do us part. That will be in about five minutes. Over there is Dry Fork Gulch. The waterhole is just down around this hill.”
Ashton took his ardent gaze off the girl’s face long enough to glance to his left. He recognized the tremendous gorge in the face of the mountain side that he had tried to ascend the previous day. It ran in with a moderately inclined bottom for nearly a mile, and then scaled up to the top of High Mesa in steep slopes and sheer ledges.
His eyes followed the dry gravelly creek bed around to the right, and he nodded: “Yes, my camp is just over the corner of those crags. But surely, Miss Knowles, you will not end our acquaintance there.”
She met his appealing look with a level glance. “Seriously, Mr. Ashton, don’t you think you had better move camp to another section? It seems to me you have done quite enough unseasonable deer hunting.”
Without waiting for him to reply, she urged her horse into a lope. His own mount was too jaded for a quick start. When he overtook the girl she had 38 rounded the craggy hill on their right and was in sight of a scattered grove of boxelders below a dike of dark colored trap rock that outcropped across the bed of the creek.
Above the natural dam made by this dike the valley was bedded up with sand and large gravel washed down by the torrential rush of spring freshets. Below it the same wild floods, leaping down in a twenty-foot fall, had gouged out a pothole so wide and deep that it was never empty of water even in the driest seasons.
39
CHAPTER V
INTO THE DEPTHS
At the top of the bank made by the dike the girl pointed with her quirt down to the rock-rimmed pool edge where a pair of riders were just swinging out of their saddles.
“Hello, Daddy! We’re coming, Kid,” she called, and she turned to explain to Ashton. “They came around the other end of the hills; a longer way but better going. How’s this? Thought you said you were camped here.”
“Yes, of course. Don’t you see the tent? It’s right there among the––Why, what––where is it?” cried Ashton, gaping in blank amazement.
“We’ll soon see,” replied the girl.
Their horses were scrambling down the short steep slope to the pool, where the other horses were drinking their fill of the cool water. The two men watched Ashton’s approach, Knowles with an impassive gaze, Gowan with cold suspicion in his narrowed eyes.
“Well, honey,” asked the cowman, “did you have him pulling leather?”
“No, and I didn’t lose him, either,” she replied, 40 with a mischievous glance at Gowan. “I took that jump-off where the white-cheeked steer broke its neck. He took it after me without pulling leather.”
“Huh!” grunted the puncher. “Mr. Tenderfoot shore is some rider. We’re waiting for him now to ride around and find that camp where we were to deliver his veal.”
Ashton stared with a puzzled, half-dazed expression from the tentless trees beside him to the fore and hind quarters of veal wrapped in slicker raincoats and fastened on back of the men’s saddles.
“Well?” demanded Knowles. “Thought you said you were camped here.”
“I am––that is, I––My tent was right there between those two trees,” said Ashton. “You see, there are the twigs and leaves I had my valet collect for my bed.”
“Shore––valleys are great on collecting beds of leaves and sand and bowlders,” observed Gowan.
“There’s his fireplace,” said the girl, wheeling her horse through a clump of wild rosebushes. “Yes, and he’s right about the tent, too. It is a bed. Here’s a dozen cigarette boxes and––What’s this, Mr. Ashton! Looks as if someone had left a note for you.”
“A note?” he muttered, slipping to the ground.
He ran over to the spot to which she was pointing. On a little pile of stones, in front of where his tent 41 had been pitched, a piece of coarse wrapping paper covered with writing was fluttering in the light breeze. He snatched it up and read the note with fast-growing bewilderment.
“What is it?” sympathetically questioned the girl, quick to see that he was in real trouble.
He did not answer. He did not even realize that she had spoken. With feverish haste he caught up an opened envelope that had lain under the paper. Drawn by his odd manner, Knowles and Gowan came over to stare at him. He had torn a letter from the envelope. It was in typewriting and covered less than a page, yet he gaped at it, reading and re-reading the lines as if too dazed to be able to comprehend their meaning.
Slowly the involved sentences burned their way into his consciousness. As his bewilderment cleared, his concern deepened to dismay, and from dismay to consternation. His jaw dropped slack, his face whitened, the pupils of his eyes dilated.
“What is it? What’s the matter?” exclaimed the girl.
“Matter?”––His voice was hoarse and strained. He crumpled the letter in a convulsive grasp––“Matter? I’m ruined!––ruined! God!”
Knowles and the girl were both silent before the despair in the young man’s face. Gowan was more obtuse or else less considerate. 42
“Shore, you’re plumb busted, partner,” he ironically condoled. “Your whole outfit has flown away on the wings of the morning. Hope you won’t tell us the pay for your veal has vamoosed with the rest.”
“Oh, Kid, for shame!” reproved the girl. “Of course Daddy won’t ask for any pay––now.”
Ashton burst into a jangling high-pitched laugh.
“No, no! there’s still my pony and saddle and rifle and watch!” he cried, half hysterically. “Take them! strip me! Here’s my hat, too! I paid forty-five dollars for it––silver band.” He flung it on the ground. “There’s a hole in it––I wish the hole were through my head!”
“Now, now, look here, son. Keep a stiff upper lip,” said Knowles. “Don’t act like you’re locoed. It’s all right about that veal, as Chuckie says, and you oughtn’t to make such a fuss over the loss of a camp outfit.”
“Camp outfit?” shrilled Ashton. “If that were all! if that were all! What shall I do? Lost––all lost!––father––all! Ruined! Oh, my God! What shall I do? Oh, my God! Oh––” Anguish and despair choked the cry in his throat. He collapsed in a huddled, quivering heap.
“Sho! It can’t be as bad as that, can it?” condoled the cowman.
“Go away!” sobbed the prostrated man. “Go away! Take my pony––all! Only leave me!” 43
“If
