Melissy saw the two prisoners brought in, though she could not tell at that distance who they were. Her watch told her that it was four-thirty. She had slept scarcely at all during the night, but now she lay down on the bed in her clothes.
The next she knew, Rosario was calling her to get up for breakfast. The girl dressed and followed Rosario to the adjoining cabin. MacQueen was not there, and Melissy ate alone. She was given to understand that she might walk up and down in front of the houses for a few minutes after breakfast. Naturally she made the most of the little liberty allowed her.
The old squaw Sit-in-the-Sun squatted in front of the last hut, her back against the log wall. The man called Buck sat yawning on a rock a few yards away. What struck Melissy as strange was that the squaw was figuring on the back of an old envelope with the stub of a lead pencil. 287
The young woman walked leisurely past the cabin for perhaps a dozen yards.
“That’ll be about far enough. You don’t want to tire yourself, Miss Lee,” Buck Lane called, with a grin.
Melissy stopped, stood looking at the mountains for a few minutes, and turned back. Sit-in-the-Sun looked quickly at her, and at the same moment she tore the paper in two and her fingers opened to release one piece of the envelope upon which she had been writing. A puff of wind carried it almost directly in front of the girl. Lane was still yawning sleepily, his gaze directed toward the spot where he presently expected Rosario to step out and call him to breakfast. Melissy dropped her handkerchief, stooped to pick it up, and gathered at the same time in a crumpled heap into her hand the fragment of an envelope. Without another glance at the squaw, the young woman kept on her way, sauntered to the porch, and lingered there as if in doubt.
“I’m tired,” she announced to Rosario, and turned to her rooms.
“Si, señorita,” answered her attendant quietly.
Once inside, Melissy lay down on her bed, with her back to the window, and smoothed out the torn envelope. On one side were some disjointed memoranda which she did not understand.
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