Once more Clovita shrugged her shoulders, spreading her hands wide.
“You look,” she said indifferently. “You no find. They far away. Besides—” she stopped, holding her hand to her ear—“I hear men coming,” she concluded, with another grin.
“The rustlers!” Nell gasped, seizing Belle’s arm. “They’re coming here!”
A clatter of horses’ feet sounded on the path outside. There were some muttered sentences, which the girls could not catch, and a figure filled the doorway. It was Richmond, the man who had driven the car.
“Evenin’ ladies,” he greeted them, smiling sardonically, his hat sweeping the ground. Another smile was on his face as he turned to the men behind him. “Our guests,” he added, and the girls detected a sarcastic note.
Belle recognized the four men who had met them at the entrance to the canyon, but this time there were two others with them. One of them looked vaguely familiar, but Belle could not remember where she had seen him before.
Ethel shrank against the wall.
“Don’t be scared—we’re not poison,” Richmond sneered. “Though your dad seems to think we are,” he added, looking at Belle Ada. “I see you got here all right,” he said to Clovita.
The woman nodded, but made no answer. She glared at Richmond from beneath beetled brows, her head bent low. Belle, observing this by-play, was at a loss to account for the woman’s apparent antagonistic attitude toward Richmond until she recalled the episode at the canyon’s mouth, when Clovita had protested at the garbling of her name. Yet it did not seem reasonable that any one would hate a man simply because he had called her by a name not her own.
Richmond motioned Clovita to him, and for some moments the two remained in low-voiced conversation. Then Richmond spoke to the girls: