She did so, and Curly put the receipt in his pocket carelessly. He sauntered leisurely to the hotel, but as soon as he could get into a telephone booth his listlessness vanished. Maloney had returned to town and he telephoned him to get Mackenzie at once and watch the Jack of Hearts in front and rear. Before he left the booth Curly had compared the writing of Mrs. Wylie with that on the sheet that had come by special delivery. The loop of the J's, the shape of the K's, the formation of the capital H in both cases were alike. So too was the general lack of character common to both, the peculiar hesitating drag of the letters. Beyond question the same person had written both. Certainly Mrs. Wylie was not warning the sheriff against herself. Then against whom? He must know her antecedents, and at once. There was no time for him to mole them out himself. 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."