pointin' up this way!" Casey muttered, staring down upon a
somnolent wilderness blanketed with hushed midnight. "If it
thinks it's got Casey whipped, it better think agin and think
quick. I'll give it somethin' to point at, 'fore I leave this
here butte.

"Funny, the way it kept pointin' up this way. I've saw Joshuays
before--miles of 'em. But I never seen one that looked so kinda
human and so kinda like it was tryin' to talk. Seems kinda
funny; an' that old lady rockin' an' lookin'--seems like her an'
the Joshuay has kinda throwed in together, hopin' somebody might
come along with savvy enough to kinda--aw, hell!" So did Casey
and his Irish belief in the supernatural fall plump against the
limitations of his vocabulary.

Against the limitations proscribed by his material predicament,
however, Casey Ryan set his face with a grin. Somebody was going
to get the big jolt of his life before long, he told himself over
a careful breakfast fire built cunningly far back in the crevice
where a current of air sucked into the rock capping of the butte.
Something was going on up here that shouldn't go on. He did not
know what it was, but he meant to stop it. He did not know who
was making Indian war on peaceful prospectors, but Casey felt
that they were already as good as licked, since he was here with
breakfast under his belt and his six-shooter tucked handily
inside his waistband.

He squinted up the crack in the ledge, made certain mental
alterations in its narrow, jagged walls, and reached for the
tough-handled, efficient prospector's pick he had thoughtfully