ave
some nice clothes, too. You wait!"

"Now don't you start riggin' yourself up for meals," Blaze said,
warningly. "First thing I know you'll have me in a full-dress suit,
spillin' soup on my shirt." Then to his guest he complained, feelingly:
"I don't know what's come over Paloma lately; this new dressmaker has
plumb stampeded her. Somebody'd ought to run that feline out of town
before she ruins me."

"She is a very nice woman," complacently declared the daughter; but her
father snorted loudly.

"I wouldn't associate with such a critter."

"My! But you're proud."

"It ain't that," Blaze defended himself. "I know her husband, and he's
a bad hombre. He backed me up against a waterin'-trough and told my
fortune yesterday. He said I'd be married twice and have many children.
He told me I was fond of music and a skilled performer on the organ,
but melancholy and subject to catarrh, Bright's disease, and ailments
of the legs. He said I loved widows, and unless I was poisoned by a
dark lady I'd live to be eighty years old. Why, he run me over like a
pet squirrel lookin' for moles, and if I'd had a gun on me I'd have
busted him for some of the things he said. 'A dark lady!' That's his
wife. I give you warnin', Paloma, don't you ask her to stay for meals.
People like them are dangerous."

"You're too silly!" said Paloma. "Nobody believes in such things."

"They don't, eh? Well, he's got all of Jonesville walkin' around
ladders, and spittin' through crossed fingers, and countin' the spots
on their nails. He interprets their dreams and locates lost articles."

"Maybe he can tell me where to find Adolfo Urbina?" Dave suggested.

"Humph! If he can't, Tad Lewis can. Say, Dave, this case of yours has
stirred up a lot of feelin' against Tad. The prosecutin' attorney says
he'll sure cinch him and Urbina, both. One of Lewis's men got on a
bender the other night and declared Adolfo would never come to trial."

"What did he mean?"

"It may have been mescal talk, but witnesses sometimes have a way of
disappearin'. I wouldn't put anything past that gang."

Not long after breakfast Don Ricardo Guzman appeared at the Jones house
and warmly greeted his two friends. To Dave he explained:

"Last night I came to town, and this morning I heard you had returned,
so I rode out at once. You were unsuccessful?"

"Our man never went to Pueblo."

"Exactly. I thought as much."

"He's probably safe across the river."

But Ricardo th