The Adam Chaser/Chapter 4
CHAPTER IV.
THE FOOTPRINT CLEW.
ABINGTON stood absolutely motionless with his head drooped forward, his narrowed eyes surveying with brief, darting glances his devastated camp. The small brown tent, lying in a tattered heap with slits crisscrossing one another in the balloon silk which was so light to carry—and so costly—received a second scrutiny. The camp supplies, which had been neatly piled just where he had unloaded them from the two burros that carried his own outfit, were strewn about in indescribable disorder, as if a drove of hogs had held carnival there for an hour or so.
Because of the view it gave of the fantastic, red-sandstone crags across the valley, Abington had pitched his camp on a smooth hard ledge a few feet above the level with a cliff at his back and a spring of good water hidden away in a tiny cleft in the cañon at his right. It was a cool, sightly spot, free from bothersome ant hills or weedy growth that might harbor rattlesnakes or other venomous creatures.
True to his word, Bill Jonathan camped apart from Abington. In this particular location he had chosen a cave half a mile up the cañon—and he had immediately set about walling up the entrance so that he must squeeze in between two rocks which he could move across the aperture at night.
“Getting close to the range of that gosh-awful thing, professor,” he had explained. “Better hunt a hole yourself and crawl into it—'specially at night. And you want to keep your eyes peeled, and don't go prowlin' around without your gun or a knife or something.”
Abington liked his little brown-silk tent, however, and he was not particularly impressed by the gosh-awfulness of the thing which Bill Jonathan could not even describe—he having failed to catch so much as a glimpse of it, as he had been forced to admit under Abington's repeated questioning.
Here was the ruin left by some animal, however, and Abington found himself completely at a loss as he circled the camp, going slowly and studying the wreckage foot by foot. On the ledge itself he did not expect to see any tracks. He walked therefore to the edge of the hard-pan and examined the softer gravel at the foot of the two-foot slope.
There, cleanly outlined in a finer streak of red gravelly sand, he discovered the imprint of a pointed, cloven foot; a gigantic sheep, by the track, or possibly an elk, though elk were not known in that country.
For some minutes he stood there looking for other tracks. When he found one, he whistled under his breath. From the length of the stride indicated by that second hoofprint he judged that this particular animal must be considerably larger than a caribou. “Gosh-awful” it certainly must be!
Abington stared down the wash, for a moment tempted to follow the tracks. But with night coming on and an empty stomach clamoring to be filled, he hesitated. There was the wrecked camp to set to tights and such supplies as had not been destroyed must be gathered together and placed where this malicious-minded animal could not reach them again.
Moreover, the tracks might not be fresh, for the damage could have been done at any time during the afternoon while he and Bill were exploring a complex assortment of crooked ravines, tangled at the head of the larger one where Bill had prepared to hole up in gloomy security.
Abington was thoughtfully regarding a sack of flour that had been slashed lengthwise and dragged in wanton destructiveness half across the ledge, when Bill Jonathan's voice sounded behind him, swearing a dismayed oath.
“Looks like it's been here a'ready!” Bill gasped, when Abington turned and glanced at him.
“Looks as though something has been here,” Abington agreed. “Very unusual incident, in some of the details. Certain incongruities can scarcely be accounted for until I have further investigated the matter. I have had a herd of wild elephants stampede through camp, and I know the work of every marauding animal from jungle tigers to the wolverines of Canada. But I have never seen anything quite like this.
“For instance,” he went on, “the slits in that tent plainly started from the peak and extended downward, with an upward thrust near the bottom, leaving a triangular rent. Any horned animal that could rip a tent like that invariably lowers the head and gores with an upward toss. So does a hog. Certain indications would seem to point to a wild hog—or a drove of them!—but I believe the longest slits in the tent were accomplished while it was still standing.
“You will observe,” he continued, “that the rents are spaced with a regularity impossible to attain while the material lay bundled in a heap on the ground. The cloth has not been chewed, therefore it could not be the work of wild cattle. Moreover, that sack of salt was not touched. Wouldn't you suppose, Bill, that any herbivorous animal would smell the salt and go after it first?”
“Yeah, but it don't ever touch salt, professor. Not as far as I know. Did it leave any tracks?”
“Down here in the sand are some enormous hoofprints resembling sheep or elk tracks, Bill. From its stride the beast must be as large as a camel.”
“Yeah, and I've known it to leave mule tracks behind it!” Bill declared glumly. “Now, maybe you'll want to crawl into my cave, professor!”
“I may decide to let you store what supplies are left, but I myself don't fancy caves except for research work. By the way, did you notice any eoliths in that cave of yours, Bill?”
“I dunno. Killed a scorpion about four inches long and his tail curled up. You ain't afraid of bugs, are you, professor?”
ABINGTON gave him a sharp glance, but Bill was innocent and looked it.
“It doesn't matter now,” Abington said, “since I shall probably spend a week or more exploring these ravines. There should be a good many artifacts left in the caves hereabouts. The carvings indicate that the ancient people lived here and I have an idea that their occupancy of this section of the country extended over a considerable period of time. This old Cretaceous sandstone gives every”
“Yeah, and it'll give 'em just the same to-morrow, don't you think, professor? I'm going to take what's left of the flour and cache it away in my cave, and that can of coffee. Looks to me like the thing was scared off before it finished the job. All the times I've saw it get in its work before now, it sure was thorough! You must 'ave scared it”
“In that case I may be able to catch it.”
Abington turned and strode again to where the tracks lay printed deep in the packed sand. He stepped down off the ledge and followed the hoofprints, scanning each one sharply as he came to it.
“Hey! You can't trail that thing, professor!” Bill called anxiously. “I tried that—once when it was a sheep and another time when it was a mule. Tracks take to the hills and quit.
“Aw, gwan and find out for yourself, then!” he grumbled, when Abington merely flung up his hand to show he heard and continued along the wash. “Won't be satisfied to take my word—never seen such a bullheaded cuss. But it won't be long, old boy, till you'll be tickled to death if you're able to dodge it!”
Dusk deepened. Bill hurriedly salvaged what supplies were not utterly destroyed, looking frequently over his shoulder when his work would not permit him to keep his back toward the cliff. It seemed a long while before Abington returned.
Bill's uneasiness had reached the point where he threw back his head to send a loud halloo booming out into the darkness; but at that very moment Abington came stumbling up to the ledge, leaning heavily on a dead mescal stalk while one foot dragged. Bill leaped forward and pulled him up the slope.
“Rock rolled down the hill and started a slide,” Abington explained in a flat, tired tone. “Dodged most of the rubble, but one fragment struck against my ankle. Temporarily paralyzed my foot. Be all right in a short time, Bill.” He sat down, breathing rather heavily.
“Who done it?” Bill knelt and tentatively felt the injured foot.
“No one, so far as I know. I am not sure, of course, but my impression is that the slide was purely accidental.”
“See anything of your sheep?”
“Too dark to detect any signs after it took to the rocks. Heard something—up the hill. Couldn't exactly locate the sound. Any coffee, Bill?”
Bill had been itching to get back to his cave and make coffee there, but now he looked at Abington and hesitated. Neither Abington nor any other man could laugh at Bill and call him a coward. There had been a small pile of firewood; it was scattered around somewhere among the débris. The coffeepot, he knew, had been flattened as if an elephant had stepped on it; but he could find a can that would serve.
HE groped for the wood, found it and got a fire started. A cheerful light pushed back the shadows, making them eerier than when all was gloom. He set about supper of a sort, keeping his back to the ledge with a persistence that might have amused Abington if he had not been wholly occupied with the mystery that had impinged upon an otherwise uneventful trip.
“I can't fathom it,” he said at last, speaking half to himself. “It is not a mountain sheep, I'm certain of that. Those slits in the tent and the salt sack ignored—those two details alone place the depredations apart from the work of any such animal.”
“Yeah, there ain't no such animal!” Bill looked up to remark, “Now you know why I wanted a gun, professor. You thought it was for killing sheriffs, maybe, but you was wrong there. I told you there was something up here we'd have to look out for. I asked you to get me a gun, because I ain't got much hopes of killin' this thing by throwin' rocks at it. That's why.”
“I'm sorry, Bill, but I really couldn't buy you a gun,” Abington told him gravely. “And I don't think you will need one. The beast keeps himself out of sight, it seems. It isn't likely to attack either of us.”
“Well, I'd about as soon be attacked as scared to death,” Bill demurred. “That's just it, professor. I wouldn't give a cuss if I could look the thing over, once. What I hate is coming in and finding camp demolished and the grub all throwed out and nothing you can fight back at. Well, here's your coffee. It's about all I could find to cook, in the dark.”
They drank the coffee in silence, even the self-contained Abington pausing every minute or so to stare into the darkness, listening. It was a nerve-trying pastime which netted them nothing in the way of enlightenment.
What it cost Bill to shoulder a load of more-or-less damaged supplies and go off alone up the cañon, his way lighted only by the stars, Abington could only guess. In justice to the peace officers of the county he could not give the man a gun, and he sensed that Bill was really afraid of the unknown marauder, and with good reason, Abington was forced to admit.
Bill had been hunted from camp to camp by the thing which he had never seen. He had been robbed and his food supplies destroyed until at last he had fled the place only to fall into the hands of the watchful sheriff. Abington couldn't blame Bill for his fears, All the same, Abington did not want to place a gun in the hands of an escaped prisoner. That, it seemed to him, would be going rather strong, even in the interests of science.
He was sitting with his back against the cliff with the dying fire before him, rubbing his numbed ankle to which sensation was returning with sharp stabs of pain, when Bill came up out of the cañon mouth with his bundle still on his shoulders and his eyes staring,
“It's been to the cave,” he announced in a suppressed tone. “Clawed out the rocks I walled the opening up with and raised hell with my stuff. Professor, how bad do you want them stone Adamses?”