and out of the danger zone.

But already he was flogging himself with his own contempt. He had
given way to panic before a girl who had been brought up to despise a
quitter. She herself had nerves as steady as chilled steel. He had
seen her clench her strong white little teeth without a murmur through
a long afternoon of pain. Gameness was one of the fundamentals of her
creed, and he had showed the white feather. It added to his
punishment, too, that he worshiped pluck with all the fervor of one who
knew he had none. Courage seemed to him the one virtue worth while;
cowardice the unpardonable sin. He made no excuses for himself. From
his father he inherited the fine tradition of standing up to punishment
to a fighting finish. His mother, too, had been a thoroughbred. Yet
he was a weakling. His heart pumped water instead of blood whenever
the call to action came.

In dejection he rode up the valley, following the same hilly trail he
had taken two days before with Miss Rutherford. It took him past the
aspen grove at the mouth of the gulch which led to the Meldrum place.
Beyond this a few hundred yards he left the main road and went through
the chaparral toward a small ranch that nestled close to the timber.
Beulah had told him that it belonged to an old German named Rothgerber
who had lived there with his wife ever since she could remember.

Rothgerber was a little wrinkled old man with a strong South-German
accent. After Beaudry had explained that he wanted board, the rancher
called his wife out and the two jabbered away excitedly in their native
tongue. The upshot of it was that they agreed to take the windmill
agent if he would room in an old bunkhouse about two hundred yards from
the main ranch building. This happened to suit Roy exactly and he
closed the matter by paying for a week in advance.

The Rothgerbers were simple, unsuspecting people of a garrulous nature.
It was easy for Beaudry to pump information from them while he ate
supper. They had seen nothing of any stranger in the valley except
himself, but they dropped casually the news that the Rutherfords had
been going in and out of Chicito Canon a good deal during the past few
days.

"Chicito Canon. That's a Mexican name, isn't it? Let's see. Just
where is this gulch?" asked Beaudry.

The old German pointed out of the window. "There it iss, mein friend.
You pass by on the road and there iss no way in--no arroyo, no gulch,
no noddings