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"Yes, I showed him what we were doing. We've had other visitors occasionally. Miss Gardner and Miss Martin at Sarita Creek, you remember come at times. Miss Martin is a niece of Mr. McDonnell, of Kennard." "So Mrs. McDonnell told me. Just before I left I called at their cabins again. But I had no more luck that time than the first; they were away somewhere.
Lee sped rapidly toward Sarita Creek, with the headlights of his car casting their glow before him upon the dark road. The silence of the night was broken only by the steady humming of his engine. The mesa seemed very hushed, unstirring, unnatural. When he reached the girls' cabins, he saw that the windows of each were lighted. The girls were there. What incredible folly!
"Your spirit is admirable, but I can't say as much for your judgment in the matter," he returned, good-naturedly. "Still, we all go hunting trouble in our own individual fashion; if not in one way, why, then in another." It was after five o'clock when Lee Bryant and Dave, once more leading the loaded horse, took their departure and followed Sarita Creek down to the mesa trail.
It was the devisa she had stolen from Jovita, and which had not been thrown away at all. In the daytime it was hidden in the bosom of her dress; at night it hung by a cord and her hand held it. By this time a sort of terror had mingled itself with her passion of anger and pain, and she lay trembling because she was saying to herself again and again: "I am like Sarita! I am like Sarita!"
Ruth would have reviewed her conduct that night at Sarita Creek, and, with her instinctive cunning, perceived it would alienate Lee. The message doubtless carried an adroit explanation and excuse, ending up with numerous declarations of her affection and hypocritical assertions of her anxiety on his account. Disgust overwhelmed him. He was minded to cast the thing into the stove unread.
Bryant, on his part, had gone evenings to Sarita Creek when he could spare an hour, and, for that matter, when he could not. But the meetings with her were infrequent, and always left him with a sense of inadequacy, of dissatisfaction, because partly Ruth and he seemed to have no common interests and partly that she now let her affection go for granted.
"What's the trouble, Jack?" McDonnell's voice came, addressed to his chauffeur. Bryant went forward to the banker, who was leaning out of the limousine. He gave the information that neither of the girls was at Sarita Creek and explained that Imogene was at the Graham house, comfortable though ill. "She's too sick to be removed and will probably need a nurse for a time," he concluded.
Off the car sped down the trail toward Bartolo where it would gain the well-travelled mesa road, a hand thrust through the curtains waving back at Bryant. The engineer did not go to Sarita Creek that night, for the rain settled into a steady drizzle that lasted until well toward morning. After supper he went, however, to the adobe dwelling of the Mexican who once had warned him from his field.
He led her back to her seat and began to remove his cap and long sheep-lined overcoat, saying in an undertone that the weather was really too warm for the things. Afterward he posted himself by the stove near her, where he stuffed his pipe with tobacco and began to smoke, while his eyes considered her face. "Imo and I returned to Sarita Creek yesterday," she remarked, with an air of satisfaction.
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