"You give the cup of water only to take it away again. I'd rather build ten railroads than to attempt to smash North and his confederates through your uncle. You see, I'm frightfully handicapped right at the start—with this mine business hanging over me. But if you say it has to be done, it shall be. I'll win Mr. Colbrith over, in spite of all that has happened; and he shall fire North and the MacMorroghs first and prosecute them afterward. I've said it."
It was just here that the broncos shied—inward, toward the hill. Ford gathered the slack reins, and Miss Adair looked up and gave a little shriek. Noiselessly, and so close upon the buckboard that he might have touched either of its occupants with his rawhide quirt, rode the Mexican. When they discovered him he was leaning forward, his half-closed eyes mere slits with pin-points of black fire to mark them, and his repulsive face a stolid mask. Ford's hand went instinctively to the whip: it was the only available weapon. But the Mexican merely touched his flapping sombrero and rode on at the shuffling fox-trot.
"That man, again!" shivered Alicia, when the portent of evil had passed out of sight around the next curve in the grade.
But Ford's concern was deeper than her passing thrill of repulsion.
"Did you notice his horse's hoofs as he went by?" he asked soberly.
"No," she said.
"I did. He dismounted somewhere behind us and covered them with sacking."
"What for?" she asked, shivering again with the nameless dread.
"You recall what I was saying when the broncos shied: his object was to creep up behind us and listen. He has done it more than once since we left the end-of-track, and this time—"
"Yes?"