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He was big and fat, with a high George the Third nose and the florid smugness of a country squire, and as he returned Wunpost's greeting his pendulous lower lip was thrust up in arrogant scorn. He came on confidently, and behind him like a shadow there followed a mysterious second person.
For it was Eells' next move, since, according to Wunpost's reasoning, the magnate was already whipped. His plans for tracing Wunpost to the source of his wealth had ended in absolute disaster and the only other move he could possibly make would be along the line of compromise.
And to think that these noble animals, big and black and beautifully gaited, had been bought with Judson Eells' own money; while he, poor fool, sent Lynch out after him on a miserable Indian cayuse. Wunpost's road was always plain, for where he went they must follow, but at every rocky point or granite-strewn flat they must circle and cut for his trail.
The sun swung up high, striking through Wunpost's thin shirt like the blast from a furnace door; sweat rolled down his face, to be sopped up by the bath-towel which he wore draped about his neck; but he sat on his hilltop, grim as a gargoyle on Notre Dame, gloating down on the suffering man.
He would take up Wunpost's trail like an Indian on the warpath, like a warrior who had been robbed of his medicine-bag; he would come on the run and with blood in his eye that is, if the heat had not killed him. For his pride was involved, and his name as a trailer and an all-around desert-man; he had been led into a trap by a boy in his twenties, and it was up to him to demonstrate or quit.
She darted a hateful glance at the perspiring Dusty Rhodes, who was vainly trying to get Campbell's ear; and at the end of her recital there was a look in Wunpost's eye that spoke of reprisals to come. The fat was in the fire, as far as Rhodes was concerned, but he surprised them all by retracting.
She reasoned in circles, as the best of us will when trying to justify doubtful acts; but she traveled in a straight line when she picked up Wunpost's trail and followed him over the rocks. He had ridden out in the night, turning straight up the ridge where the mountain-sheep trail came down; and Good Luck bounded ahead of her, his nose to the ground, his bobbed tail working like mad.
In another day or so, if the ratio kept up, Wunpost's sixth would be reduced to a twelfth, a twenty-fourth, a forty-eighth, a ninety-sixth and he had discovered the mine himself! What philosophy or sophistry can reconcile a man to such buffets from the hand of Fate? Wunpost cursed and turned to raw whiskey.
They were back-tracking of course, for the tracks really came down it, but before the sun had set Wunpost's monument was discovered, together with the vein of gold. It was astounding, incredible, after all his early efforts, that he should let them back-track him to his mine; but that was what he had done and Pisen-face Lynch was not slow to take possession of the treasure.
Dusty Rhodes was still there, describing in windy detail Wunpost's encounter with one Pisen-face Lynch, but as she stood before them smiling he sensed the mischief in her eye and interrupted himself with a question. "He's coming," announced Billy, showing the dimples in both cheeks and Dusty Rhodes let his jaw drop.
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