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Fifty-seven buzzards, one on each of fifty-seven fence posts at the rancho El Tejon, on a mirage-breeding September morning, sat solemnly while the white tilted travelers' vans lumbered down the Canada de los Uvas. After three hours they had only clapped their wings, or exchanged posts.
But in the end when he was told curtly that he owed vastly more to the county than to his stupid conscience, that he had been chosen to get Jim Galloway, that that was his job, that he could do all the resigning he wanted to afterward, and that finally he was not to consider his own personal feelings until he had thought of Virginia's, Norton gave over his regrets and merely waxed impatient for the time when he could finish his work and go back to Las Flores rancho.
Mum's the word," agreed Ruth; and then both girls struck their horses sharply and started on a swift gallop for the Conroyal rancho, where we must leave them for the present and return to Thure and Bud. At the date of the happenings here recorded, 1849, the greater part of California was still an unbroken wilderness, inhabited only by scattered tribes of Indians and the wild beasts.
To the Senorita Inez he had spoken of his claim upon the Windham rancho through her brother's note won on the gambling table. He had touched the matter very gently, for McTurpin knew the ways of women and was not without engaging qualities when they stood him in good stead.
His eye did not rise, but clung in a fascinated, faintly accusing way to the gun which had betrayed him. The stranger nodded and then lifted his hat for the ceremony while he presented himself. 'Name of Howard, he announced breezily. 'Alan Howard of the old Diaz Rancho. Glad to know you both. 'It is a pleasure, I am sure, Mr. Howard, said the professor.
"Lots of 'em," said Teddy, with symptoms of mental delirium under the strain. Do you happen to know any such individual?" "No; the description is imaginary. Is your interest in the old lady whom you describe a personal one?" "Never saw her in my life. She's painted entirely from fancy. She owns the little piece of property where I earn my bread and butter the Rancho de las Sombras.
Talk like water gushed from him: he might have been smitten with Aaron's rod that is your gentle shepherd when an audience is vouchsafed him whose ears are not overgrown with wool. "Missis Yeager," he babbled, "I see a man the other day on the Rancho Seco down in Hidalgo County by your name Webb Yeager was his. He'd just been engaged as manager. He was a tall, light-haired man, not saying much.
"I play my game according to the time-honored rules of that game. I do not ask for quarter, and I shall not give it. I'm going to do all in my power to acquire the Rancho Palomar under that mortgage I hold and I hope that young man gives me a bully fight. That will make the operation all the more interesting.
The Indians who had harried the sheep and cattle who had attacked the hacienda of Don Juan who had fired the rancho and carried off Rosita were Colonel Vizcarra, his officer Captain Roblado, his sergeant Gomez, and a soldier named Jose another minion of his confidence and will.
To renew the search in the city, to send telegrams in every direction, was the next effort, which, like the first, proved fruitless; and, at the end of ten days Miss Edwards made a few formal calls on her friends, concluded some necessary purchases, and set out on her return to Tesoro Rancho, exhausted in mind and body.
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