He glanced around at Stlingbloke and several curious observers standing in saloon doors.
“Course it ain’t any o’ my business,” he said apologetically, “but ain’t you a bit worried, ’way out here this time o’ day? ’S almost night.”
“Oh, I’ll get along—thanks. I ride lots after dark. I simply must find Mart. Don’t let me detain you.”
He touched a finger to the broad brim of his hat, hitched up his heavy cartridge belt, and rode on through town. Manzanita moved her pinto until tents and sacks hid her from the retreating sheriff, then sat her saddle a moment or two and heaved a great sigh of relief.
For some reason obscure to her the sheriff, after leaving the second camp beyond Stlingbloke, had departed from the right of way and rode westward across the sandy wastes. From the water hole he had mentioned—she knew its location—he had ridden back to the ragtown as the crow flies. Thus she had come upon him before her brother had. Mart probably was still trailing him. At the water hole he doubtless would be told that the sheriff had ridden straight to Stlingbloke, completing his triangle, and Mart at once would continue on here in his trailing. What luck! The sheriff was to spend the night in the next camp below Stlingbloke—two miles away, perhaps. There was no course for her to pursue other than to remain at the town to intercept her brother and in some way rob him of the record of the family tree of Aaron. For many men might wear pink ties, regardless of the tastes of others, but who other than Phinehas Daisy could have written his fantastic rigmarole on that bit of pasteboard? And who in the camps did not know that Mr. Daisy was a proud member of the “begatters”—who did not know that Daisy and The Falcon were friends?
She was at the edge of town farthest from the retreating sheriff. He would not know that she had not ridden on up the line. Her mare was spent, anyway. She needed rest and water.
Manzanita dismounted and found a piece of lath, with which she scraped the foamy sweat from the pinto’s neck and rump and belly. This done, she looked about for a means of at least letting her wet her mouth, and caught sight of a tank wagon in the rear of a big structure, half tent, half boards and corrugated iron.
She saw nothing else that promised water, and, though she dreaded to, she led the mare to the tank.
A man stood in the rear door of the establishment behind which the tank wagon was at rest. She did not by any means like his looks.
“May I turn on a little water?” she asked. “My mare needs it badly.”