At last the Indian said softly:
“The sheriff and his men have gone away. They are satisfied that the man they are looking for is not here. I assured them that there was no stranger in the Cañada del Oro.”
“They are gone?” said Edwards doubtfully, as if he feared the Indian were playing him some cruel trick.
“For this time,” Natachee said gravely.
“You—you—think they will come again?”
The Indian looked away and answered with odd deliberation:
“Who can say? There is always that possibility. Any day—any hour they may come. But if, in spite of what I told Sheriff Burks, the man wanted by him is in the Cañada del Oro, my advice to that man would be that he stay right where he is.”
Hugh Edwards hesitated. He felt that the Indian was playing some kind of a game—a game which the red man seemed rather to enjoy but which left the white man very much in the dark.
“You don’t think then that he—that the man could get away, out of this part of the country, I mean?” he said at last.
“The sheriff and his deputies will be watching every place but the Cañada del Oro,” returned the Indian. “Because they are just now satisfied that their man is not here, this is the one safe place for him. And if they should by any chance return——“