e, but Kit Rhodes and Cap Pike will wander back here some of
these days, and I mean to have every bit of evidence for Kit to start
in with. He suspected a lot, and all Granados combined to silence
him--fool Granados!"

"But, just between ourselves, child, are you convinced Rhodes did not
make the statement liable to be construed into a threat against Mr.
Singleton?"

"Convinced nothing," was the inelegant reply of his new ward. "I heard
him say enough to hang him if evidence could be found that he was
north of the line that morning, and that's why it's my job to take
note of all the evidence on the other side. The horses did not kill
themselves. That telegram concerning it did not send itself. Papa Phil
did not shoot himself, and that telephone wire did not cut itself! My
hunch is that those four things go together, and that's a combination
they can't clear up by dragging in the name of a man who never saw the
horses, and who was miles south in Sonora with Cap Pike when the other
three things happened. Now can they?"

CHAPTER VII

IN THE PROVINCE OF ALTAR

_There was a frog who lived in the spring:
Sing-song Kitty, can't yo' carry me, oh?
And it was so cold that he could not sing,
Sing-song Kitty, can't yo' carry me, oh?
Ke-mo! Ki-mo! Dear--oh my!
To my hi'--to my ho--to my----_

"Oh! For the love of Mike! Bub, can't you give a man a rest instead of
piling up the agony? These old joints of mine are creakin' with every
move from desert rust and dry camps, and you with no more heart in you
than to sing of springs,--cold springs!"

"They do exist, Cap."

"Uh--huh, they are as real to us this minute as the red gold that
we've trailed until we're at the tag end of our grub stake. I tell
you, Bub, they stacked the cards on us with that door of the old
Soledad Mission, and the view of the gold canon from there! Why,
Whitely showed us that the mission door never did face the hills, but
looked right down the valley towards the Rio del Altar just as the
Soledad plaza does today; all the old Mexicans and Indians tell us
that."

"Well, we've combed over most of the arroyas leading into the Altar
from Rancho Soledad, and all we've found is placer gravel; yet the
placers are facts, and the mother lode is somewhere, Cap."

"Worn down to pan dirt, that's what!" grunted Pike. "I tell you these
heathen sit around and dream l