near, at least, none that was not more accessible from
another point. To be sure, some tenderfoot tourist might have been told
some yarn that brought him up here on a wild-goose chase. You can,
thought Starr, expect any fool thing of a tourist. He remembered running
across one that was trying between trains to walk across the mesa from
Albuquerque to the Sandia mountains. It had been hard to convince that
particular specimen that he was not within a mile or so of his goal, and
that he would do well to reach the mountains in another three hours or
so of steady walking. Compared with that, driving a car up this arroyo
did not look so foolish.

But tourists did not invade this particular locality with their
overconfident inexperience, and Starr did not give that explanation much
serious thought. Instead he followed on up the narrowed gulch to higher
ground, to see where men would be most likely to go from there. At the
top he looked out upon further knobs and hollows and aimless
depressions, just as he had expected. Half a mile or so away there
drifted a thin spiral of smoke, from the kitchen stove of the Senora
Medina, he guessed. But there was no other sign of human life anywhere
within the radius of many miles, or, to be explicit, within the field of
Starr's vision.

He looked for footprints, but in a few minutes he gave up in disgust.
The ridge he stood on stretched for miles, up beyond Medina's home
ranch and down past the Sommers' ranch, five or six miles nearer town,
and on to the railroad. And it was a rocky ridge if ever there was one;
granite outcroppings, cobblestones, boulders, anything but good loose
soil where tracks might be followed. A dog might have followed a trail
there before the scent was baked out by blistering heat; but Starr
certainly could not.

He stood looking across to where the smoke curled up into the intense
Blue of the sky. If a man wanted to reach the Medina ranch by the most
obscure route, he thought, this would be one way to get there. He went
back to where the automobile had stood and searched there for some sign
of those who had ridden this far. But if any man left that machine, he
had stepped from the running board upon rock, and so had left no telltale
print of his foot.

"And that looks mighty darn queer," said Starr, "if it was just
accidental. But if a fellow _wanted_ to take to the rocks to cover his
trail, why, he couldn't pick a better place than this. She's a dandy
ridge a