“Mendoza’s sick and she took a dislike to old Mrs. Morgan, so she came over with Juan Pachuca in his car.”
“You’re joking.”
“I am not. I drove as far as Junipero Hill and when I got to the top of it I saw a big car at the foot, twisted about, almost in the ditch. I found Johnny on his stomach under the car and the girl holding an electric torch for him. She said she’d been underneath giving him a hand with it. I wouldn’t put it past her.”
“But the child must be out of her head,” protested Hard, weakly. “They don’t do those things—even in these degenerate days.”
“I guess you and me are behind the times, Henry. And then, you know Pachuca’s manners. Something between the King of Spain and Chauncey Depew. Any woman’d fall for them.”
“But——”
“But nothing. Pachuca brought her over and he behaved himself while he was doing it as near as I can find out. What I want to know is what the smooth young devil wants around here?”
“If there’s a revolution in the air, Pachuca would throw in his lot with Obregon and De la Huerta. What he thinks about the First Chief is unprintable.”
“He had the cheek to tell me to close up the mine and get out of the country,” grinned Scott.
“That may mean something and it may not. They’re keen about their bit of melodrama, these chaps. My El Paso paper says that there is a rumor again about troops having been ordered in from Chihuahua. That looks as though they were afraid of something.”