'We'll be looking for one man's bones--they could be anywhere in Mexico.' 'We still have to look,' Call said, wishing Augustus would just quiet down and go to sleep.
On the third day the rangers came into terrain that looked familiar--they had crossed the same country before, when Inish Scull had first pursued Ahumado into the Sierra Perdida.
'We've got to be alert now,' Call said.
'We're in his country.' In the afternoon they both had the feeling that they were being watched--and yet, as far as they could see, the country was entirely empty of human beings. The mountains were now a faint line, far to the west.
Augustus kept looking behind him, and Call did too, but neither of them saw anyone. Once Gus noticed a puff of dust, far behind them. They hid and waited, but no one came. Gus saw the puff of dust again.
'It's them,' he said. 'They're laying back.' Too nervous to leave the problem uninvestigated, they crept back, only to see that the dust had been kicked up by a big mule deer. Gus wanted to shoot the deer, but Call advised against it.
'The sound of a gun would travel too far,' he said.
'The sound of my belly rumbling will too, pretty soon, if we don't raise some more grub,' Gus said.
'Throw your knife at him--I don't object to that,' Call said. 'I think it's time we started travelling at night.' 'Aw, Woodrow, I hate travelling at night in a foreign country,' Augustus said.
'I get to thinking about Billy being a ghost. I'd see a spook behind every rock.' 'That's better than having Ahumado catch you,' Call told him. 'We're not as important as Captain Scull. They won't send no expeditions after us.' 'Woodrow, he ain't important either,' Augustus said. 'None of these ranchers let us have a single cow--I guess they figure the Captain's rich enough to pay his own way out.' They rode all night and, the next day, hid under some overhanging rocks. Gus thought to amuse himself by playing solitaire, only to discover that his deck of cards was incomplete.
'No aces,' he informed his companion. 'That damn Lee Hitch stole every one of them. What good is a deck of cards that don't have no aces?' 'You're just playing against yourself,' Call pointed out. 'Why do you need aces?' 'You ain't a card-playing man and you wouldn't understand,' Gus said. 'I always knew Lee Hitch was a card cheat. I mean to give him a good licking once we get back to town.' 'I'd suggest hitting him with a post, if you want to whip him,' Call said. 'Lee Hitch is stout.' As dusk approached they started to edge into the foothills and immediately began to see tracks. People had been on the move, some on horseback, some on foot, and all the tracks led out of the Sierra. Gus, who considered himself a tracker of high skill, jumped down to study the tracks but was frustrated by poor light.
'I could read these tracks if we'd got here a little earlier,' he said.
'Let's keep going,' Call said. 'These tracks were probably just made by some poor people looking for a better place to settle.' As they passed from the foothills into the first narrow canyon, the darkness deepened. Above them, soon, was a trough of stars, but their light didn't do much to illuminate the canyon. The terrain was so rocky that they dismounted and began to lead their horses. They had but one mount apiece and could not risk laming them. They entered an area where there were large boulders, some of them the size of small houses.
'There could be several pistoleros behind every one of those big rocks,' Augustus pointed out.
'We might be surrounded and not know it.' 'I doubt it,' Call said. 'I don't think there's anybody here.' When they had ridden into the Yellow Canyon before, there had been no army of pistoleros, just three or four riflemen, shooting from caves in the rock. Only their Apache scout had seen Ahumado lean out briefly and shoot Hector and the Captain. No one else saw him.
Ahumado was not like Buffalo Hump--he didn't prance around in front of his enemies, taunting them. He hid and shot; he was only seen by his enemies once he had made them his prisoner.
As they walked their horses deeper and deeper into the Sierra Perdida, Call became more and more convinced that they were alone. From years of rangering in dangerous territory he had gained some confidence: he believed he could sense the presence of hostiles before he saw them. There would be a sense of threat that could not be traced to any one element of the situation: the horses might be nervous, the birds might be more noisy; or the threat might be detectable by the absence of normal sounds. Even if there was nothing specific to point to, he would tense a little, grow nervous, and rarely was his sense of alarm without basis. If he felt there was about to be a fight, usually there would be a fight.
Now, in the canyon that led to the cliff of caves, he felt no special apprehension.
Few landscapes were more threatening, physically-- Gus was right about the boulders being a good place for pistoleros to hide--but he didn't believe there were any pistoleros. The place felt empty, and he said so.
'He's gone,' he said. 'We've come too late, or else we've come to the wrong place.' 'It's the place we came to before, Woodrow,' Augustus said. 'I remember that sharp peak to the south. This is the same place.' 'I know that,' Call agreed, 'but I don't think anybody's here.' 'Why would they leave?' Gus asked. 'They'd be pretty hard to attack, in these rocks.' Call didn't answer--he felt perplexed.
They were only a few miles from the place where they expected to find the Captain, but they had heard nothing and seen nothing to indicate that anyone was there.
'Maybe we came all this way for nothing,' he said.
'Maybe,' Gus said. 'We've had a lot of practice, going on expeditions for nothing.
That's how it's mostly turned out. You ride awhile in one direction and then you turn around and ride back.' In the rocky terrain they had several times heard rattlesnakes sing, so many that Augustus had become reluctant to put his foot on the ground.
'We'll just get snakebit if we keep tramping on in the dark like this,' he said. 'Let's stop, Woodrow.' 'We might as well,' Call agreed. 'We can't be more than a mile or two from the place where the camp was. In the morning we can ride in and see what we see.' 'I hope I see a whore and a jug of tequila,' Gus said. 'Two whores wouldn't hurt, either. I'm so randy I might wear one of them down.' Now that he didn't have to march through rattlesnakes, Augustus felt a little more relaxed. He immediately took off his boots and shook them out.
'What was in your boots?' Call inquired.
'Just my feet, but I like to shake my boots out regular,' Gus said.
