“Will you tell me when we get to it?”
“Hot Air Sue tell everything. Hot Air Sue talk much. That’s why cowboys call her ‘Hot Air.’”
Billie laughed. Was it possible she had been dying of thirst in the desert only a few hours before, and here she was exhilarated and almost shouting with joy over her escape; riding with Hot Air Sue in a perfectly strange automobile. But was it perfectly strange? She leaned over and looked at the color as they sped along. It was gray. It was a racing car and it was built for two.
“Hawkeseye bad man. Hawkeseye call himself school-teacher. He bad Indian,” went on Sue. “He no teacher. He thief. He no Indian, either. He only half Indian. That’s why Hawkeseye bad man. All white or all red better.”
“Hawkeseye steals automobiles,” said Billie.
“Umph! Umph! His sisters, they spoil Hawkeseye. They work to send him to school and give him fine clothes.”
“Has he got another sister?”
“Hawkeseye got two sisters—Rosina and Maria.”
“The illustrious Hawkes family,” said Billie to herself. “Well-known in the West. I think the most dangerous member of that family had better be locked up.”
The first stars were just coming into view when Billie drew up in front of Steptoe Lodge, but in all that big ranch house only two human beings were there to greet her—Miss Helen Campbell and the Chinese cook.