The Desert Valley | Page 8

and went ripping through a patch of mesquite that a
man would generally go round. Then there's something else. Want to
see?'
They went with him, the professor with alacrity, Helen with a studied
pretence at indifference. By the spring where Helen had found the
willow rod and the bluebird feather, Howard stopped and pointed
down.
'There's a set of tracks for you,' he announced triumphantly. 'Suppose
you spell 'em out, professor; what do you make of them?'
The professor studied them gravely. In the end he shook his head.
'Coyote?' he suggested.
Howard shook his head.
'No coyote,' he said with positiveness. 'That track shows a foot four
times as big as any coyote's that ever scratched fleas. Wolf? Maybe. It
would be a whopper of a wolf at that. Look at the size of it, man! Why,
the ugly brute would be big enough to scare my prize shorthorn bull
into taking out life insurance. And that isn't all. That's just the front foot.
Now look at the hind foot. Smaller, longer, and leaving a lighter
imprint. All belonging to the same animal.' He scratched his head in
frank bewilderment. 'It's a new one on me,' he confessed frankly. Then
he chuckled. 'I'd bet a man that the gent who left on the hasty foot just
got one squint at this little beastie and at that had all sorts of good
reasons for streaking out.'
A big lizard went rustling through a pile of dead leaves and all three of
them started. Howard laughed.
'We're right near Superstition Pool!' he informed them with suddenly
assumed gravity. 'Down in Poco Poco they tell some great tales about
the old Indian gods going man-hunting by moonlight. _Quién sabe_,
huh?'

Professor Longstreet snorted. Helen cast a quick, interested look at the
stranger and one of near triumph upon her father.
'I smell somebody's coffee boiling,' said the cattleman abruptly. 'Am I
invited in for a cup? Or shall I mosey on? Don't be bashful in saying
I'm not wanted if I'm not.'
'Of course you are welcome,' said Longstreet heartily. But Howard
turned to Helen and waited for her to speak.
'Of course.' said Helen carelessly.

Chapter III
Payment in Raw Gold
'You were merely speaking by way of jest, I take it, Mr. Howard,'
remarked Longstreet, after he had interestedly watched the rancher put
a third and fourth heaping spoonful of sugar in his tin cup of coffee. 'I
refer, you understand, to your hinting a moment ago at there being any
truth in the old Indian superstitions. I am not to suppose, am I, that you
actually give any credence to tales of supernatural influences
manifested hereabouts?'
Alan Howard stirred his coffee meditatively, and after so leisurely a
fashion that Longstreet began to fidget. The reply, when finally it came,
was sufficiently non-committal.
'I said "_Quién sabe_?" to the question just now,' he said, a twinkle in
the regard bestowed upon the scientist. 'They are two pretty good little
old words and fit in first-rate lots of times.'
'Spanish for "Who knows?" aren't they?'
Howard nodded. 'They used to be Spanish; I guess they're Mex by
now.'

Longstreet frowned and returned to the issue.
'If you were merely jesting, as I supposed----'
'But was I?' demanded Howard. 'What do I know about it? I know
horses and cows; that's my business. I know a thing or two about men,
since that's my business at times, too; also something like half of that
about half-breeds and mules; I meet up with them sometimes in the run
of the day's work. You know something of what I think you call
auriferous geology. But what does either of us know of the nightly
custom of dead Indians and Indian gods?'
Helen wondered with her father whether there were a vein of
seriousness in the man's thought. Howard squatted on his heels, from
which he had removed his spurs; they were very high heels, but none
the less he seemed comfortably at home rocking on them. Longstreet
noted with his keen eyes, altered his own squatting position a fraction,
and opened his mouth for another question. But Howard forestalled
him, saying casually:
'I have known queer things to happen here, within a few hundred yards
of this place. I haven't had time to go finding out the why of them; they
didn't come into my day's work. I have listened to some interesting
yarns; truth or lies it didn't matter to me. They say that ghosts haunt the
Pool just yonder. I have never seen a ghost; there's nothing in raising
ghosts for market, and I'm the busiest man I know trying to chew a
chunk that I have bitten off. They tell you down at San Juan and in
Poco Poco, and all