ewhere not more than a long rifle-shot away, a Ford was
coughing under full pressure of gas and with at least one dirty spark plug
to give it a spasmodic stutter. While Casey stood there listening, the
stutter slowed and stopped with one wheezy cough. That was all.

"They'll have to clean up her hootin'-annies before they git outa here,"
Casey observed shrewdly, having intimate and sometimes unpleasant
knowledge of Fords and their peculiar ailments. "And I wonder what the
sufferin' Chris'mas they're doin' here, anyway. If it's huntin' the Injun
Jim they're after, the quicker they scrape the sut off them dingbats and
git outa here, the healthier they'll ride. You ask anybody if Casey Ryan's
liable to back up now he's on the ground and squared away!"

He stood there uneasily for a minute or two longer, caught a whiff of his
bacon scorching and stooped to its rescue. Then he fried a bannock hastily
in the bacon grease, folded two slices of bacon within it and ate in a
hurry, keeping an ear cocked for any further sounds from the concealed
car.

He finished eating without having heard more and piled his dishes without
washing them. I don't suppose he had used more than ten minutes at the
longest in eating his supper. That was about the limit of Casey's inaction
when he smelled a mystery or a scrap. This had the elements of both, and
he started out forthwith to trail down the Ford, wiping crumbs from his
mouth and getting out his plug of tobacco as he went.

In broken country sounds are deceptive as to direction, but Casey was
lucky enough to walk straight toward the spot, which was over a hump in
the gulch, a sort of backbone dividing it in two narrow branches there at
its mouth. He had noticed when he rode toward it that it was ridged in the
middle, and had chosen the left-hand branch for no reason at all except
that it happened to be a little smoother traveling for his animals.

He topped the ridge and came full upon a camp below, almost within calling
distance from where he first sighted it. There was a stone hut that could
not possibly contain more than two small rooms, and there was a tent
pitched not far away. There seemed to be a spring just beyond the cabin.
Casey saw the silver gleam of water there, and a strip of green grass, and
a juniper bush or two.

But these details were not important at the moment. What sent him down the
hill in an uneven trot was a group of three that stood beside a car. From
their voic