The Desert Valley

At the hotel Howard dismounted first to give his hand to Helen. This time she accepted it and even repaid him with a quick smile. Longstreet, while Helen was dismounting, tipped the cattleman a sly wink. It was meant to be full of meaning, but only succeeded in making Howard wonder.

'If you two will wait for me a moment,' said Longstreet, making a perfectly transparent pretence of having nothing of importance on his mind, 'I am going to ride over to the post office. It's just over yonder. You'll be on the porch when I come back?' and without waiting for a reply he clucked to his horse and trotted away. Helen looked after him in surprise.

'Papa's up to something he ought to leave alone,' she decided wisely. She turned to remount.

'We'd better 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.'