She started, recollection filling her eyes. "A Toltec!" she said in an awed voice. "I have heard that they are fanatics where their religion is concerned; your father told me that his—that woman—Ezela—told him. She said that the tribe would never give up the search for the idol. He laughed at her; he laughed at me when he told me about it." She drew a deep breath. "And so one of them has come," she said. "I thought I heard a noise upstairs last night," she added. "It must have been then."
"An'," he jeered, "you was so busy about that time that you couldn't go to investigate. That's how you guarded it—how you filled your trust."
She gazed fixedly at him and his gaze dropped. "You are determined to continue your insults," she said coldly.
He reddened. "I reckon you deserve them," he said sneeringly. "Taggart's makin' a fool of you. I heard him palaverin' to you last night. I followed him, but lost him. Then I got into the clearin' in the timber. I run into a man named Al Sharp, who'd been knifed by the Toltec. Him an' the Toltec had been detailed by Taggart to get the diagram. Sharp said Taggart knowed my dad had drawed one. Telza got it last night while you was talkin' to Taggart. Frame-up. Sharp tried to take it away from Telza, an' Telza knifed him. Sharp's dead. I buried him last night. Telza dropped the diagram. I got it. I reckon Telza has sloped. Then I met Taggart an' his dad. They reckoned they didn't like my company overmuch an' they walked home. Didn't even wait to take their horses."
She drew a breath which sounded strangely like relief.
"Well," she said; "it was fortunate that you happened to be there to get the idol."
"Yes," he drawled, with a suspicious grin; "I reckon you feel a whole lot like congratulatin' me."
"I do," she said. "Of course you were not to have the idol just yet, but it is better for you to have it before the time than that the Taggarts should get hold of it."
"Do you know where the idol is hid?" he asked.
She told him no, that she had never consulted the diagram.