Claim Number One Part 15

"Walker and I were wrong in our opinion; something has happened to Slavens," said Bentley.

"Your opinion?" she questioned.

"Well, I should say Walker's rather," he corrected. "I only concurred weakly along toward the end. Walker has held out all the time that Slavens went out to hold a celebration all by himself."

"No; he didn't do that," said she calmly. "I thought so for a little while this morning, too. But I know he didn't. Do you suppose----"

She stopped, as if considering something too extravagant to utter.

"Suppose?" he repeated.

"He talked a good deal about going into the canon to clear up the mystery of that newspaperman and earn the reward," said she.

Bentley shook his head.

"He'd hardly start at night and without preparation."

"He seemed to be a man of peculiar moods. If it came over him suddenly and strongly in an hour of depression he might even go to that desperate length. He believed the difficulties of the canon were largely exaggerated, anyhow. Once he told me that he would undertake to go through it with nothing more than a pair of moccasins and a lantern. It was his theory that a man would need the moccasins for clinging to the rocks."

"It's a queer notion," said Bentley reflectively.

"Do you think----" she began, halting her words again and looking at him with distended eyes.

"There's no telling what a man might do when desperate and despondent,"

he answered. "But I don't believe he'd go without leaving some word, or at least making some disposition of his property in writing, in case he never returned. We'll open his bags and see what we can find."

They hurried forward to carry out this intention.

The doctor's baggage consisted of his battered suitcase and the black bag which contained his instruments. Neither was locked, but neither contained any word to explain where he had gone, nor to give support to the belief that he had intended going anywhere.

Walker, whom Bentley and Agnes rejoined at the camp, sat pondering the information supplied by the girl concerning the doctor's designs on the canon.

"I'll tell you," he declared at length, as if talking to himself, "that man had the nerve to tackle it!"

Agnes looked at him, her face quickening.

"What do you know about him?" she asked.

"I know," said Walker mysteriously, with no intention of bringing his own indiscretions up for the censure of June and her severe mother, "that he had courage enough to tackle anything. I've seen proof of that right here in Comanche, and I want to tell you people that doctor wasn't any man's coward."

"Thank you for saying that," blurted Agnes, wholly unintentionally, a glow of pride on her cheeks.

Mrs. Reed and June looked at her, the widow with a severe opening of her mouth, out of which no sound came; June with a smile behind her hand.

Walker shook his head.

"He had the courage," said he, "but he had too much sense to try to go through that canon. No white man ever went in there and came out alive.

And even if the doctor had wanted to go he wouldn't have started at night."

"I don't know that it would make much difference," said Agnes. "It's always night in that terrible canon."

"And that's so, too," Walker agreed. "I think I'll go over there and take a look around."

"Do you mind if Mr. Bentley and I go with you?" Agnes asked.

"I was going to suggest it," Walker replied, looking longingly at June.

June asked permission with her eyes; Mrs. Reed nodded, having overcome her fears of Walker, owing to the substantial credentials which he was able to show. Mrs. Mann put on her hat and slipped her black bag a bit farther up her arm, and stood ready in a moment to join the expedition.

Mrs. Reed was to remain alone in camp to watch things, for they had been warned that morning by the hotel people against a band of visiting Indians, who picked up anything and everything that was not anch.o.r.ed at least at one end.

It was late in the afternoon; the sun was low when they reached the river. There wasn't anything to be made out of the footprints there. The mouth of the canon had been visited by a great many tourists, some of whom had ventured within a little way to bring out stones for mementos of their daring days of fearsome adventures in the West.

The party stood looking into the mouth of the narrow slit between the high-towering walls. Down there it was already dark; the eye could pierce the gloom but a little way.

"There are places in there where the sun never shines, even for a second a day," Walker declared. "And that water goes through there with power enough in it to grind a man's bones against the rocks. There must be a fall of more than a thousand feet."

"I don't believe he went in there," said Agnes with finality, after standing as if trance-bound for a long time, gazing after the foam-white river as it roared into the echoing depths.

"No," Walker agreed. "He had too much sense for that."

They were all cheered and lightened by this conclusion. A daylight study of the terrors of the place was sufficient to convince anybody that a man would have to be driven to desperate lengths before he would venture for the dubious reward or narrow notoriety to be gained by following that wild river through its dark way.

"I camped over at the other side one summer," Walker told them as they turned away to go back to Comanche, "and I used to pick up things that had come through--boards and things that people had dropped in over at Meander. It pounds things up, I tell you!"

"Did you ever pick up any gold on the other side?" asked June.

"I never found a trace of any," said Walker. "I think that's all a sheep-herder's yarn."

They saw one of the police force in conversation with Mrs. Reed in front of the tent as they drew near, and hastened forward in the hope that he had brought news of the missing man. Mrs. Reed received them with shocked expression, and a gesture of the hands denoting hopelessness for the salvation of the world.

"It's scandalous!" she declared.

The policeman, a carpenterly looking man full of sandy hairs, stood by, grinning.

"What is it, Mother?" asked June.

"I'll not repeat what he says," announced Mrs. Reed. "I will--not--repeat--it!"

They turned to the officer, who wore his tarnished badge--evidently bought after long service in a p.a.w.n-shop at Cheyenne--pinned to his suspender at a point where he could turn his eye down on it whenever the longing, or a desire to feed upon the pride of his official importance, overcame him.

"I was tellin' her that the chief sent me over to say that your friend, the doctor, was seen last night at half-past two in the mornin', jagged up so tight he took two steps back'ards for every one he went ahead. The chief told me to tell you he was layin' under a tent somewhere, and that he'd be as safe as a calf in a barn. I hope that's what you wanted to know."

The policeman turned and went his dusty way after delivering his message from the chief, the wagon-spoke which he carried at the end of a thong twirling at his wrist.

Walker looked around with a little flash of triumph in his eyes, for a man likes to be vindicated in his opinion, even at the expense of his friends' honor. But the gust of pain and disappointment which he saw sweep over Agnes' face set him back with a sudden wrench.

"Say," said he with an a.s.sumption of indignation which he did not altogether feel, "I don't believe that!"

"Nor I," declared Bentley, with no need of a.s.suming a part to say it. "I heard a man describing a crook the other day. He said the fellow was so crooked that if you were to shoot him in the top of the head the bullet would make seven holes in his body before it hit the ground. That's the kind of a man that chief is."