Collie wheeled quickly, saw nothing unusual, and turned again toward the camp. Then he hesitated. He would look down the cañon. He realized that he was unarmed. Then he grew ashamed of his hesitancy. He picked his way down the stream. A buzzard circled far above the cliffs. The air hummed with invisible bees in the rank wild clover. He peered past the next bend. A short distance below stood a riderless horse. The bridle was trailing. For an instant Collie did not realize the significance of the animal waiting patiently for its rider. Then, like the flash of a speeding film, he saw it all--his pony's tracks up the cañon--the rider who had undoubtedly seen him crossing to the water-hole, and who had waited until daylight to follow the tracks; who had dismounted, and was probably in ambush watching him. He summoned all his reserve courage. Turning away, he remarked, distinctly, naturally, casually, "Thought I heard something. Must have been the water."
He walked slowly back to the notch in the cañon walls. Stepping through it, he continued on up the stream. A few paces beyond the notch, and a face appeared in the cleft rock, watching him. The watcher seemed in doubt. Collie's action had been natural enough. Had he seen the horse? The hidden face grew crafty. The eyes grew cold. The watcher tapped the side of the cliff with his revolver butt. The noise was slight, but in that place of sensitive echoes, loud enough to be heard a long way up the cañon. Then it was that Collie made a courageous but terrible mistake. He heard the sound, and seemed to realize that it was made intentionally--to attract his attention. Yet he was not sure. He kept on, ignoring the sound. Had he not suspected some one was in the cañon, to have glanced back would have been the most natural thing in the world. The watcher realized this. He knew that the other had heard him--suspected his presence, and was making a daring bluff.
"Got to stop that," muttered the watcher, and he raised his hand.
The imprisoned report rolled and reëchoed like mountain thunder. Collie threw up his arms and lurched forward.
Below in the cañon clattered the hoofs of the speeding horse. The rider, still holding his six-gun, muzzle up, glanced back. "I didn't care partic'lar about gettin' _him_, but gettin' the kid hits the red-head between the eyes. I guess I'm about even now." And Silent Saunders holstered his gun, swung out of the cañon, and spurred down the mountain, not toward the desert town, but toward Gophertown, some thirty miles to the north. He had found the claim. The desert town folk he had used to good advantage. They had paid his expenses while he trailed Overland and Collie. They had even guaranteed him protection from the law--such as it was on the Mojave. He had every reason to be grateful to them, but he was just a step or two above them in criminal artistry. He had been a "killer." Like the lone wolf that calls the pack to the hunt, he turned instinctively to Gophertown, a settlement in the hills not unknown to a few of the authorities, but unmolested by them. The atmosphere of Gophertown was not conducive to long life.