Brand Blotters

It was on one of these occasions, when he had been driven into a dark and

narrow cañon, that he came to a sudden halt. He was looking at an empty

tomato can. Swinging down from his saddle, he picked it up without

dismounting. A little juice dripped from the can to the ground.

Flatray needed no explanation. In Arizona men on the range often carry a

can of tomatoes instead of a water canteen. Nothing alleviates thirst like

the juice of this acid fruit. Some one had opened this can within two

hours. Otherwise the sun would have dried the moisture.

Jack took his rifle from its place beneath his legs and set it across the

saddle in front of him. Very carefully he continued on his way, watching

every rock and bush ahead of him. Here and there in the sand were printed

the signs of a horse going in the same direction as his.

Up and down, in and out of a maze of crooked paths, working by ever so

devious a way higher into the chain of mountains, Jack followed his

leader. Now he would lose the hoofmarks; now he would pick them up again.

And, at the last, they brought him to the rim of a basin, a bowl of wooded

ravines, of twisted ridges, of bleak spurs jutting into late pastures

almost green. It was now past sunset. Dusk was filtering down from the

blue peaks. As he looked a star peeped out low on the horizon.

But was it a star? He glimpsed it between trees. The conviction grew on

him that what he saw was the light of a lamp. A tangle of rough country

lay between him and that beacon, but there before him lay his destination.

At last he had found his way into Dead Man's Cache.

The sheriff lost no time, for he knew that if he should get lost in the

darkness on one of these forest slopes he might wander all night. A rough

trail led him down into the basin. Now he would lose sight of the light.

Half an hour later, pushing to the summit of a hill, he might find it.

After a time there twinkled a second beside the first. He was getting

close to a settlement of some kind.

Below him in the darkness lay a stretch of open meadow rising to the

wooded foothills. Behind these a wall of rugged mountains encircled the

valley like a gigantic crooked arm. Already he could make out faintly the

outlines of the huddled buildings.

Slipping from his horse, Jack went forward cautiously on foot. He was

still a hundred yards from the nearest hut when dogs bayed warning of his

approach. He waited, rifle in hand. No sign of human life showed except

the two lights shining from as many windows. Flatray counted four other

cabins as dark as Egypt.