Away up the arroyo,
Luck stopped for breath after a sharp climb up through a narrow gash in the
sheer wall of what was now a small canon, and saw that to search any farther
in that direction would be useless. Across the arroyo--that had narrowed and
deepened until it was a canon--Andy Green was mopping his face with his
handkerchief and studying a bold hump of jumbled bowlders and ledges,
evidently considering whether it was worth while toiling up to the top. A
little below him, the Native Son was flinging rocks at a rattlesnake with the
vicious precision of frank abhorrence. Down in the canon bottom Big Medicine
and Pink were holding the horses on the shady side of the gorge, and the smoke
of their cigarettes floated lazily upward with the jumbled monotone of their
voices.
Andy, glancing across at Luck, waved his hand and sat down on a rock that was
shaded by a high bowlder; reached mechanically for his "makings" and with his
feet far apart and his elbows on his thighs, wearily rolled a cigarette.
"How about it, boss?" he asked, scarcely raising his voice above the ordinary
conversational tone, though a hard fifteen-minutes' climb up and down
separated the two; "they never came up the arroyo, if you ask ME.
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