“I didn’t, for I wasn’t lookin’.”
“Nor you didn’t see Latimer come from this gate five minutes or more ago?”
“I tell ye, I wasn’t lookin’. Somethin’ queer about this place,” she added suspiciously.
“I’m beginning to think so, too.”
“Well,” she declared, “they can’t fool with me! Aire you goin’ to stay here long?”
“Until I discover what has become of Nomad.”
“Then I’m with ye! We’ll find him, if we have to tar and feather that Latimer to make him tell what he knows. I reckon I’ll go up to the house and give him a few jabs in the ribs with this old umbreller, to make him talk a bit.”
She marched angrily toward the house.
The scout began to look for the tracks of the mustang. He found them in the dust close by the gate; and on the other side of the gate he saw the imprint of shoes, which he was sure had been made by John Latimer.
“As Kate says, there is something mysterious here,” was his thought, “and it begins to look as if John Latimer were crooked. He lied to me when he said he had not been down here by this gate, and he lied in saying he had not here met an Indian. I think I’ll follow this trail. It may reveal something.”