ter follow him and----'

Suddenly her expression altered. Her eyes softened and she added.

'I know,' she added. 'No, we mustn't follow him. And he'll be gone an
hour.'

'What is it?' wondered Alan.

'I am not quite old enough to stop having birthdays,' she explained.
'He's just slipping off mysteriously as usual to buy something
expensive and foolish for me. He's just about the dearest old dad in
the world.'

So they tied their horses and went into the cool of the shady porch.
Because they had matters of their own to talk about, they did not
concern themselves further with the eccentricities of a fond parent.
Meantime Longstreet, chuckling as he went, rode by the post office to
establish a sort of moral alibi and thence proceeded to the
court-house. He found it readily, a square, paintless, dusty building
upon a dying lawn. Sanchia looking flushed and hot, was waiting for
him under a tree in front.

'Mr. Harkness is out,' she told him immediately. 'And as it happens,
there is no one in the office. But I have found where his assistant
is. He is Mr. Bates, and he has had a hard day, it seems, and is now
having a late lunch at the Montezuma House. We are to ride over there.'

This satisfied him, and together they rode through the back street and
to the rear entrance of the gambling-house. Here they dismounted and
left their horses, Sanchia going before him.

'We'll go in the back way,' she told him, 'as I do not care to come to
such places, and if I must come, I'd rather it wasn't known. Tongues
are so eager to wag when one is a woman deprived of a protector. The
men from the court-house sometimes come here for their meals.'

She showed him the way under a long grape-vine arbour and to a door
which she opened. There was a dark, cool hall and another door opening
upon a small room in which they could see a man sitting at a table with
a cup of coffee and some sandwiches before him.

'I don't know Mr. Bates personally,' whispered Sanchia. 'But he knows
who I am and will do quite as well as Mr. Harkness.'

'You are Mr. Bates, aren't you?' she asked from the doorway. 'Mr.
Harkness's assistant?'

The man at the table nodded.

'Yes. Come in. You are Mrs. Murray? I have heard Harkness mention
you. If there is anything I can do for you?' His eye travelled slowly
to Longstreet.

The man was not a pleasant type, thought Longstreet. He was swarthy
and squat and had an eye that slunk away from h