The next day he went to tell Marguerite good-bye and sat talking with her a long time upon her veranda. Las Plumas had noticed the frequency of his calls at the Delarue house on his last trip to the town, and when it saw him there again two days in succession it felt sure that a love story was going on under the roses and honeysuckles. The smoke of the engine which carried him away had scarcely melted on the horizon before people were saying to one another that it would be a splendid match and what a fine thing it was for Marguerite Delarue that so rich a man as Wellesly had fallen in love with her. Judge Harlin at once drove out to Emerson Mead's ranch in order that he might learn, from Mead's own lips, exactly what had happened to Wellesly and what sort of a compact Mead had made with him concerning the finding of Will Whittaker's body. They sat under the trees discussing Wellesly's character, after Mead had told the whole story down to their parting at Muletown. "By the way," said Harlin, "they are saying, over in town, that Wellesly is stuck on Frenchy Delarue's daughter, and that they are to be married next fall. She is a stunning pretty girl, and as good as she is pretty, but it seems to me rather odd for Wellesly to come down here to get a wife. He's the sort of man you would expect to look for money and position in a wife, rather than real worth." CHAPTER XVI When Thomson Tuttle and Nick Ellhorn reached the little canyon in the Oro Fino mountains they saw that the two would-be kidnappers must have been there since Wellesly's departure for three of the four horses were quietly grazing, with hobbled feet, beside the rivulet. They speculated upon what the absence of the fourth horse might mean while they staked their own beasts and started on the trail of the two men. Up the larger canyon a little way they saw buzzards flying low and heavily. "That looks as if one of 'em was dead," said Nick. "It would be just like the scrubs," Tom grumbled, "for both of 'em to go and die before we get a pop at 'em. I want to see the color of their hair just once. Confound their measly skins, they might have got Emerson into a worse scrape than this Whittaker business." They were both silent for some moments, watching the buzzards as they swooped low over some dark object on the floor of the canyon. As they came nearer they saw that the dead thing on which the birds were feeding was the missing horse. "They killed it for meat," said Nick, pointing to a clean cut which had severed one hind leg from the body. "Yes, and not so very long ago, either," Tom assented, "or the buzzards wouldn't have left this much flesh on it, and it would be dried up more." "Say, Tom, they brought this beast up here to kill it, and they sure wouldn't have brought it so far away if they had wanted the meat down there in that canyon. They must have changed camp."