Gard’s face was pale, and the sweat stood upon his forehead.
“Don’t!” cried he, sharply. “You don’t know what you’re talking about! A man’s got to follow his own line, I tell you, and get it clear before him, before he asks any woman to take hold of it with him!”
He turned abruptly and left her. Yes: that was what he must do. Whatever was to be met, he must meet it, and clear the way, before he took one step nearer Helen.
“But it’s hard to wait,” he muttered, pacing the desert with clenched hands; “hard as wickedness!”
The stage that night brought him a letter from San Francisco. Sawyer, it told him, had left the city. The writer believed that he had gone to Arizona for the winter. He was thought to be somewhere on a ranch in the neighborhood of the Navajo reservation. Gard read that with a little feeling of dismay. He did not care to go up there. He had grown confident that he was not likely to be recognized; but still, there was danger, and he wanted to keep clear of complications until such time as he was ready to act for himself. If anything should happen to him he had no one to take up his work on the outside. He must find someone whom he could trust.
Suddenly he bethought himself of Sandy Larch. They were friends. He could trust Sandy, and he would.
He spent a long time that evening, writing a letter of instructions for Sandy Larch to read, in the event of any failure in his own plans. This he put carefully inside a worn memorandum book, and did the whole up in a neat packet which he meant to leave with the foreman, together with a heavy money-belt which he was then himself wearing. If necessity arose he would have to trust much to the foreman’s shrewd judgment in action, but at least he would fix things so that Sandy should not be acting in the dark.
He got an early start in the morning, and rode out to the Palo Verde. Morgan Anderson was away. He had left at daylight, to go down into Mexico, Sandy Larch explained, on some mining business. Incidentally, he was going to see about some choice lemon trees that he had set his heart upon, and before their arrival ground must be broken to receive them.
“So it’s up to us to git them workin’ cows gentled an’ onto their job,” the foreman told Gard; “We’re goin’ to bust ’em out right now.”
“Say,” he added, “That lawyer-sharp ’s here. Came down last night, to see the patron; he’s goin’ on to Sylvania, I guess. He said somethin’ about it, awhile ago.”