“But didn’t he run away with my girl?”
“I am inclined to the belief,” returned Mangan, with a little smile, “that your girl ran away with him.”
“She did, o’ course—seein’s she was outside the closet and he was in it, tied. She deceived me, Hunt. She made me think she was agin’ The Falcon, and agreed to what I was goin’ to do. Then I’m no more’n gone when—bingo!—she turns ’im loose, and together they fork saddles and fogs it. She done it, o’ course, but he’d pulled the wool over her eyes and made ’er.”
“I can’t blame him,” Hunt objected. “Things looked a little hot when you and the deputies and your vaqueros started for Squawtooth. I guess I’d have hit the trail myself, under the circumstances.”
“Maybe; maybe. O’ course he’d protect ’imself, guilty or not guilty. Well, we’ll get ’im and see, anyway—that is, if the desert folks don’t get too rambunctious and fix ’im so he can’t talk before we get a chance at ’im. But, Hunter, this won’t make any difference in yer feelin’s toward the girl, will it?”
“Not the slightest,” Mangan told him. “But I’ve given up hope. Falcon the Flunky is her choice, I know. She has decided.”
“Oh, no, no! She’ll ferget all that.”
Mangan shook his head. “She’s a steadfast little body,” he said. “Girls like her don’t forget—don’t shift about in their affections from one to another. She’s too simple—too sincere for that. No; I’m out of it.”
Canby tried to encourage him, but he remained firm in the belief that The Falcon had won Manzanita’s affections. Squawtooth left him within half an hour and went about his arrangements for a big, concerted effort to hunt down the missing couple. As yet no word had come from the sheriff at the county seat, but it was known that Halfaman Daisy had been safely lodged in the jail at Opaco, awaiting the sheriff’s orders. By four o’clock Mart and Toddlebike rode in from the mountains with a string of saddle stock. By four-thirty the hundred that Squawtooth had predicted would gather were at the ranch, awaiting the signal to start.
Though little could be done during the remaining daylight of that twenty-four hours, they moved off soon and spread out fanwise over the desert, searching for a trail or clews. They picked up the trail that evening, and long before darkness came had followed it for many miles.