Hugh Edwards, fully aroused now, was trembling with emotion. He gazed at the little ranch house in the distance as if fascinated. Then, without a word, he went hurriedly down the hill to his horse.
Natachee was beside him, and, as they mounted, the Indian spoke.
“We must be careful, friend, it will not do to show ourselves here. If I am not mistaken, we will pick up the trail again beyond that ranch on the south.”
Riding into the nearest opening between the hills of the Nariz range, the Indian again turned westward, thus leaving the ranch well to the north. At the western end of the range they found the outlaw’s trail leading straight south into Mexico.
When the sun went down, Natachee and Edwards, lying in the greasewood and mesquite on top of a low ridge a few miles south of the international boundary line, looked down upon the buildings and corrals of a Mexican Ranch.
The nearest corral was not more than a quarter of a mile distant. The fence of a small pasture which lay between them and the corrals was less than a hundred yards away. In this pasture, within a stone’s throw of where the white man and the Indian lay, the pinto horse Nugget was feeding quietly with another horse and a mule.
CHAPTER XXVIII
THE OUTLAWS
In reality, the ranch was a general meeting place, or station, for cattle rustlers, smugglers, and their kind, from both sides of the border.
ALL through these lonely months following the disappearance of Hugh Edwards, Marta Hillgrove had lived in the firm conviction that the man she loved would come again. She had nothing to justify her belief. She could not understand why, if he loved her, he had left no message—no word of hope. But her woman instinct had persistently swept aside all the opposing facts and held her to the truth which her heart knew. She was so sure of Hugh Edwards’ love that nothing could shake her faith in him or cause her to doubt that he would come again to claim her. With Saint Jimmy’s help she had endured the long days when there had been no word from the man to whom she had given, without reserve, the wealth of her first woman love.
Marta never dreamed what it cost Saint Jimmy to help her. She would never know. Many, many times Saint Jimmy had told himself that the girl must never know how hard it was for him to help her through those weeks of her waiting for Hugh Edwards.