The buckboard, with a team of broncos driven by one of the men, was already driving away. Strapped at the back was Gard’s suit-case, which Anderson had insisted upon having brought out from the hotel in Sylvania. Gard felt quite sure that he preferred to ride, and Anderson gave it as his opinion that that was the best way to travel.
“Better ’n railroad trains, or automobiles,” he declared, and quoted, as a clincher to his opinion, “‘A good man on a good horse is nobody’s slave.’”
Gard had been at the rancho five days; five wonderful days, they were to him, and he felt that he dared not stay another hour. The cattleman had not been able to help him much, on the business that had been his errand to the Palo Verde. Ashley Westcott had been diligent in seeking, a couple of years before, to learn what had become of Sawyer, after he acknowledged the Oliphant deed to Ed Hallard; but it had never occurred to him to mention the young notary to Morgan Anderson.
Curiously enough, however, the first person whom Gard had asked about the notary, after learning of Mrs. Hallard’s trouble, had referred him to the cattleman. It was this fact that had brought him out to the Palo Verde.
Anderson remembered the young fellow. Sawyer had “developed lungs” in Sacramento, and had come down to the desert in search of health. He had got better, Anderson knew, and had “gone back inside”—he thought to San Francisco. He gave Gard the address of a correspondent of his own in that city, who might, he thought, be able to furnish Sawyer’s address.
“I wish I could have helped you more in what you wanted to know,” Anderson said, shaking hands with his guest. “But you come out again while you’re down this way, and maybe we’ll have better luck all round.”
Gard thanked him, and with another word or two to Helen, rode away. Anderson stood watching him, long after the horse and rider had become a mere speck on the yellow desert.
“There’s something awfully likable about that chap, Sis,” he remarked to the girl at his side. “But he puzzles me, too.”
“Yes?” Helen answered, absently, and her father glanced at her quickly.
What he saw seemed to reassure him. She was bending over Patsy, whose paw had come into painful contact with prickly pear.