looked back at him ingratiatingly, and Starr called. Pat came running
in long leaps, nearly wagging himself in two because someone he liked was
going to be nice to him. Starr petted him and talked to him and pulled
his ears and slapped him on the ribs, and Pat in his joy persisted in
trying to lick Starr's cheek.

"Quit it! Lay down and be a doormat, then. You've got welcome wrote all
over you. And much as I like welcome, I hate to be licked."

Pat lay down, and Starr eyed the tan boot toes. They moved impatiently,
but they did not uncross. Starr smiled to himself and proceeded to carry
on a one-sided conversation with Pat, and to smoke his cigarette.

"Sick, over there?" he inquired casually after perhaps five minutes;
either of them would have sworn it ten or fifteen.

"Why, no," chirped the crisp voice. "Why?"

"Seemed polite to ask, is all," Starr confessed. "I didn't think you
was." He finished his smoke in the silence that followed. Then, because
he himself owned a perverse streak, he took his binoculars from their
case and began to study the low-lying ridge in the distance, in a pocket
of which nestled the Medina ranch buildings. He was glad this ridge
commanded all but the "draws" and hollows lying transversely between here
and Medina's place. It was Medina whom he had been advised by his chief
to watch particularly, when Starr had found a means of laying his clues
before that astute gentleman. If he could sit within ten feet of Helen
May while he kept an eye on that country over there, all the better.

He saw a horseman ride up out of a hollow and disappear almost
immediately into another. The man seemed to be coming over in this
direction, though Starr could not be sure. He watched for a reappearance
of the rider on high ground, but he saw no more of the fellow. So after a
little he took down the glasses to scan the country as a whole.

It was then that he glanced toward the other rock and saw that the tan
boots had moved out of sight. He believed that he would have heard her if
she moved away, and so he kept his eyes turned upon the corner of the
rock where her feet had shown a few minutes before.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

A SHOT FROM THE PINNACLE

"Why--did some one come with you, Mr. Starr? I thought you were alone."

Starr turned his head and saw Helen May standing quite close, on the
other side of him. She was glancing inquiringly from him to the pinto
pony, and she was smiling the least littl