and kept his eyes open for a tall young Mexican who
might be unduly interested in his movements.

He met various acquaintances who expressed surprise at not having seen
him around the hotel. To these he explained that he had rented a corral
for his horse, where he could be sure of the feed Rabbit was getting, and
to save the expense of a livery stable. Rabbit had been kinda off his
feed, he said, and he wanted to look after him himself. So he had been
sleeping in the cabin that went with the corral.

His friends thought that was a sensible move, and praised his judgment,
and Starr felt better. He did not, however, tell them just where the
corral was located. He had some notion of moving to another place, so he
considered that it would be just as well not to go into details.

So thinking, he took his packages and started across to the gully which
led into the arroyo that let him into his place by the back way. He meant
to return as he had come; and if any one happened to be spying, he would
think Starr had chosen that route as a short cut to town, which it was.

A block away from the little side street that opened to the gully, Starr
stopped short, shocked into a keener attention to his surroundings. He
had just stepped over an automobile track on the walk, where a machine
had crossed it to enter a gateway which was now closed. And the track had
been made by a cord tire. He looked up at the gate of unpainted planks,
heavy-hinged and set into a high adobe wall such as one sees so often in
New Mexico. The gate was locked, as he speedily discovered; locked on the
inside, he guessed, with bars or great hooks or something.

He went on to the building that seemed to belong to the place; a long
two-story adobe building with the conventional two-story gallery running
along the entire front, and with the deep-set, barred windows that are
also typically Mexican. Every town in the adobe section of the southwest
has a dozen or so buildings almost exactly like this one. The door was
blue-painted, with the paint scaling off. Over it was a plain lettered
sign: LAS NUEVAS.

Starr had seen copies of that paper at the Mexican ranches he visited,
and as far as he knew, it was an ordinary newspaper of the country-town
style, printed in Mexican for the benefit of a large percentage of
Mexican-Americans whose knowledge of English print is extremely hazy.

He walked on slowly to the corner, puzzling over this new twist in the
faint clue