coming to the door with
a six-shooter hidden against her skirt. There was that handwriting, to
which Starr would unhesitatingly have sworn as being the same as on the
pages he had found in the office of _Las Nuevas_. The writing was
unmistakable: fine, even, symmetrical as print, yet hard to decipher;
slanting a little to the left instead of the right. He had studied too
often the pages in his pocket not to recognize it at a glance.

Most damning evidence of all the evidence against her were two or three
words which his eyes had picked from the context on the page uppermost in
his hand. He had become familiar with those words, written in that
peculiar chirography. "Justice... submission ... ruling ..." He had
caught them at a glance, though he did not know how they were connected,
or what relation they bore to the general theme. Political bunk, his mind
tagged it therefore, and had no doubt whatever that he was right.

"She's got brown eyes and blond hair, and that looks like mixed blood,"
he reminded himself suddenly, after he had sat for a long while staring
down at the house. "How do I know her folks aren't Spanish or something?
How do I know anything about her? I just swallowed what she handed
out--like a damn' fool!"

Just after noon, when the wind had shown some sign of dying down to a
more reasonable blow, Helen May came forth in her riding skirt and a
Tam o' Shanter cap and a sweater, with a package under her arm--a
package of manuscript which she had worked late to finish and was now
going to deliver.

She got the pinto pony which Vic had just ridden sulkily down to the
corral and left for her, and she rode away down the trail, jolting a good
deal in the saddle when the pinto trotted a few steps, but apparently
well pleased with herself.

Starr watched until she turned into the main trail that led toward San
Bonito. Then, when he was reasonably sure of the direction she meant to
take, he hurried down to where Rabbit waited, mounted that long-suffering
animal and followed, using short cuts and deep washes that would hide him
from sight, but keeping Helen May in view most of the time for all that.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

HOLMAN SOMMERS TURNS PROPHET

Holman Sommers, clad outwardly in old wool trousers of a dingy gray, a
faded brown smoking jacket that had shrunk in many washings until it was
three inches too short in the sleeves, and old brown slippers, sat tilted
back in a kitchen chair against the