"You don't smell drunk," said Helen May suddenly and very bluntly, "and you don't look crazy. What is the matter with you, Starr of the desert? Is this a joke, or what?"
"It didn't strike me as any joke," Starr told her passionlessly. "Thirteen of them I rounded up. Holman Sommers was the head of the whole thing. Elfigo Apodaca is in jail, held for the shooting of Estan Medina. Luis Medina is in jail too, held as a witness and to keep Apodaca's men from killing him before he can testify in court. I hated to see the kid tangled up with it—and I hate to see you in it. But that don't give me any license to let you off. You're under arrest. I'm a Secret Service man, sent here to prevent the revolution that's been brewing all spring and summer. I guess I've done it, all right." He stared at her with growing bitterness in his eyes. His hurt began dully to ache again. "Helen May, what in God's name did you tangle up with 'em for?" he flashed in a sudden passion of grief and reproach.
Helen May's chin squared a little; but she who had not screamed when she found her father dead in his bed; she who had read his letter without whimpering held her voice quiet now, though womanlike she answered Starr's question with another.
"What makes you think I am tangled up with it? What reason have you got for connecting me with such a thing?"
A stain of anger reddened Starr's cheek bones, that had been pale. "What reason? Well, I'll tell you. In the office of Las Nuevas, in that little, inside room with the door opening out of a closet to hide it, where I got my first real clue, I found two sheets of paper with some strong revolutionary stuff written in English. Also I found a pamphlet where the same stuff had been printed in Spanish. I kept that writing, and I kept the pamphlet. I've got it now. I'd know the writing anywhere I saw it, and I saw a sample of it here in this very room, when the wind blew those papers off your desk."
"You—in this room!" Helen May caught her breath. "Why—why, you couldn't have! I never wrote any revolution stuff in my life! Why—I don't know the first thing about Las Nuevas, as you call it. How could my writing—?" She caught her breath again, for she remembered.
"Why, Starr of the desert, that was Holman Sommers' writing you saw! I remember now. Some pages of his manuscript blew off the desk when you were here. See, I can show you a whole pile of it!" She ran to the desk, Starr following her mechanically. "See? All kinds of scientific junk that he wanted typed. Isn't that the writing you meant? Isn't it?" Her hands trembled so that the papers she held close to Starr's face shook, but Starr recognized the same symmetrical, hard-to-read chirography.
"Yes, that's it." His voice was so husky that she could hardly hear him. He moistened his lips, that had gone dry. Was it possible? His mind kept asking over and over.
"And here! I don't ask you to take my word for it—I know that just those pages don't prove anything, because I might have written that stuff myself—if I knew enough! But here's a lot that he sent over by the stage driver yesterday. I haven't even opened it yet. You can see the same handwriting in the address, can't you? And if he has written a note—he does sometimes—and signed it—he always signs his name in full—why, that will be proof, won't it?" Her eyes burned into his and steadied a little his whirling thoughts.
"Open it, desert man! Open it, and see if there's a note! And you can ask the stage driver, if you don't believe me; here, break the string!"