ess
blanketed with hushed midnight. "If it thinks it's got Casey whipped,
it better think agin and think quick. I'll give it somethin' to point
at, 'fore I leave this here butte.

"Funny, the way it kept pointin' up this way. I've saw Joshuays
before--miles of 'em. But I never seen one that looked so kinda human
and so kinda like it was tryin' to talk. Seems kinda funny; an' that
old lady rockin' an' lookin'--seems like her an' the Joshuay has kinda
throwed in together, hopin' somebody might come along with savvy enough
to kinda--aw, hell!" So did Casey and his Irish belief in the
supernatural fall plump against the limitations of his vocabulary.

Against the limitations proscribed by his material predicament,
however, Casey Ryan set his face with a grin. Somebody was going to
get the big jolt of his life before long, he told himself over a
careful breakfast fire built cunningly far back in the crevice where a
current of air sucked into the rock capping of the butte. Something was
going on up here that shouldn't go on. He did not know what it was,
but he meant to stop it. He did not know who was making Indian war on
peaceful prospectors, but Casey felt that they were already as good as
licked, since he was here with breakfast under his belt and his
six-shooter tucked handily inside his waistband.

He squinted up the crack in the ledge, made certain mental alterations
in its narrow, jagged walls, and reached for the tough-handled,
efficient prospector's pick he had thoughtfully included in his meagre
equipment. Slowly and methodically he worked up the crevice, knocking
off certain sharp points of rock, and knowing all the while what would
probably happen to him if he were overheard.

He was not discovered, however. When he laid elbows on the upper level
of the rim and pulled himself up, his coat was on his back where it
belonged, and even Barney could have followed him. Yet the top showed
no evidence of a widening of the fissure. The bushy junipers hid him
completely while he reconnoitred and considered what he should do.

Because the place was close and the invisible call was strong, Casey
went first to the rock hut, circled it carefully and found that it was
exactly what it had seemed at first sight; a hidden place with no
evident opening save that high, small window under the eaves. There
was no sign of pathway leading to it, no trace of life outside its
wall. But when he crept close and peeked in a