While I was digesting this unpalatable information, Hicks and Gregory spurred abreast of us; for the remainder of the journey we four rode elbow to elbow, and conversation was scant.

Mid-afternoon found us camped under the Stone. Once on the ground, I began to think we were in no immediate danger of getting our throats cut for the sake of the treasure. Rutter had said "under the Stone"--and the vagueness of his words came home to me with considerable force, for the Stone, roughly estimated, was a good mile in length. It paralleled the river, a perpendicular wall of gray sandstone. An aptly-named place; wherever a ledge offered foothold, and even in places that seemed wholly beyond reach of human hands, the bald front of the cliff was chiseled with rude traceries--the picture-writing of the Blackfoot tribe. The history of a thousand battles and buffalo-hunts was written there. And somewhere at the foot of that mile-long cliff, under the uncouth figures carved by the red men in their hour of triumphant ease, rested that which we had come to find. I sat with my back against a cottonwood and smoked a cigarette while I considered the impa.s.sive front of Writing-On-the-Stone; and the fruit of my consideration was that he who sought for the needle in the haystack had no more difficult task than ours.

In due time we ate supper, and dark spread its mantle over the land.

Then MacRae and I crawled up on a projecting ledge of rock to roll out our blankets--in a place where we could not well be surprised. Not that either of us antic.i.p.ated anything of the sort so early in the game; when we had found what we were after, that would come. But the mere fact that we were all playing a part made us incline to caution. I don't know if we betrayed our knowledge or suspicions to Hicks and Gregory, but it was a good deal of an effort to treat those red-handed scoundrels as if they were legitimate partners in a risky enterprise. We had to do it, though. Until they showed their hand we could do nothing but stand pat and wait for developments; and if they watched us un.o.btrusively, we did the same by them. It is not exactly soothing to the nerves, however, to be in touch all day and then lie down to sleep at night within a few feet of men whom you imagine are only awaiting the proper moment to introduce a chunk of lead into your system or slip a knife under your fifth rib. I can't truthfully say that I slept soundly on that ledge.

CHAPTER XII.

WE LOSE AGAIN.

Three days later MacRae and I scaled the steep bank at the west end of the cliff and threw ourselves, panting, on the level that ran up to the sheer drop-off. When we had regained the breath we'd lost on that Mansard-roof climb we drew near to the edge, where we could stare into the valley three hundred feet below while we made us a cigarette apiece.

We were just a mite discouraged. Beginning that first morning at the east end of the Writing-Stone we had worked west, conning the weather-worn face of it for a mark that would give a clue to the _cache_. Also we had scanned carefully the sandy soil patches along the boulder-strewn base, seeking the tell-tale footprints of horse or man.

And we had found nothing. Each day the conviction grew stronger upon us that finding that gold would be purely chance, a miracle of luck; systematic search had so far resulted in nothing but blistered heels from much walking. And unless we did find it, thereby giving the gentlemen of the mask some incentive to match themselves against us once more, we were not likely to have the opportunity of breaking up a nervy bunch of murdering thieves.

We reasoned that the men whose guns we had looked into over Rutter's body and those who robbed the paymaster on the MacLeod trail were tarred with the same stick; likewise, that even now two of them ate out of the same pot with us three times daily. The thing was to prove it.

Personally, the paymaster's trouble was none of my concern; what I wanted was to get back that ten thousand dollars, or deal those hounds ten thousand dollars' worth of misery. Not that I wasn't willing to take a long chance to help Lyn to her own, but I was human enough to remember that I had a good deal at stake myself. It was a rather depressed stock-hand, name of Flood, who blew cigarette smoke out over the brow of Writing-Stone that evening.

Mac finished smoking and ground the stub into the earth with his heel.

For another minute or two he sat there without speaking, absently flipping pebbles over the bank.

"I reckon we might as well poke along the top to camp," he said at last, getting to his feet. "I sent that breed back, down there, so we could talk without having to keep cases on him. This is beginning to look like a hopeless case, isn't it?"

"Somewhat," I admitted. "I did think that Rutter's description would put us on the right track when we got there; but I can't see much meaning in it now. I suppose we'll just have to keep on going it blind."

"We'll have to stay with it while there's any chance," he said thoughtfully. "But I've been thinking that it might be a good plan to take a fall out of those two." He jerked his thumb in the direction of camp. "If we have sized things up right, they'll make some sort of move, and if we're mistaken there will be no harm done. I'll tell you an idea that popped into my head a minute ago. We can pretend to locate the stuff. Fix up a couple of dummy sacks, you know, and get them to camp and packed on the horse without letting them see what's inside. If Lyn gave Lessard the right figures, there should be between a hundred and forty or fifty pounds of dust. It's small in bulk, but weighty as a bad conscience. If we had a couple of little sacks we could get around that problem, easy enough--this black sand along the river would pa.s.s for gold-dust in weight. We could make the proper sort of play, and give them the chance they're looking for. If they make a break it'll be up to us to get the best of the trouble."

"It might work," I replied. "If you think it would make them tip their hand, I'm with you. This watch-the-other-fellow business is making me nervous as an old woman. Once we had those two dead to rights they might let out something that would enable us to land the whole bunch, and the plunder besides; once we had them rounded up we could come back here and hunt for Hank Rowan's gold-dust in peace."

"You've got the idea exactly, and we'll see what we can do in the morning," Mac returned. "But don't get married to the notion that they'll cough up all they know, right off the reel. Hicks might, if you went at him hard enough. But not the other fellow. Gregory's game clear through--he's demonstrated that in different ways since I've been in the Force. You could carve him to pieces without hearing a cheep, if he decided to keep his mouth shut. And he's about as dangerous a man in a scrimmage as I know. If there's a row, don't overlook Mr. Gregory."

We hoofed it toward camp as briskly as our galled feet would permit, for the sun was getting close to the sky line, and talked over Mac's scheme as we went. There was no danger of being overheard on that bench. As a matter of fact, Hicks and Gregory didn't know we were up there; at least, they were not supposed to know. MacRae had made a practice of leaving one or the other in camp, in case some prowling Indians should spy our horses and attempt to run them off. That afternoon Hicks had been on guard. When Mac started Gregory back he told him that we would be along presently, then sat himself down on a rock and watched the breed. When he was far enough up the flat to lose track of our movements we dropped into a convenient washout and sneaked along it to the foot of the bank, where a jutting point of rock hid sight of us climbing the hill.

We had no thought of spying on them, at first--it was simply to be rid of their onerous presence for a while, and getting on the bench was an afterthought. But as we came opposite camp, MacRae took a notion to look down and see what they were about. At a point which overlooked the bottom some two hundred yards from the east end of the Stone, we got down on our stomachs and wriggled carefully to the naked rim of the cliff. For some time we laid there, peering down at the men below. Hicks was puttering around the fire, evidently cooking supper, and Gregory was moving the picket rope of his horse to fresh gra.s.s. There was nothing out of the ordinary to be seen, and I drew back. But MacRae still kept his place. When he did back away from the edge, he had the look of a man who has made some important discovery.

"On my soul, I believe I've found it," he calmly announced.

"What!"

"I believe I have," he repeated, a trace of exultation in his tone. "At least, it amounts to the same thing. Crawl up there again, Sarge, and look straight down at the first ledge from the bottom. Hurry; you won't see anything if the sun has left it. And be careful how you show your head. We don't want to get them stirred up till we have to."

Cautiously I peeped over the brink, straight down as Mac had directed.

The shadow that follows on the heels of a setting sun was just creeping over the ledge, but the slanting rays lingered long enough to give me sight of a glittering patch on the gray stone shelf below. While I stared the sun withdrew its fading beams from the whole face of the cliff, but even in the duller light a glint of yellow showed dimly, a pin point of gold in the deepening shadow.

Gold! I drew back from the rim of Writing-On-the-Stone, that set of whispered phrases echoing in my ears. Mac caught my eye and grinned.

"_Gold--raw gold--on the rock--above._" I mouthed the words parrotlike, and he nodded comprehendingly.

"Oh, thunder!" I exclaimed. "Do you reckon _that's_ what he meant?"

"What else?" Mac reasoned. "They'd mark the place somehow--and aren't those his exact words? What dummies we were not to look on those ledges before. You can't see the surface of them from the flat; and we might have known they would hardly put a mark where it could be seen by any pilgrim who happened to ride through that bottom."

"Hope you're right," I grunted optimistically.

"We'll know beyond a doubt, in the morning," Mac declared. "To-night we won't do anything but eat, drink, and sleep as sound as possible, for to-morrow we may have one h.e.l.l of a time. I prefer to have a few hours of daylight ahead of us when we raise that _cache_. Things are apt to tighten, and I don't like a rumpus in the dark. Just now I'm hungry. If that stuff is there, it will keep. Come on to camp; our troubles are either nearly over or just about to begin in earnest."

We followed the upland past the end of the Stone till we found a slope that didn't require wings for descent. If Hicks or Gregory wondered at our arrival from the opposite direction in which we should have appeared, they didn't betray any unseemly curiosity. Supper and a cigarette or two consumed the twilight hour, and when dark shut down we took to our blankets and dozed through the night.

At daybreak we breakfasted. Without a word to any one MacRae picked up his carbine and walked out of camp. I followed, equally silent. It was barely a hundred yards to the ledge, and I caught myself wishing it were a good deal farther--out of range of those watchful eyes. I couldn't help wondering how it would feel to be potted at the moment of discovery.

"I thought I'd leave them both behind, and let them take it out in guessing," Mac explained, when we stood under the rock shelf upon which we had looked down the evening before. "We're right under their noses, so they won't do anything till the stuff's actually in sight."

He studied the face of the cliff for a minute. The ledge jutted out from the towering wall approximately twenty feet above our heads, but it could be reached by a series of jagged points and k.n.o.bs; a sort of natural stairway--though some of the steps were a long way apart.

Boulders of all shapes and sizes lay bedded in the soft earth where we stood.

"You shin up there, Sarge," Mac commanded, "and locate that mark. It ought to be an easy climb."

I "shinned," and reached the ledge with a good deal of skin peeled from various parts of my person. The first object my eye fell upon as I hoisted myself above the four-foot shelf was a dull, yellow spot on the gray rock, near enough so that I could lean forward and touch it with my fingers. A two-inch circle of the real thing--I'd seen enough gold in the raw to know it without any acid test--hammered into the coa.r.s.e sandstone. I pried it up with the blade of my knife and looked it over.

Originally it had been a fair-sized nugget. Hans or Rowan had pounded it into place with the back of a hatchet (the corner-marks told me that), flattening it to several times its natural diameter. I threw it down to MacRae, and looked carefully along the ledge. There was no other mark that I could see; I began to wonder if we were as hot on the scent as we had thought.

"Is there a loose piece of rock up there?" Mac called presently. "If there is, set it on the edge, in line with where this was."

I found a fragment about the size of my fist and set it on the rim of the ledge. He squinted up at it a moment, then nodded, smiling.

"Come on down now, Sarge," he grinned; and, seating himself on a rock with the carbine across his knees, he began to roll a cigarette, as if the finding of Hank Rowan's gold-_cache_ were a thing of no importance whatever.

"Well," I began, when I had negotiated that precarious succession of k.n.o.bs and notches and acc.u.mulated a fresh set of bruises, "why don't you get busy? How much wiser are you now? Where's your gold-dust?"

He took a deliberate puff and squinted up at the ledge again. "I'm sitting on it, as near as I can figure," he coolly a.s.serted.

"Yes, you are," I fleered. "I'm from Missouri!"

"Oh, you're a doubting Thomas of the first water," he said. "Stand behind me, you confounded unbeliever. Kink your back a little and look over that stone you set for a mark. Do you see anything that catches your attention?"

Getting in the position he suggested, I looked up. Away back in the days before the white man was a power to be reckoned with in the Indian's scheme of things, some warrior had stood upon that self-same ledge and hacked out with a flint chisel what he and his fellows doubtless considered a work of art. Uncanny-looking animals, and uncannier figures that might have pa.s.sed for anything from an articulated skeleton to a Missing Link, cavorted in a long line across that tribal picture-gallery. Between each group of figures the face of the rock was scored with mysterious signs and rudely limned weapons of war and chase.

Right over the stone marker, a long-shafted war-lance was carved--the blade pointing down. MacRae's seat, stone-marker, and aboriginal spearhead; the three lined up like the sights of a modern rifle. The conclusion, in the light of what we knew from Rutter, was obvious, even to a lunkhead like myself.

"It looks like you might have struck it," I was constrained to admit.

Mac threw away his cigarette. "Here and now is where we find out," he declared.

Worming our fingers under the edge of the boulder, we lifted with all the strength that was in us. For a second it seemed that we could never budge it. Then it began to rise slowly, so slowly that I thought the muscles of my back would snap, and MacRae's face close by mine grew red and then purple with the strain. But it moved, and presently a great heave turned it over. Bedded in the soft earth underneath lay the slim buckskin sacks. Our fingers, I remember, trembled a bit as we stood one on end and loosened its mouth to make sure if we had found the treasure for which two men had already lost their lives.

[Ill.u.s.tration: BEDDED IN THE SOFT EARTH UNDERNEATH LAY THE SLIM BUCKSKIN SACKS.

_Page 159._]