f. Calling up a local detective agency, he
asked the manager to let him know within an hour or two all that could be
found out about the woman without alarming her.

"Wait a moment I think we have her on file. Hold the 'phone." The
detective presently returned. "Yes. We can give you the facts. Will you
come to the office for them?"

Fifteen minutes later Curly knew that Mrs. Wylie was the divorced wife of
Lute Blackwell. She had come to Saguache from the mountains several years
before. Soon after there had been an inconspicuous notice in the
_Sentinel_ to the effect that Cora Blackwell was suing for divorce from
Lute Blackwell, then a prisoner in the penitentiary at Yuma. Another news
item followed a week later stating that the divorce had been granted
together with the right to use her maiden name. Unobtrusively she had
started her little store. Her former husband, paroled from the
penitentiary a few months before the rustling episode, had at intervals
made of her shop a loafing place since that time.

Curly returned to the Del Mar and sent his name up to Miss Cullison. With
Kate and Bob there was also in the room Alec Flandrau.

The girl came forward lightly to meet him with the lance-straight poise
that always seemed to him to express a brave spirit ardent and unafraid.

"Have you heard something?" she asked quickly.

"Yes. Tell me, when did your father last meet Lute Blackwell so far as you
know?"

"I don't know. Not for years, I think. Why?"

The owner of the Map of Texas answered the question of his nephew. "He met
him the other day. Let's see. It was right after the big poker game. We
met him downstairs here. Luck had to straighten out some notions he had
got."

"How?"

Flandrau, Senior, told the story of what had occurred in the hotel lobby.

"And you say he swore to get even?"

"That's what he said. And he looked like he meant it too."

"What is it? What have you found out?" Kate implored.

The young man told about the letters and Mrs. Wylie.

"We've got to get a move on us," he concluded. "For if Lute Blackwell did
this thing to your father it's mighty serious for him."

Kate was white to the lips, but in no danger of breaking down. "Yes, if
this man is in it he would not stop at less than murder. But I don't
believe it. I know Father is alive. Cass Fendrick is the man we want. I'm
sure of it."

Curly had before seen women hard as nails, gaunt strong mountaineers as
tough as hickory withes