The Falcon paid the penalty of his levity with good grace.
“Now I’ll write at the top of the paper with my stub pencil, and explain what is to be done in regard to the message you’ll write below to Mr. Winston.”
“Proceed. Little matters like writing in invisible ink and sending the messages for twenty miles are nothing at all to you. I realize that fully. Go on, wonder girl.”
“I don’t half mind your calling me names like that,” she demurely informed him. “Well, here we go to Pa Squawtooth.”
For a while she scribbled industriously, the paper flattened against a stiff portion of her leather chaparajos, often wetting the pencil at her adorable lips, often gazing into space in search of inspiration. The man watched her, and thrilled all over again at the thought that she had given herself into his keeping forever, come what might.
She finished and handed him her part of the message.
He read aloud:
“Dear Old Pa Squawtooth: Forgive me, pa. Forgive us. But one of us doesn’t want to be lynched, and the other of us doesn’t want him to be. Pa, you’re all wrong. The sheriff is wrong. Everybody in the world is wrong but Falcon the Flunky and me.
“Now listen, pa: You’ll never, never find us. We have provisions and guns to kill game with, and any amount of water. I’ve known of the place where we are hiding for two years, and I am the only one in the country that does know it.”
“That’s a legitimate little fib,” Manzanita interrupted. “Mart knows, but he won’t cheep.”