l almost at once. One was the attorney Fitt, the other a young woman
who gave her name as Kate Underwood. Fitt used an hour of the old
miner's time to no purpose, but the young woman brought with her one
piece of news.

"I want to know when Mr. Gordon was last seen," she explained, "because
he was calling on my mother and me last night and left about ten
o'clock."

The little man got to his feet in great excitement. "My dear young
woman, you're the very person I've been wanting to see. He told me he
was going calling, but I'm such a darned chump I didn't think to ask
where. Is Dick a friend of your family?"

"No, hardly that. I met him when he came to our office in the State
House to look up the land grant papers. We became friendly and I asked
him to call because we own the old Valdes house, and I thought he would
like to see it." She added, rather dryly: "You haven't answered my
question."

"I'll say that so far as I know you are the last person who ever saw
Dick alive except his murderers," Davis replied, a gleam of tears in his
eyes.

"Oh, it can't be as bad as that," she cried. "They wouldn't go that
far."

"Wouldn't they? He was shot at from ambush while we were out riding one
day in the Chama Valley."

"By whom?"

"By a young Mexican--one of Miss Valdes servants."

"You don't mean that Valencia----?"

She stopped, unwilling to put her horrified thought into words. He
answered her meaning.

"No, I reckon not. She wanted Dick to tell her who it was, so she could
punish the man. But that doesn't alter the facts any. He was shot at.
That time the murderer missed, but maybe this time----"

Miss Underwood broke in sharply. "Do you know that he has been followed
ever since he came to town, that men have dogged his steps everywhere?"

Davis leaned across the table where he was sitting. "How do you know?"
he questioned eagerly.

"I saw them and warned him. He laughed about it and said he knew
already. He didn't seem at all worried."

"Worried! He's just kid enough to be tickled to death about it," snapped
the miner, masking his anxiety with irritation. "He hadn't sense enough
to tell me for fear it would disturb me--and I hadn't the sense to find
out in several days what you did in five minutes."

Davis and Miss Underwood went together over every foot of the road
between her home and the hotel. One ray of hope they got from their
examination of the ground he must have traversed to reach the El Tovar,