This time the girl laughed, and Rathburn was rewarded by the flashing gleam of two rows of pearls and eyes merry with mirth. But her reciprocating mood of cheerfulness was quickly spent.
“You are only a mile and a half from High Point,” she said hurriedly. “You can get what you want there.”
She retreated into the doorway, and Rathburn saw that the chance interview was at an end.
“Gracias, as they say in the desert country,” he said, saluting as he turned away. “It means thanks, ma’am.”
He looked back as he touched the mustang with his steel and saw her looking after him with a strange look in her eyes.
“That gal looks half like she was scared, hoss,” he reflected. “I wonder, now, if she got me wrong. Dang it! Maybe she thought I was trying to flirt with her. Well, maybe I was.”
He thrust a hand in a pocket and fingered the two objects he had picked up in the road at the scene of the holdup. Then he pulled his hat a bit forward over his eyes and increased his pace. The town, as he had half expected, came suddenly into sight around a sharp bend in the road.
High Point consisted of some two-score structures, and only a cursory glance was needed to ascertain that it was the source of supplies and rendez-vous for entertainment of the several mines and all 109 the miners and prospectors in the neighboring hills. Several fairly good roads and many trails led into it, and from it there was a main road of travel to the railroad on the edge of the desert in the east.
Before he entered the dusty, single street, lined with small buildings flaunting false fronts, Rathburn recognized the signs of a foothill town where the hand of authority rested but lightly.
He rode directly to the first hotel, the only two-story structure in town, and around to the rear where he put up his horse and left his saddle, chaps and slicker pack in the care of the barn man.