“Ye-yes, brother.”
In outraged dignity the boy mounted, thrusting into a pocket of his chaps the cover of the book of cigarette papers his sister had bought at Stlingbloke, and from which she had torn the contents. In a pocket of her own chaps safely reposed the “ev’dence.” Mart Canby had much to learn of the wiles of the other sex, but it would have been a difficult matter to convince him of this fact.
“We must be hurrying,” meekly said Manzanita.
“I wonder if the sheriff didn’t stop at that camp over there for to-night.” Mart pointed through the blackness to a cluster of lights on their left. “I oughta follow the grade, Nita, and stop at every camp.”
To his surprise his seemingly chastened sister did not object now.
“Maybe you ought,” she replied. “It’s not a great deal farther for us to go home that way. If I go over with you, and he happens to be there, will you promise to give it to him and hurry right back to me? Pa’ll be worried about me if he got home this evening.”
“Aw, worried nothin’! You been ridin’ the desert nights ever since I c’n remember.”
“But there’s no moon to-night. And that business at Stlingbloke has made me nervous. I want to get home.”
“Well, come on, then.”
“Do you promise? Just give it to him, if you find him in any of the camps, and don’t wait to hear what he has to say. You’ll know all about it later, anyway.”