“--My ’Nicia has her years ahead of her. Her love life must be awakened and given freedom to unfold like a flower in a garden. Yet I have permitted her to come back to me here in the Garden of Solitude because I was lonely. Better far that I sell what we have here and take you back to the world. In these evil days there is no fit mate to be found for you in all Sonora. Hamilcar Urgo has threatened me if I do not give you to him; he is of our blood, but he is abominable. I--” A soft hand clapped over his lips. He heard passionate words: “Father mine, stop! Never--never whisper again that you will sell our Garden. For I love it, next to you, above all the world. We are desert people, little father. We live in God’s hand and are happy. The cities crush me with their noise, their confusion.” “But, ’Nicia--” “And, dearest of daddies”--her lips against his ear were giving kisses light as thistledown--“I want no lover but you--no happiness but what I have returned to here in the Garden. Now, not a word more!” She was on her feet and with the skirts of her gown caught in her fingers was making him an old-fashioned curtsy. Then she slipped into the shadows where the great golden harp stood, and in an instant the ancient room began to hum with spirited arpeggios--rush of many waters over a fall. CHAPTER IX GOLD AND PEARLS Bim Bagley, on the trail of the information brought by Doc Stooder’s pipe line, found himself against a blank wall the instant he passed through the barrier of the Line into Sonizona. He was too conversant with the ways of Mexican officialdom to make any inquiry in high places, knowing that to do so would be but to jeopardize Grant Hickman, however he might be placed, and win for himself naught but suave denials. Nor did he even go to the American consul, who, in the usual course of things, would be the last man in Sonizona to hear of the disappearance of an American citizen there. Rather, with Doc Stooder’s counsel, Bim circulated warily among the gambling halls and in the _cantinas_ where the rurales were wont to go for their salt and mescal. Here ten pesos slipped into a complacent palm; there twenty. Then weary waiting for results. Bit by bit the story came to him, and behind the fragments was always the dim figure of Colonel Hamilcar Urgo. Bagley knew Urgo for the tyrant politician that he was: how he used his position in the garrison as a cloak to cover his manipulations of government all along the Sonora border. No man was stronger, not even the governor of Sonora himself; and the central regime in Mexico City was forced to wink at Colonel Urgo’s obliquities else run the risk of his firing the train to revolution. But why this little sand viper in uniform should have conceived a desire to be rid of Grant Hickman, a total stranger to the country, not even the most astute of Bagley’s informers could guess. “’E’s not like theese gringo” appeared to cover the whole case.