"Reckon you 're right," concurred Brevoort. "But I ain't had a drink for so long—let's go see that show."
They crowded into a cheap and odoriferous nickel theater, and straightway Pete forgot where he was and all about who he was in watching the amazing offerings of the screen. The comedy feature puzzled him. He thought that he was expected to laugh—folks all round him were laughing—but the unreality of the performance left him staring curiously at the final tangle of a comedy which struggled to be funny to the bitter end. His attention was keen for the next picture, a Western drama, entitled "The Battle of the Border," which ran swiftly to lurid climax after climax, until even Pete's unsophisticated mind doubted that any hero could have the astounding ability to get out of tight places as did the cowboy hero of this picture. This sprightly adventurer had just killed a carload of Mexicans, leaped from the roof of an adobe to his horse, and made off into the hills—they were real hills of the desert country, sure enough—as buoyantly as though he had just received his pay-check and was in great haste to spend it, never once glancing back, and putting his horse up grades at a pace that would have made an old-timer ashamed of himself had he to ride sixty miles to the next ranch before sundown—as the lead on the picture stated. Still, Pete liked that picture. He knew that kind of country—when suddenly he became aware of the tightly packed room, the foul air laden with the fumes of humanity, stale whiskey, and tobacco, the shuffling of feet as people rose and stumbled through the darkness toward the street. Pete thought that was the end of the show, but as Brevoort made no move to go, he fixed his attention on the screen again. Immediately another scene jumped into the flickering square. Pete stiffened. Before him spread a wide cañon. A tiny rider was coming down the trail from the rim. At the bottom was a Mexican 'dobe, a ramshackle stable and corral. And there hung the Olla beneath an acacia. A saddle lay near the corral bars. Several horses moved about lazily… The hero of the recent gun-fight was riding into the yard… Some one was coming from the 'dobe. Pete almost gasped as a Mexican girl, young, lithe, and smiling, stepped into the foreground and held out her hands as the hero swung from his horse. The girl was taller and more slender than Boca—yet in the close-up which followed, while her lover told her of the tribulations he had recently experienced, the girl's face was the face of Boca—the same sweetly curved and smiling mouth, the large dark eyes, even the manner in which her hair was arranged…
Pete nudged Brevoort. "I reckon we better drift," he whispered.
"How's that, Pete?"
"The girl there in the picture. Mebby you think I'm loco, but there's somethin' always happens every time I see her."
"You got a hunch, eh?"
"I sure got one."
"Then we play it." And Brevoort rose. They blinked their way to the entrance, pushed through the crowd at the doorway, and started toward their room. "I didn't want to say anything in there," Brevoort explained. "You can't tell who's sittin' behind you. But what was you gettin' at, anyhow?"
"You recollect my tellin' you about that trouble at Showdown? And the girl was my friend? Well, I never said nothin' to you about it, but I git to thinkin' of her and I can kind of see her face like she was tryin' to tell me somethin', every doggone time somethin's goin' to go wrong. First off, I said to myself I was loco and it only happened that way. But the second time—which was when we rode to the Ortez ranch—I seen her again. Then when we was driftin' along by that cactus over to Sanborn I come right clost to tellin' you that I seen her—not like I kin see you, but kind of inside—and I knowed that somethin' was a-comin' wrong. Then, first thing I know—and I sure wasn't thinkin' of her nohow—there is her face in that picture. I tell you, Ed, figuring out your trail is all right, and sure wise—but I'm gettin' so I feel like playin' a hunch every time."
"Well, a drink will fix you up. Then we'll mosey over to the room. Our stuff'll be there all right."