"Won't ye wait till mornin', anyhow?" queried Sandy with concern.
Dejectedly, hopelessly, Deadoak stumbled to his cayuse, pulled himself aboard, waved a limp hand, and rode down the valley. He was slumped in the saddle like a man who sees no hope in the future.
"He's mighty cheerful over something," said Murray drily, and chuckled.
"Well, Sandy, suppose you elucidate? Why did you turn him down?"
Sandy faced his friend and made a wide gesture.
"Murray," he said earnestly, "I'm playin' a hunch. Why should that fellow come here and make us an offer? I don't know--but there was something behind it. We've got something that somebody wants. And I've a notion who that somebody is."
"Oh!" Murray gave him a keen glance. "Then you really found something?"
Sandy rubbed his chin thoughtfully. "Come with me and I'll show you."
Murray accompanied him past the shack, up toward the head of the canyon. Sandy led the way to one side, where a high rocky wall formed a solid background. Before this was a stretch of sand, perfectly level, a hundred feet wide; this was enclosed on either hand by a low growth of manzanita, whose grotesque, wine-red limbs curled eerily in the sunlight.
On either side of this little clearing, a stake had been thrust into the sand. About the head of either stake, had been bound a scrap of red paper. One scrap had been torn away by the wind. On the scrap which fluttered from the other stake, was a flaring black Chinese ideograph.
"Aiblins, now," said Sandy, while Murray examined the paper, "that looks like a chink laundry-man's mark, eh? And ye said that the chink, Tom Lee, had been out here and was comin' home when ye treated his leg. What did he put those stakes in for?"
"I'll bite," said Murray, gazing at the scene with a frown of perplexity. "What?"
Days of honest work and virtuous toil evolved a new Bill Hobbs--a grimy individual streaked with sweat and daubed with printer's ink, yet as absorbedly delighted in his new task as a child with a fresh toy.
For the first time in his life, Willyum was his own boss at actual labor. The financial aspect of his travail had not yet arisen to trouble him. Naturally swift to comprehend things mechanical, he set himself to learn type, and succeeded more or less. He had found enough old job stuff set up to show him the use of the quoins, sticks, and furniture--although these names meant nothing to him--and after various attempts in which some type was sadly ruined, he managed to get the hang of the job press. The flatbed was a simpler proposition.