, and mail ought to get
in once a month."

Rhodes grunted something about "mail in normal times, but these times
were not normal," and did not seem much interested in word from
Granados.

He had not the heart, or else had too much, to tell the old man that
the letter to Billie never reached her. When Whitely went north he put
it in his coat pocket, and then changed his coat! Kit found it a month
later and held it, waiting to find someone going out. He had not even
mentioned it to Whitely on his return, for Whitely was having his own
troubles, and could not spare a man for a four day trip to mail.

Whitely's folks lived north of Naco, and he had gone there direct
and returned without touching at Nogales, or hearing of the tragedy
at Granados. The latest news of the Mexican revolutions, and the
all-absorbing question as to whether the United States would or
would not intervene, seemed all the news the worried Whitely had
brought back. Even the slaughter of a dozen nations of Europe had
no new features to a ranchman of Sonora,--it remained just slaughter.
And one did not need to cross boundaries to learn of killings, for
all the world seemed aflame, and every state in Mexico had its own
wars,--little or big.

Then, in the records of the tumultuous days, there was scarce space
for the press or people to give thought after the first day or two, to
the colorless life going out in mystery under the cottonwoods of
Granados, and no word came to tell Rhodes of the suspicion, only half
veiled, against himself.

The ranch house of Mesa Blanca was twenty miles from the hacienda of
Soledad, and a sharp spur of the Carrizal range divided their grazing
lands. Soledad reached a hundred miles south and Mesa Blanca claimed
fifty miles to the west, so that the herds seldom mingled, but word
filtered to and from between the vaqueros, and Rhodes heard that Perez
had come north from Hermosillo and that El Aleman, (the German) had
made the two day trip in from the railroad, and had gone on a little
_pasear_ to the small rancherias with Juan Gonsalvo, the half-breed
overseer. The vaqueros talked with each other about that, for there
were no more young men among them for soldiers, only boys and old men
to tend the cattle, and what did it mean?

The name of Rhodes was not easy for the Mexican tongue, and at Mesa
Blanca his identity was promptly lost in the gift of a name with a
meaning to them, El Pajarito, (the singer). Capitan Viajo, (t