With floor bare and hard and white, except for a patch of green
mesquite near the far end it was a lurid and desolate spot, the
barren bottom of a desert bowl.
"Keep down, boys" said Ladd. "There's the waterhole an' hosses
have sharp eyes. Shore the Yaqui figgered this place. I never
seen its like for a trap."
Both white and black horses showed against the green,
and a thin curling column of blue smoke rose lazily from amid
the mesquites.
"I reckon we'd better wait till dark, or mebbe daylight," said
Jim Lash.
"Let me figger some. Dick, what do you make of the outlet to
this hole? Looks rough to me."
With his glass Gale studied the narrow construction of walls and
roughened rising floor.
"Laddy, it's harder to get out at that end than here," he replied.
"Shore that's hard enough. Let me have a look....Well, boys, it
don't take no figgerin' for this job. Jim, I'll want you at the
other end blockin' the pass when we're ready to start."
"When'll that be?" inquired Jim.
"Soon as it's light enough in the mornin'. That Greaser outfit
will hang till to-morrow. There's no sure water ahead for two
days, you remember."
"I reckon I can slip through to the other end after dark," said
Lash, thoughtfully. "It might get me in bad to go round."
The rangers stole back from the vantage point and returned to their
horses, which they untied and left farther round among broken
sections of cliff. For the horses it was a dry, hungry camp, but
the rangers built a fire and had their short though strengthening
meal.
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