“Belongs over in Moniment, in one of them mining camps, I expect,” the old man replied indifferently. “I seen her riding past this afternoon.”
“Where is she going alone at night?”
“I dunno—guess she knows her own business.”
“Such a small girl!”
“They know how to look after themselves, in these parts, as soon as they can creep,” the old man remarked calmly. “They have to!”
“Monument!” Brainard repeated to himself, wondering where he had heard that name before.
“That’s what they call it. It ain’t much of a place now. There used to be a big mine near there, but it ain’t been worked in years. . . . You can come right in and bunk alongside of me, stranger.”
XI
Brainard did not follow the old plainsman’s advice to stick to the railroad for his travels. Instead, he induced Gunnison to leave his dugout and guide his chance guest across the Mexican border.
It was not as easy as it looks on the map in the railroad folder to get from Phantom, Arizona—which was the name of the water tank where he had dropped from the train—into the State of Chihuahua; but Brainard did not feel pressed for time. Indeed he judged it might be as well for him to remain out of all possible contact with civilized centers for several weeks, to “let things settle down,” as he phrased it. Pursuit would naturally relax after the first unsuccessful attempts and would probably concentrate upon New York where it might be supposed that he would ultimately turn up. Moreover, every day of delay made it less likely that some observing busybody would recall the sensational newspaper story and identify him and his bag with the description of the robber who had left San Francisco on the evening of April 26. Gunnison asked no questions. The virtue of reticence, Brainard found, was admirably cultivated in these sparsely habited parts of the earth. The old man seemed to have no pressing duties to recall him to his dugout, and so they followed the trail leisurely, making a few miles each day and occasionally stopping for a day or two to rest while Gunnison procured supplies from one of the small mining towns.