nd pulled down
a pair of motor goggles and put them on distastefully. Like blinders on a
horse they were, but he could not afford to face that wind with
unprotected eyes--not when so very much depended upon his eyes and his
ears and the keenest, coolest faculties of his mind.

Still worry nagged at him. He wanted to know who was the man that had
visited Helen May so soon after he had left, and he wanted to know why a
light had shone from her window at one o'clock last night; and whether
the automobile had been going to Sunlight Basin, or merely in that
direction.

He hurried, for he had no patience with worries that concerned Helen May.
Besides, he meant to beg a breakfast from her, and he was afraid that if
he waited too late she might be out with Pat and the goats, and he would
have to waste time on the kid (Vic would have resented that term as
applied to himself) who might be still laid up with his sprained ankle.

He was not thinking so much this morning about the knowledge he had
gained in the night. He had given several quiet hours to thought upon
that subject, and he had his course pretty clearly defined in his mind.
He also had Sheriff O'Malley thoroughly coached and prepared to do his
part. The matter of Elfigo Apodaca, then, he laid aside for the present,
and concerned himself chiefly with what on the surface were trifles, but
which, taken together, formed a chain of disquieting incidents. Rabbit
felt his master's desire for haste, and loped steadily along the trail,
dropping now and then into his smooth fox-trot, that was almost as fast a
gait; so it was still early morning when he dropped reins outside and
rapped on the closed door.

Helen May opened the door cautiously, it seemed to him; a scant six
inches until she saw who he was, when she cried "Oh!" in a surprised,
slightly confused tone, and let him in. Starr noticed two things at the
first glance he gave her. The first was the blue crocheted cap which she
wore; he did not know that it was called a breakfast-cap and that it was
very stylish, for Starr, you must remember, lived apart from any intimate
home life that would familiarize him with such fripperies. The cap
surprised him, but he liked the look of it even though he kept that
liking to himself.

The second thing he noticed was that Helen May was hiding something in
her right hand which was dropped to her side. When she had let him in and
turned away to offer him a chair, he saw that she had