“There ain’t a God almighty thing that we can do ’til th’ mornin’.”
The old Pardners, when their day’s work was finished, climbed slowly down from the mouth of the tunnel to the creek and, crossing the little stream, climbed as slowly up to the level above. As his head and shoulders came above the top of the steep bank, Thad, who was in the lead, stopped.
“What’s the matter?” called Bob, who was close behind in the narrow path with his head on a level with his pardner’s feet. “Gittin’ so old you can’t make the grade without takin’ a rest, be you?”
“Whar’s the little pinto hoss?” demanded Thad in an injured tone, as if the absence of Nugget was a personal grievance.
“She ought to be,” said Thad with an anxious eye on the threatening clouds that now hung dark and heavy over the upper cañon.
“Stopped at Saint Jimmy’s, I reckon,” returned Bob, who was also studying the angry sky. “Goin’ to storm some, ain’t it?”
“The gal sure can’t miss seein’ that,” returned the other, “an’ she ought to know that when we do get a storm this time of the year, it’s always a buster. I wish she was home.”
“Mebby she’s over to Edwards’,” said Bob hopefully.
They went on toward the house until they gained an unobstructed view of the neighboring cabin and premises.
“Her hoss ain’t there neither,” said Thad, and again he looked up at the dark, rolling clouds.
“Oh, she’ll be comin’ along in a minute or two,” offered Bob soothingly, but his voice betrayed the anxiety his words were meant to hide.
Marta was no novice in the mountains, and the old Pardners knew that it was not like their girl to ignore the near approach of a storm that would in a few moments change the murmuring cañon creek into a wild, roaring flood that no living horse could ford or swim. The trail, on its course from her home to the Burtons, and to Oracle, crossed and recrossed the creek many times, and should the storm break in the upper cañon at the right moment, it would easily be possible for the girl to be trapped at some point between the cañon walls and the bends of the stream, and forced to spend at least the night there. More than this, there was a place where the trail followed for some distance up the narrow, sandy bed of the creek itself, between sheer cliffs. The Pardners and Marta had more than once seen a rolling, plunging, raging wall of water come thundering down the cañon from a storm above, with a mad force that no power on earth could check or face, and with a swiftness that no horse could outrun.