orse, as
she and her mother lifted Pete and carried him to the bedroom.

CHAPTER XXI

BOCA DULZURA

Just before dawn Pete became conscious that some one was sitting near
him and occasionally bathing his head with cool water. He tried to sit
up. A slender hand pushed him gently back. "It is good that you
rest," said a voice. The room was dark--he could not see--but he knew
that Boca was there and he felt uncomfortable. He was not accustomed
to being waited upon, especially by a woman.

"Where's Malvey?" he asked.

"I do not know. He is gone."

Again Pete tried to sit up, but sank back as a shower of fiery dots
whirled before his eyes. He realized that he had been hit pretty
hard--that he could do nothing but keep still just then. The hot pain
subsided as the wet cloth again touched his forehead and he drifted to
sleep. When he awakened at midday he was alone.

He rose, and steadying himself along the wall, finally reached the
doorway. Old Flores was working in the distant garden-patch. Beyond
him, Boca and her mother were pulling beans. Pete stepped out dizzily
and glanced toward the corral. His horse was not there.

Pete was a bit hasty in concluding that the squalid drama of the
previous evening (the cringing girl, the drunkenly indifferent father,
and the malevolent Malvey) had been staged entirely for his benefit.
The fact was that Malvey had been only too sincere in his boorishness
toward Boca; Flores equally sincere in his indifference, and Boca
herself actually frightened by the turn Malvey's drink had taken. That
old Flores had knocked Pete out with a bottle was the one and
extravagant act that even Malvey himself could hardly have anticipated
had the whole miserable affair been prearranged. In his drunken
stupidity Flores blindly imagined that the young stranger was the cause
of the quarrel.

Pete, however, saw in it a frame-up to knock him out and make away with
his horse. And back of it all he saw The Spider's craftily flung web
that held him prisoner, afoot and among strangers. "They worked it
slick," he muttered.

Boca happened to glance up. Pete was standing bareheaded in the noon
sunlight. With an exclamation Boca rose and hastened to him. Young
Pete's eyes were sullen as she begged him to seek the shade of the
portal.

"Where's my horse?" he challenged, ignoring her solicitude.

She shook her head. "I do not know. Malvey is gone."

"That's a cinch! You sure w