e. He saw that it had been traveling toward town but had turned
and come back. And looking more closely, he saw that one horse had pulled
the buggy.

He stopped to make sure of that and to search for footprints. But those
he found were indistinct, blurred partly by the looseness of the sand and
partly by the sparse grass that grew along the trail there, because the
buggy had turned in a hollow. He went on a couple of rods, and he saw
where an automobile had also come to this point and had turned and gone
back toward town, or rather, it had swung sharply around and taken the
trail which led through the Mexican settlement; but he guessed that it
had gone back to town, for all that. And the tire marks were made by
Silvertown cords.

Starr stopped and looked back to where the buggy tracks were faintly
outlined in the dust of the hollow, and he spoke aloud his thought:
"You'd think, just to see him and talk to him, that Estan Medina
assays one hundred per cent, satisfied farmer. He's sure some
fox--that same greaser!" After that he shook Rabbit into a long,
distance-eating lope for town.

Night came with its flaring forerunners of purple and crimson and all the
gorgeous blendings of the two. By the time he reached San Bonito, the
stars were out, and the electric lights were sputtering on certain street
corners. Starr had rented a small adobe cabin and a corral with a shed on
the outskirts of town where his movements might be unobserved. He did not
always use these, but stopped frequently at a hotel with a garrulous
landlord, and stabled his horse at a certain livery which he knew to be a
hotbed of the town's gossip. In both places he was a privileged patron
and was the recipient of many choice bits of scandal whispered behind a
prudent palm, with a wink now and then to supply the finer shades of
meaning. But to-night he chose the cabin and the corral sandwiched
between
a transfer company's warehouse and a steam laundry that had been closed
by the sheriff. The cabin fronted on a street that was seldom used, and
the corral ran back to a dry arroyo that was used mainly as a dump for
the town's tin cans and dead cats and such; not a particularly attractive
place but secluded.

He turned Rabbit into the corral and fed him, went in and cooked himself
some supper, and afterwards, in a different suit and shoes and a hat that
spoke loudly of the latest El Paso fad in men's headgear, he strolled
down to the corner and up the next