Virginia was not the only one whom Galloway had set pondering; certain of his words spoken to the sheriff when the two faced each other on the Tecolote trail gave Norton food for thought. For the first time Jim Galloway had openly offered a bribe, one of no insignificant proportions, prefacing his offer with the remark: "I have just begun to imagine lately that I have doped you up wrong all the time." If Galloway had gone on to add: "Time was when I didn't believe I could buy you, but I have changed my mind about that," his meaning could have been no plainer. Now he held out a bribe in one hand, a threat in the other, and Norton riding on to Tecolote mused long over them both. In Tecolote, a straggling village of many dogs and swarthy, grimy-faced children, he tarried until well after dark, making his meal of coffee, _frijoles_, and _chili con carne_, thereafter smoking a contemplative pipe. Abandoning the little lunch-room to the flies and silence he crossed the road to the saloon kept by Pete Nunez, the brother of the man whom it was Norton's present business to make answer for a crime committed. Pete, a law-abiding citizen nowadays, principally for the reason that he had lost a leg in his younger, gayer days, swept up his crutch and swung across the room from the table where he was sitting to the bar, saying a careless "Que hay?" by way of greeting. "Hello, Pete," Norton returned quietly. "Haven't seen Vidal lately, have you?" Besides Vidal's brother there were a half dozen men in the room playing cards or merely idling in the yellow light of the kerosene lamp swung from the ceiling, men of the saloon-keeper's breed to the last man of them. Their eyes, the slumbrous, mystery-filled orbs of their kind, had lifted under their long lashes to regard the sheriff with seeming indifference. Pete shrugged. "Me, I ain't seen Vidal for a mont'," he answered briefly. "I see Jim Galloway though. Galloway say," and Pete ran his towel idly back and forth along the bar, "Vidal come to la Casa Blanca to-night. I dunno," and again he shrugged. Norton allowed himself the luxury of a mystifying smile as Pete Nunez lifted probing eyes to his face. "Jim Galloway has been known to lie before now, like other men," was all of the information he gave to the questioning look. "And," his face suddenly as expressionless as Pete's own, "it wouldn't be a bad bet to look for Vidal in Tres Robles, would it? Eh, Pete?" With that he went out. Quite willing that Pete and his crowd should think what they pleased, Tres Robles lay twenty miles northeast of Tecolote, and if Pete cared to send word to Galloway that the sheriff had ridden on that way, well and good.