er the court room there was a shuffling of feet and a
craning of necks, and a buzzing whisper went back from the foremost
ranks.

Nick Ellhorn was there, tall and slender and smiling, with a happy,
triumphant look overspreading his handsome face. By his side was a
young man, dark-skinned, black-haired and black-mustached, who looked
ashamed and self-conscious. Ellhorn tucked one hand into his arm and
urged him to a quicker pace. Nick's eye sought Emerson Mead and as
Mead's glance flashed from the stranger's face to his, Nick's lid
dropped in a significant wink. Mead leaned back in his chair, a look
of amused triumph on his face, as he watched the scene before him and
waited for it to come to its conclusion.

Slowly Colonel Whittaker stepped forward, trembling, with a look upon
his face that was almost fear. The crowd was pushing and pressing
toward the center of interest, and everywhere wide eyes looked out
from amazed, incredulous faces. Nick Ellhorn and his companion slowly
edged their way between the tables and chairs, the young man advancing
reluctantly, with downcast face, until they stood in front of Colonel
Whittaker. Then he looked up, and exclaimed in a choking voice:

"Father! I am not dead!"

CHAPTER XXV

"It was Amada Garcia put me on," said Nick Ellhorn to Emerson Mead and
Tom Tuttle, as the three sat in Mead's room, whither they went at once
to hear Nick's story. "One morning the first of this week Miss Delarue
came runnin' up to me on the street and said Amada was sick at her
house and had walked all the way in from Garcia's ranch and had
something to tell that she wouldn't say to anybody but Emerson. I went
over to see if she would tell me what she wanted, and Emerson can
thank her, and the _padre_, for gettin' out of this scrape with the
laugh on the other side. She thought she was goin' to die and had
unloaded her soul on to the _padre_, and he had ordered her to tell
Emerson Mead what she had told him. I reckon the little witch wouldn't
have peeped about it to anybody if the _padre_ hadn't made her. She
didn't want to say a word to me, and at first she said she wouldn't,
but I finally made her understand she couldn't see Emerson, and I
swore by all the saints I could think of that I'd tell him and nobody
else exactly what she said. So then she whispered in my ear that Senor
Mead didn't kill Senor Whittaker, and I inched her along until I got
out of her that Will Whittaker wasn't dead.