“I didn’t even know he was going until I saw him in the stage.”
“Same here with that cuckoo, Daisy. Funny! Once Halfaman was braggin’ about what he was gonta do one o’ these days. He said your Falcon was in on it. He was tryin’ to be mysterious. I couldn’t get ’im. D’ye know anything about that?”
“No—nothing. Oh, I don’t know what to do or think. I can’t believe either of them guilty—I won’t believe The Falcon is!”
Wing o’ the Crow said nothing to this.
“What shall we do?” repeated Manzanita. “Oh, I wish they’d come back!”
“We’ll jest lay low and keep our mouths shut,” was the shanty queen’s decision. “If they do come back we’ll find out all about it.”
Manzanita mounted to ride back to Squawtooth, and her higher elevation in the saddle brought to view a dust cloud hanging over the chaparral a short distance away.
“What’s coming?” she asked, pointing.
Wing o’ the Crow climbed on her wheeler and steadied herself by holding to the Johnson bar.
“Some kind of an outfit,” she answered. “Not railroaders, I guess—all the outfits are in now, except Demarest, Spruce & Tillou’s. What’s comin’ wouldn’t make a wart on their outfit. Desert rats, maybe.”