It was five hours later when the watchers on Hardscrabble saw the Johnson party turn south, up the valley between barb and shank of the mountain; an hour after that Zurich rejoined them, as they repacked at the trail foot, and made his report: 

“I couldn’t hear where they’re going; but it is somewhere west or westerly, and it’s a day farther on.  Say, it’s a good thing I went over there.  What do you suppose that fiend Johnson is going to do?  You wouldn’t guess it in ten years.  You fellows all know there’s only one way to get out of that Fishhook Valley—­unless you turn round and come back the way you go in?”

“I don’t,” said Bill.  “I’ve never been down this way before.”

“You can get out through Horse-Thief Gap, ’way in the southwest.  There’s a place near the top where there’s just barely room for a horse to get through between the cliffs.  You can ride a quarter mile and touch the rocks on each side with your hands.  Johnson’s afraid some one will see those tracks they’re makin’ and follow ’em up.  I heard him tellin’ it.  So the damned old fool has lugged dynamite all the way from Tucson, and after they get through he’s going to stuff the powder behind some of those chimneys and plug Horse-Thief so damn full of rock that a goat can’t get over,” said Zurich indignantly.  “Now what do you think of that?  Most suspicious old idiot I ever did see!”

“I call it good news.  That copper must be something extraordinary, or he’d never take such a precaution,” said Eric.

Zurich answered as they saddled: 

“If we had followed them in there, we would have lost forty miles.  As it is, they gain twenty miles on us while we ride back round the north end of the mountain, besides an hour I lost hoofing it back.”

“I don’t see that we’ve lost much,” said Jim Scarboro.  “We’ve got their direction and our horses are fresh beside of theirs.  We’ll make up that twenty miles and be in at the finish to-morrow; we’re four to four.  Let’s ride.”

Tall Eric rubbed his chin.

“That Benavides,” he said, “is a tough one.  He is a known man.  He’s as good as Johnson when it comes to shooting.”

“I’m not afraid of the shooting, and I’m not afraid of death,” said Zurich impatiently; “but I am leery about that cussed old man.  He’ll find a way to fool us—­see if he don’t!”

* * * * *

A strong wind blew scorching from the south the next day; Johnson turned aside from the sagebrush country to avoid the worst sand, and bent north to a long half-circle, through a country of giant saguaro and clumped yuccas; once they passed over a neck of lava hillocks thinly drifted over with sand.  The heat was ghastly; on their faces alkali dust, plastered with sweat, caked in the stubble of two days’ growth; their eyes were red-rimmed and swollen.  Boland, bruised and racked and cramped, suffered agonies.

It was ten in the morning when Joe touched Pete’s arm: