“Good morning,” he greeted her. “It’s pretty shivery out here. You beat me to it, and I apologize for oversleeping and allowing you to start breakfast alone.” “You’re a very considerate gentleman, Doctor,” replied Mary Temple. “But this is nothing new for me, and I like to work. I like to smell the dawn come, too. They’ve gone.” “What’s that? Who’s gone, Miss Temple?” “Leach and Morley and his wife,” Mary replied, raking coals one side from the fire on which to place the coffeepot to simmer. “Gone? Gone where?” “Land knows! But I guessed it last night. They knew they’d not have any chance after Charmian talked with that Shirttail body. They’re crooked, Doctor. A dog’s hind leg would look like a steel ruler ’longside of Leach and Morley. I knew it--I just knew it all along!” “Do you mean, Miss Temple, that Morley and his wife and Leach have ridden off and left us here on the desert?--that their opal claims are a fake, and that they were afraid Shirttail Henry would expose them to Mrs. Reemy?” “Of course,” answered Mary simply. “I knew it all along, but nobody would have paid any attention to me, so I couldn’t say boo to a goose. Now isn’t this a beautiful splatchet?” “I don’t believe I understand you,” puzzled the physician. “A ‘splatchet’?” Mary never seemed to find the dictionaries adequate to the needs of her vocabulary. She invented words indiscriminately when the sound of them seemed to suggest the thought she wanted to express. “A splatchet,” she said carefully, “is a double mess on the floor. If you were baking pancakes, for instance, and turned to the sink a second to rinse out a couple of teacups, then saw that the pancakes were about to burn, and then you jumped for them and upset both the dishwater and the pancake batter, you’d make a splatchet on the floor.” “What animals have they taken?” asked Shonto, with a smile at her droll word coinage. “Have you investigated?” “Of course,” said Mary. “They’ve taken the three horses they rode here on, a little grub, and three canteens of water. That’s all. No great loss to us. We’ve plenty left to travel back on. They tied what grub they took behind their saddles, for all the burros are here.” “You didn’t find a note or anything like that?” “Nothing.” “Well, this is a pretty mess, Miss Temple! Mrs. Reemy will be sick with disappointment.” “Maybe so. It’ll do her good. If she’d taken my advice she’d be tucked in her pretty ivory bed at El Trono de Tolerancia this minute, and I’d be turning flapjacks at the fireplace. But, no--I don’t know anything! Nobody listens to me!”