be back today, an’ won’t she be glad? . . . Rich is out huntin’ with Sam.”
“Sam who?” queried Cappy, remembering that Rich seldom hunted with anyone.
“Sam Playford. He’s been here since last spring. Homesteaded up the creek near Doubtful. Rich is with him a lot. We all like him fine, Uncle Cappy. He’s terrible sweet on Nesta.”
“Ahuh! Small wonder. An’ is Nesta sweet on him?”
“Mother says she is an’ Rich says she isn’t,” laughed Mescal.
“Humph! What does Nesta say?” asked Cappy, conscious of misgivings.
“Nesta! You know her. She tosses her head,” replied Manzanita.
“But she did like Sam,” protested Mescal, seriously. “We saw her let Sam kiss her.”
“That was ages ago, Manzi.” When she spoke this name, Cappy realized he had taken Mescal for Manzanita. “Lee Tate is runnin’ her hard now, uncle.”
“No!—Lee Tate?” returned the old trapper, incredulously.
“Yes. It was a secret,” said Mescal, most seriously. “But Rich found Nesta out. . . . An’ say, didn’t he lay into her! It didn’t do no good. Nesta is as crazy as a young hen-turkey, so mother says.”
“Wal, wal, this is news,” rejoined Tanner, thoughtfully, as he kept looking toward the cabin. “Where’s Tommy? I reckoned I’d see him first off.”
Mescal’s blue eyes darkened and dimmed with tears. Manzanita averted her face. And then something struck cold at the old trapper’s heart.
“Tommy’s dead,” whispered Mescal.
“Aw, no!” burst out Cappy, poignantly.
“Yes. It was in June. He fell off the rocks. Hurt himself. Rich an’ Nesta weren’t home. We couldn’t get a doctor. An’ he died.”
“Lord! I’m sorry!” exclaimed the trapper.
“It hurt us all—an’ near broke Rich’s heart.”
At this juncture the mother of the girls appeared on the cabin porch, wiping flour from her strong brown arms. She was under forty and still handsome, fair-haired, tall and strong, a pioneer woman whom the recent Tonto war had made a widow.
“If it ain’t Uncle Cappy!” she ejaculated, warmly. “I wondered what-all the twins was yelling at. Then I seen the burros. . . . Old timer, you’re welcome as mayflowers.”
“Thanks, an’ you’re shore lookin’ fine, Mrs. Ames,” replied Cappy, shaking her hand. “I’m awful glad to get back to Mescal Ridge. It’s about the only home I ever had—of late years, anyhow. . . . Thet about Tommy digs me deep. . . . I—I’m shore surprised an’ sorry.”
“It wouldn’t have been so hard for us if he’d been killed outright,” she rejoined, sadly. “But the hell of it was he might have been saved if we could have got him out.”
“Wal—wal! . . . I reckon I’d better move along. I’ve fetched some things for you-all. I’ll drop them off here, then go on to my cabin, an’ soon as I unpack I’ll come back.”
“An’ have supper. Rich will be back an’ mebbe Nesta.”
“You bet I’ll have supper,” returned Cappy. Then he loosened a pack from one of the burros, and carrying it to the porch he deposited it there. The twins, radiantly expectant, hung mutely upon his movements.
“See hyar, Mescal Ames,” declared Cappy, shaking a horny finger at one of the glowing faces, “if you——”
“But I’m Manzi, Uncle Cappy,” interrupted the girl, archly.
“Aw—so you are,” went on Cappy, discomfited.
“You’ve forgotten the way to tell us,” interposed Mescal, gayly.
“Wal, I reckon so. . . . But no matter, I’ll remember soon. . . . An’ see hyar, Manzi, an’ Mescal—don’t you dare open this pack.”
“But, uncle, you’ll be so long!” wailed the twins together.
“No I won’t, either. Not an hour. Promise you’ll wait. Why, girls, I wouldn’t miss seein’ your faces when I undo thet pack—not for a whole winter’s trappin’.”
“We’ll promise—if you’ll hurry back.”
Mrs. Ames vowed she would have to fight temptation herself and besought him to make haste.
“I’ll not be long,” called Tanner, and slapping the tired burros out of the shade he headed them into the trail.
At the end of the clearing, the level narrowed to a strip of land, high above the creek, and the trail led under huge pines and cone-shaped spruces and birches to a shady leaf-strewn opening in the rocky bluff, from which a tiny stream flowed in cascades and deep brown pools. This was a gateway to a high-walled canyon, into which the sun shone only part of the day. It opened out above the break in the bluff into a miniature valley, isolated and lonely, rich in evergreens, and shadowed by stained cliffs and mossy ledges.
Cappy arrived at his little log cabin with a sense of profound gratitude.
“By gum! I’m glad to be home,” he said, as if the picturesque little abode had ears. He had built this house three years before, aided now and then by Rich Ames. Before that time he had lived up at the head of Doubtful Canyon, where that “rough Jasper,” as Rich called it, yawned black and doubtful under the great wall of the mesa.
Throwing packs, he strapped bells on the burros, and giving them a slap he called cheerily: “Get out an’ rustle, you tin-can-label-eatin’ flop-ears! You’ve got a long rest, an’ if you’ve sense you’ll stay in the canyon.”
The door of the cabin was half ajar. Cappy pushed it all the way open. An odor of bear assailed his nostrils. Had he left a bearskin there, or had Rich Ames, in his absence? No, the cabin walls and floor were uncovered. But his trained eyes quickly detected a round depression in the thick mat of pine needles that covered his bough couch. A good-sized bear must have used it for a bed. In the dust of the floor bear tracks showed distinctly, and the left hind foot was minus a toe. Cappy recognized that track. The bear that had made it had once blundered into one of Cappy’s fox traps, had broken the trap and left part of his foot in it.
“Wal, the son-of-a-gun!” ejaculated the old trapper. “Addin’ insult to injury. I’ll jest bet he knowed this was my cabin. . . . Wonder why Rich didn’t shoot him.”
Cappy swept out, carried his packs inside, and opening one of them he took out his lantern and fuel, cooking utensils, and camp tools, which he put in their places. Then he unrolled his bed of blankets and spread it on the couch. “Reckon I won’t light no fire tonight, but I’ll fix one ready, anyhow,” he decided, and repairing to his woodpile he discovered very little left of the dry hardwood that he had cut the winter before. Rich Ames, the lonely fire-gazer, had been burning it! Presently Cappy was ready to go back to the Ames’ cabin. But he bethought himself of his unkempt appearance. That was because he remembered
