Again Pete tried to sit up, but sank back as a shower of fiery dots whirled before his eyes. He realized that he had been hit pretty hard—that he could do nothing but keep still just then. The hot pain subsided as the wet cloth again touched his forehead and he drifted to sleep. When he awakened at midday he was alone.
He rose, and steadying himself along the wall, finally reached the doorway. Old Flores was working in the distant garden-patch. Beyond him, Boca and her mother were pulling beans. Pete stepped out dizzily and glanced toward the corral. His horse was not there.
Pete was a bit hasty in concluding that the squalid drama of the previous evening (the cringing girl, the drunkenly indifferent father, and the malevolent Malvey) had been staged entirely for his benefit. The fact was that Malvey had been only too sincere in his boorishness toward Boca; Flores equally sincere in his indifference, and Boca herself actually frightened by the turn Malvey's drink had taken. That old Flores had knocked Pete out with a bottle was the one and extravagant act that even Malvey himself could hardly have anticipated had the whole miserable affair been prearranged. In his drunken stupidity Flores blindly imagined that the young stranger was the cause of the quarrel.
Pete, however, saw in it a frame-up to knock him out and make away with his horse. And back of it all he saw The Spider's craftily flung web that held him prisoner, afoot and among strangers. "They worked it slick," he muttered.
Boca happened to glance up. Pete was standing bareheaded in the noon sunlight. With an exclamation Boca rose and hastened to him. Young Pete's eyes were sullen as she begged him to seek the shade of the portal.
"Where's my horse?" he challenged, ignoring her solicitude.
She shook her head. "I do not know. Malvey is gone."
"That's a cinch! You sure worked it slick."
"I do not understand."
"Well, I do."