“The thing that’s sorta got me fussed is how I’m goin’ explain all this to the old Doc.” Bim’s voice broke through Grant’s contemplation of shadowy frontiers; he noted with a start that his horse had dropped behind Benicia’s and was ambling head-and-head with his friend’s. Bim drawled on: “It sure will look like a double-cross to Stooder--my sailin’ off down into Sonora on the search for you an’ then hooking up with an outfit to go get all the plunder the old Doc thinks he’s as good as got his hands on. Me, I guess I’m queered all right,” was the man’s whimsical finish to his lament. Grant, who had been too preoccupied with the sweep of affairs to give any thought to his pal’s perplexities, could not now offer much consolation. A point of honour involving the grotesque creature who had elected to receive him as a book agent did not greatly move Grant. “A’ course,” Bim continued his monologue, “the way things lie with the girl, her bein’ hipped on gettin’ back this swag somebody in her family lifted from the mission, I’m more’n willing to see her get it. But the old Doc hasn’t got a large store of what you might call sentiment, an’ I sure got my work cut out for me when I try to show him the light.” “Too bad I got you into a tangle, old man,” Grant heartily commiserated; then with a hopeless little laugh, “My own affairs aren’t set on any straight and beautiful road to happiness either.” Bim chuckled deep in his throat. “Me, I was all for your first idea to rope the señorita right outa the home corral an’ put your brand on her, fighting. But like’s not we’ll get _mucho_ plenty excitement along this trail before we’re through.” He gave a short laugh. “Say, Cap’n Hickman, I brought you out from the East on a whale of a proposition. You’re sure getting it. A girl who assays higher’n any pearls an’ old gold junk you could find in a church cellar--the feel and savvy of a man’s country--a larrupin’ fight with old Urgo and his rurales bunch. That last you can back right down to your last white chip.” “But how can Urgo follow us from the O’Donoju house?” incredulously from Grant. “Not one of the servants or other Indians there knows what our destination is--we don’t ourselves except in a general way.” The man of the big country chuckled at metropolitan innocence. “Horses don’t leave tracks on your Fifth Avenoo because they’s no horses left there for one thing, I reckon. But in this country they do. Five horses make a trail a blind man could follow. I or anybody else could track this outfit of ours in the dark. I look to see our li’l friend Urgo drop in on us some time to-morrow. He’ll travel fast with fresh horses his men round up at the O’Donoju corrals.”