Several miles from town Sanders pulled up. "I'm going back for a couple of miles. Bob was telling me of a Mexican tendejon in the hills kept by the father of a girl Otero goes to see. She might know where he is. If I can get hold of him likely I can make him talk."
This struck Crawford as rather a wild-goose chase, but he had nothing better to offer himself in the way of a plan.
"Might as well," he said gloomily. "I don't reckon you'll find him. But you never can tell. Offer the girl a big reward if she'll tell where Doble is. I'll hustle to town and send out posses."
They separated. Dave rode back up the road, swung off at the place Hart had told him of, and turned up a valley which pushed to the roots of the hills. The tendejon was a long, flat-roofed adobe building close to the trail.
Dave walked through the open door into the bar-room. Two or three men were lounging at a table. Behind a counter a brown-eyed Mexican girl was rinsing glasses in a pail of water.
The young man sauntered forward to the counter. He invited the company to drink with him.
"I'm looking for Juan Otero," he said presently. "Mr. Crawford wanted me to see him about riding for him."
There was a moment's silence. All of those present were Mexicans except Dave. The girl flashed a warning look at her countrymen. That look, Sanders guessed at once, would seal the lips of all of them. At once he changed his tactics. What information he got would have to come directly through the girl. He signaled her to join him outside.
Presently she did so. The girl was a dusky young beauty, plump as a partridge, with the soft-eyed charm of her age and race.
"The señor wants to see me?" she asked.