“Pa’d say, ‘Worse’n that.’” she retorted, tearing and pressing flat a paper sack in which she had brought some part of their pitiably small store of provisions.
“Now,” she said, seating herself flat on the rough stone floor and tucking her feet under her, “we’ll get busy. You say that if you can get word to a Mr. Winston in Los Angeles, you can clear everything up, Tom?”
“I think so. Winston knows my signature, and he knows me well enough to be positive that for me to steal fourteen thousand dollars would be utterly ridiculous.”
“Uh-huh. And he can get in touch with the sheriff of this county and show him where he’s barking up the wrong tree.”
“So I should imagine. Men listen to what a man in Winston’s position has to say.”
“Uh-huh—of course. But listen here: There’s a chance that we have been tracked to the mountains and that Pa Squawtooth and a gang of men are somewhere up here now, hunting for us. So if we send a message down to the desert, and pa wasn’t there, it might fall into unfriendly hands.
“Say somebody else got it,” she continued to speculate, “and decided to signal ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ or whatever we may direct—and would fool us? If Pa Squawtooth signals, ‘Yes—everything will be all right if you come out,’ he will mean it, and we can depend upon it and not be afraid to show ourselves. But in case of his absence, somebody might get our message and think it would be smart to deceive us and get us out—when they’d nab us and give us the ha-ha. See?”
“Yes, all that seems quite probable.”
“And at this distance the glass isn’t strong enough for us to make sure that it is Pa Squawtooth who is sending the signal, even though he were sending it and was standing out in plain view. You couldn’t be sure it was he, could you? It’s more than twenty miles to Squawtooth.”
“Not with that sand storm blowing down there,” he replied. “No; it would be difficult to tell one man from another.”