on was flinging rocks at a rattlesnake with the vicious precision of
frank abhorrence. Down in the canon bottom Big Medicine and Pink were
holding the horses on the shady side of the gorge, and the smoke of
their cigarettes floated lazily upward with the jumbled monotone of
their voices.

Andy, glancing across at Luck, waved his hand and sat down on a
rock that was shaded by a high bowlder; reached mechanically for his
"makings" and with his feet far apart and his elbows on his thighs,
wearily rolled a cigarette.

"How about it, boss?" he asked, scarcely raising his voice above the
ordinary conversational tone, though a hard fifteen-minutes' climb up
and down separated the two; "they never came up the arroyo, if you ask
ME. My side don't show a hoof track from where we left the boys down
below."

"Mine either," Luck replied, by the power of suggestion seating himself
and reaching for his own tobacco and papers. "We might as well work back
down and connect with Applehead. Wish there was some sign of water in
this darn gulch. By the time we get down where we started from, it'll be
sundown." He glanced down at Bud and Pink. "Hey! You can start back any,
time," he called. "Nothing up this way."

"Here's the grandfather of all rattlers," Miguel called across to Luck,
and held up by the tail a great snake that had not ceased its muscular
writhings. "Twelve rattles and a button. Have I got time to skin him? He
tried to bite me on the leg--but I beard him and got outa reach."

"We've got to be moving," Luck answered. "It's a long ways back where
we started from, and we've got to locate water, if we can." He rose with
the deliberateness that indicated tired muscles, and started back; and
to himself he muttered exasperatedly: "A good three hours all shot to
pieces--and not a mile gained on that bunch!"

The Native Son, calmly pinching the rattles of the snake he had not time
to skin, climbed down into the Canon and took his horse by the bridle
reins. Behind him Andy Green came scrambling; but Luck, still faintly
hoping for a clue, kept to the upper rim of the arroyo, scanning every
bit of soft ground where it seemed possible for a horse to climb up from
below. He had always recognized the native cunning of Ramon, but he had
never dreamed him as cunning as this latest ruse would seem to prove
him.

As for Bill Holmes, Luck dismissed him with a shrug of contempt. Bill
Holmes had been stranded in Albuquerque when the cold we