Martie boy, The Falcon is as innocent of the holdup as I am. I want you to believe it as I do, for I know. We are afraid this letter may fall into the wrong hands, and that a trap may be laid to lure us out of hiding. So we’ll pay no attention to the red-blanket signal from the big cottonwood at Squawtooth unless we get another one from you at the same time, assuring us that the other signal stands for a genuine surrender. And your signal must be a commonplace one, or some one may suspect. So if everything is all O. K. for us to come out, get on that gray colt you’ve been bragging you could break all summer, and ride him out in the open to the east of Squawtooth. I’m sure the colt will signal so we shall understand. You’ll get the rest of the idea from the penciled letters.
What I wrote about your going to see Halfaman Daisy was written only to manufacture a reason for the letter to be given to you.
Bet you my old spurs against fifty cents you pull leather before the gray has carried you a hundred feet from the corral. Lovingly,
Manzanita.
A Lady in Distress.
Go to it!
“So that will protect us,” said Manzanita, as he laughingly returned the letter. “If we see a gray colt go bucking over the desert when the blanket is hoisted, we’ll know everything’s all right. Now—to send these messages down on the desert. Get the rifle and come on.”
Perhaps two hours later Manzanita and Falcon the Flunky slipped into a grove of yucca palms, tossing and singing in the wind that stood on the edge of the desert. They had crawled from the chaparral retreat, and by a circuitous, unmarked route descended a slope of the mountains, over steep slides and bushy expanses, to this vantage point.
“We won’t dare go a step farther,” objected the man. “We don’t know who or how many may be riding the desert in search of us. To walk out there over the level, open land would be suicidal to our plans.”
“Of course. We won’t have to. We’ll now scout up the magic letter bearers, give them the messages, and send them out over the desert to deliver them. Come on back up the slope.”
He followed her. Soon she paused beside a great, dry weed almost as high as her waist. The drying by the fierce desert sun had caused the tips of the branches to draw together so that the branches were bowed and the entire plant almost as round as a big ball.