"Better wait till to-morrow. Forty miles is a long ride, la.s.s."

"No, I can't wait. Have Curly Flandrau come to the Del Mar if he's in town--and d.i.c.k Maloney, too. That's all. Good-by."

She turned to her cousin, who was standing big-eyed at her elbow.

"What is it, Kate? Has anything happened to Uncle Luck?"

She swallowed a lump in her throat. "Dad's gone, Bob. n.o.body knows where.

They say--the liars--that he robbed the W. & S. Express Company."

Suddenly her face went down into her forearm on the table and sobs began to rack her body. The boy, staggered at this preposterous charge, could only lay his hand on her shoulder and beg her not to cry.

"It'll be all right, Kate. Wait till Uncle Luck comes back. He'll make 'em sick for talking about him."

"But suppose he--suppose he----" She dared not complete what was in her mind, that perhaps he had been ambushed by some of his enemies and killed.

"You bet they'll drop into a hole and pull it in after them when Uncle Luck shows up," the boy bragged with supreme confidence.

His cousin nodded, choking down her sobs. "Of course. It--it'll come out all right--as soon as he finds out what they're saying. Saddle two horses right away, Bob."

"Sure. We'll soon find where he is, I bet you."

The setting sun found their journey less than half done. The brilliant rainbow afterglow of sunset faded to colder tints, and then disappeared.

The purple saw-toothed range softened to a violet hue. With the coming of the moon the hard, dry desert lost detail, took on a loveliness of tone and outline that made it an idealized painting of itself. Myriads of stars were out, so that the heavens seemed sown with them as an Arizona hillside is in spring with yellow poppies.

Kate was tortured with anxiety, but the surpa.s.sing beauty that encompa.s.sed them was somehow a comfort to her. Deep within her something denied that her father could be gone out of a world so good. And if he were alive, Curly Flandrau would find him--Curly and d.i.c.k between them. Luck Cullison had plenty of good friends who would not stand by and see him wronged.

Any theory of his disappearance that accepted his guilt did not occur to her mind for an instant. The two had been very close to each other. Luck had been in the habit of saying smilingly that she was his majordomo, his right bower. Some share of his lawless temperament she inherited, enough to feel sure that this particular kind of wrongdoing was impossible for him. He was reckless, sometimes pa.s.sionate, but she did not need to rea.s.sure herself that he was scrupulously honest.

This brought her back to the only other tenable hypothesis--foul play. And from this she shrank with a quaking heart. For surely if his enemies wished to harm him they would destroy him, and this was a conclusion against which she fought desperately.

The plaza clock boomed ten strokes as they rode into Saguache. Mackenzie was waiting for them on the steps of the hotel.

"Have they--has anything been----?"

The owner of the Fiddleback shook his grizzled head. "Not yet. Didn't you meet Curly?"

"No."

"He rode out to come in with you, but if he didn't meet you by ten he was to come back. You took the north road, I reckon?"

"Yes."

His warm heart was wrung for the young woman whose fine eyes stared with dumb agony from a face that looked very white in the shining moonlight. He put an arm around her shoulders, and drew her into the hotel with cheerful talk.

"Come along, Bob. We're going to tuck away a good supper first off. While you're eating, I'll tell you all there is to be told."

Kate opened her lips to say that she was not hungry and could not possibly eat a bite, but she thought better of it. Bob had tasted nothing since noon, and of course he must be fed.

The lad fell to with an appet.i.te grief had not dulled. His cousin could at first only pick at what was set before her. It seemed heartless to be sitting down in comfort to so good a supper while her father was in she knew not how great distress. Grief swelled in her throat, and forced back the food she was trying to eat.

Mackenzie broke off his story to remonstrate. "This won't do at all, Kate.

If you're going to help find Luck, you've got to keep yourself fit. Now, you try this chicken, honey."

"I--just can't, Uncle Mac."

"But you need it."

"I know," the girl confessed, and as she said it broke down again into soft weeping.

Mac let her have her cry out, petting her awkwardly. Presently she dried her eyes, set at her supper in a businesslike way, heard the story to an end quietly, and volunteered one heartbroken comment.

"As if father _could_ do such a thing."

The cattleman agreed eagerly. There were times when he was full of doubt on that point, but he was not going to let her know it.

Curly came into the room, and the girl rose to meet him. He took her little hand in his tanned, muscular one, and somehow from his grip she gathered strength. He would do all that could be done to find her father, just as he had done so much to save her brother.

"I'm so glad you've come," she said simply.

"I'm glad you're glad," he smiled cheerfully.

He knew she had been crying, that she was suffering cruelly, but he offered her courage rather than maudlin sympathy. Hope seemed to flow through her veins at the meeting of the eyes. Whatever a man could do for her would be done by Curly.

They talked the situation over together.

"As it looks to me, we've got to find out two things--first, what has become of your father, and, second, who did steal that money."

"Now you're talking," Mackenzie agreed. "I always did say you had a good head, Curly."

"I don't see it yet, but there's some link between the two things. I mean between the robbery and his disappearance."

"How do you mean?" Kate asked.

"We'll say the robbers were his enemies--some of the Soapy Stone outfit maybe. They have got him out of the way to satisfy their grudge and to make people think he did it. Unfortunately there is evidence that makes it look as if he might have done it--what they call corroborating testimony."

Billie Mackenzie scratched his gray poll. "Hold on, Curly. This notion of a link between the hold-up and Luck's leaving is what the other side is tying to. Don't we want to think different from them?"

"We do. They think he is guilty. We know he isn't."

"What does Sheriff Bolt think?"

Curly waved the sheriff aside. "It don't matter what he thinks, Miss Kate.

He _says_ he thinks Luck was mixed up in the hold-up. Maybe that's what he thinks, but we don't want to forget that Ca.s.s Fendrick made him sheriff and your father fought him to a fare-you-well."

"Then we can't expect any help from him."

"Not much. He ain't a bad fellow, Bolt ain't. He'll be square, but his notions are liable to be warped."