When he was sure that he could trace them no
farther, he turned back, meaning to have breakfast at his favorite
restaurant. And as he turned, he met face to face a tall young Mexican in
a full-crowned Stetson banded with horsehair.

Now, as I have said before, San Bonito was full of young Mexicans who
wore Stetson hats and favored horsehair bands around them. Starr
glanced at the fellow sharply, got the uninterested, impersonal look
of the perfect stranger who neither knows nor cares who you are, and
who has troubles of his own to occupy his mind; the look which
nineteen persons out of twenty give to a stranger on the street. Starr
went on unconcernedly whistling under his breath, but at the corner he
turned sharply to the left, and in turning he flicked a glance back at
the fellow. The Mexican was not giving him any attention whatever, as
far as he could see; on the contrary, he was staring down at the
ground as though he, too, were looking for something. Starr gave him
another stealthy look, gained nothing from it, and shrugged his
shoulders and went on.

He ate his breakfast while he turned the matter over in his mind. What
had he done to rouse suspicion against himself? He could not remember
anything, for he had not yet found anything much to work on; nothing, in
fact, except that slight clue of the automobile, and he did not even know
who had been in it. He suspected that they had gone to meet Estan Medina,
but as long as that suspicion was tucked away in the back of his mind,
how was any one going to know that he suspected Estan? He had not been
near the chief of police or the sheriff or any other officer. He had not
talked with any man about the Mexican Alliance, nor had he asked any man
about it. Instead, he had bought sheep and cattle and goats and hogs from
the ranchers, and he had paid a fair price for them and had shipped them
openly, under the eye of the stock inspector, to the El Paso Meat
Company. So far he had kept his eyes open and his mouth shut, and had
waited until some ripple on the surface betrayed the disturbance
underneath.

He was not sure that the young man he met on the street was the one who
had been spying over the fence, but he did not mean to take it for
granted that he was not the same, and perhaps be sorry afterwards for his
carelessness. He strolled around town, bought an automatic gun and a lot
of cartridges for Vic, went into a barber shop on a corner and had a
shave and a haircut,