“No, I don’t lie, either. I’m telling you the truth, and I can bring plenty of witnesses to prove what I say. It was young Evans who handled all that stolen booze and sold it to some guy from L. A. It was young Evans who got the money. He was getting rich on it till your brother butted in and crabbed his game, and then it was young Evans who kept still and let an innocent man do time for him. That’s the kind of fellow you’re going to marry. If you want the whole world to know about it, you just tell your father or your brother anything about me!”
He saw the girl sink down in her saddle, her head and shoulders drooping like some lovely flower in the path of fire, and he knew that he had won. Then he let her go.
It was half past nine o’clock when Colonel Pennington was aroused by some one knocking on the north door of his bedroom—the door that opened upon the north porch.
“Who is it?” he asked.
It was the stableman.
“Miss Eva’s horse is out, sir,” the man said. “I heard a horse pass the bunk house about half an hour ago. I dressed and come up here to the stables, to see if it was one of ours—somethin’ seemed to tell me it was—an’ I found her horse out. I thought I’d better tell you about it, sir. You can’t tell, sir, with all them pictur’ people up the cañon, what might be goin’ on. We’ll be lucky if we have any horses or tack left if they’re here long!”
“Miss Eva’s in bed,” said the colonel; “but we’ll have to look into this at once. Custer’s sick to-night, so he can’t go along with us; but if you will saddle up my horse, and one for yourself, I’ll dress and be right down. It can’t be the motion-picture people—they’re not horse thieves.”
While the stableman returned to saddle the horses, the colonel dressed. So sure was he that Eva was in bed that he did not even stop to look into her room. As he left the house, he was buckling on a gun—a thing that he seldom carried, for even in the peaceful days that have settled upon southern California a horse thief is still a horse thief.
As he was descending the steps to the stable, he saw some one coming up. In the moonlight there was no difficulty in recognizing the figure of his daughter.
“Eva!” he exclaimed. “Where have you been? What are you doing out at this time of night, alone?”