned loose. You might be to hell an' gone by that time, or some nosey Adam chaser might run acrost 'em. I seen last spring how you've got your heart set on finding the granddaddy of all men, or some such thing, and I'd kinda hate to see anybody beat you to it. So I made my git-away in order to show you where they're at.”

AVING thus explained the matter to his own satisfaction, Bill forthwith began to empty the can of beans in a manner best pleasing to himself.

John Abington poked absently at the fire, gently rapping upon a burning juniper branch until it broke under the blows, spurting sparks as it fell into the coals.

“Adam chasers, as you call it, are not so numerous in this country,” he said softly. “Not nearly so numerous as—er—deputy sheriffs.”

Bill Jonathan leaned sidewise, reached the coffeepot and refilled his cup. “Yeah, I get you,” he said finally. “But this is wild country we're going into. I ain't taking such an awful chance, now I got this far. I was duckin' sheriffs when I found these stone men. I've got to go on duckin' sheriffs anyway—that, or else let 'em ketch me and put me in for five or ten years. It's six one way and a half dozen the other.

“This is how I've got it doped out, professor. You and me throw in together. I'll show you Adam—or his wife's folks, anyway—and you furnish me with grub and tobacco so I don't have to show up where I can be nabbed. I'll draw on you for supplies and keep along close without trailing right with you. So you won't get in bad if it's found out I'm in the hills.” He looked across the fire at Abington. “How's it strike you, professor?”

Over and over Abington had considered this very point during his month of waiting. It all depended on Bill himself, he had decided. Some men are so constituted that preying upon society is second nature to them. Others fall afoul of the law through no real criminal intent. There is a vast difference between the two types, Abington knew. It all depended on Bill.

“I never did function as guardian angel to escaped convicts,” Abington said with brutal directness. “Laws are better kept than broken, as you will probably agree, and it ill becomes a loyal citizen to help any man dodge the penalty for his misdeeds. On the other hand, even law-breakers may contribute something to the general welfare of the world. Discovering the skeletal relics of a man of the Cretaceous period may not materially help to liquidate the national debt, but it would be a priceless contribution to the scientific knowledge of the human race.”

“Yeah, and I can go on and finish that argument, myself. I can't do no more damage to society while I'm herdin' with the coyotes, and if I can help you find what you're lookin' for, that's better than loafin' around doing time in Carson. So you won't be doing nothing worse than taking a boarder off the hands of the State. That's about the way you doped it out, ain't it, professor?”

“Essentially the same, yes,” Abington admitted. “I'm glad you have so thorough an understanding of the matter. if your offense was not too great I could perhaps get you paroled and placed in my charge, but that would take time and They've just discovered the skull of an ape man in Rhodesia, Bill! I'd give a good deal to be able to show them a Cretaceous man found in America.”

Bill leaned back with a sigh of repletion and lighted his second cigarette. “Well, I dunno how Cretaceous they are, professor, but they're fossils all right enough. Stone, anyway, way back in a cave—you have to crawl on your belly quite a ways, where I went in. I guess maybe there's another opening somewhere. I didn't look for it. I had piñon knots for torches, and I lit a fresh one soon as I come into this chamber—or cave. And when the blaze showed them stone skeletons Say, professor, I backed right out the same way I'd went in!”

“How do you know they were fossilized? They may have been modern—no more than a hundred years old! They may even have been frontiersmen trapped in there while trying to escape from hostile Indians.” Abington's tone was crisp.

“I went back,” Bill declared calmly. “Got over my scare and wanted to see for sure whether them skeletons was twelve feet high like they looked to be, or just plain man size. So I looked good, next time in. There was four, and the biggest wasn't over eight feet. And they was solid stone, far as I could tell.”

“I don't suppose you could describe the geologic conditions—I shall have to determine that, of course, when I arrive at the spot.”

During five minutes Bill smoked and silently eyed the archæologist, who sat meditatively tapping another burned stick into coals.

“One thing I better tell you, professor,” he ventured at last, vaguely stirred by the rapt look in Abington's dark eyes. “There's a lot more to it than just arriving 'at the spot,' as you say. When I went into that cave, I was scared in. There's something up in there that got my goat. I beat it outa there—that's how I got nabbed by the law.

“I can't tell you what it is, professor. Some kinda animal. Makes tracks like a mountain sheep—but it ain't a sheep; or if it is All I can say is that us Adam chasers will have to keep our eyes peeled.”