Of course, if she had a headache—but it seemed queer to leave a fellow so early on their last evening together for no one knew how long. Perhaps she wouldn’t come back after all and he would wish that he hadn’t given the old life a chance to call her and keep her. Then he thought of the parents—never having had any of his own as far as memory went, Scott felt their claims strongly. He wanted the girl; wanted her so badly that his whole being ached to take advantage of her youth and impulsiveness; to make the wedding in the morning a double one.
But Scott had not lived a hard life without learning to do without a thing if he chose to do without it; the thing might be a drink, it might be a horse, it might be a woman. Still, Polly might have stayed down and walked with him a while in the moonlight—it wasn’t much to ask. Hard and Clara had come out, the latter muffled in her long cloak, and were walking down Chula Vista’s main artery toward the Padre’s church. With a muttered exclamation, Scott dug his hands into his pockets and went inside.
“I suppose I can sit in the office and gab with Sam,” he growled, but Sam had disappeared. Scott picked up a newspaper and lit another cigarette. Suddenly, the door opened and Clara, visibly excited, appeared, followed by Hard.
“Mr. Scott, what do you think? We’ve just seen Juan Pachuca,” declared Clara.
“Sure enough? I suppose he could slide over the border if he wanted to. Where’d you see him?”
“He was one of those three Mexicans who had dinner at that other small table—so Clara says,” replied Hard.
“Your back was toward them,” went on Clara. “Henry’s never seen him, so of course he wouldn’t notice. I thought at the time that the man looked like Pachuca but I didn’t get a good view of him. We were going past that little saloon down near the church and they came out and rode off. He pretended not to see us.”
“Where’d they go?” demanded Scott, with the dryness in his tone which always appeared when Pachuca was mentioned.
“Out of town—past the church. I’m going up to tell Polly what she’s missed,” said Clara, as she ran up the narrow little stairway. “Girls have changed—not a doubt about it,” she thought, whimsically. “Fancy spending the last evening they have together moping upstairs with a headache! Wonder if anything’s gone wrong?”
A few moments later she was back in the office with the two men.