Still worry nagged at him.  He wanted to know who was the man that had visited Helen May so soon after he had left, and he wanted to know why a light had shone from her window at one o’clock last night; and whether the automobile had been going to Sunlight Basin, or merely in that direction.

He hurried, for he had no patience with worries that concerned Helen May.  Besides, he meant to beg a breakfast from her, and he was afraid that if he waited too late she might be out with Pat and the goats, and he would have to waste time on the kid (Vic would have resented that term as applied to himself) who might be still laid up with his sprained ankle.

He was not thinking so much this morning about the knowledge he had gained in the night.  He had given several quiet hours to thought upon that subject, and he had his course pretty clearly defined in his mind.  He also had Sheriff O’Malley thoroughly coached and prepared to do his part.  The matter of Elfigo Apodaca, then, he laid aside for the present, and concerned himself chiefly with what on the surface were trifles, but which, taken together, formed a chain of disquieting incidents.  Rabbit felt his master’s desire for haste, and loped steadily along the trail, dropping now and then into his smooth fox-trot, that was almost as fast a gait; so it was still early morning when he dropped reins outside and rapped on the closed door.

Helen May opened the door cautiously, it seemed to him; a scant six inches until she saw who he was, when she cried “Oh!” in a surprised, slightly confused tone, and let him in.  Starr noticed two things at the first glance he gave her.  The first was the blue crocheted cap which she wore; he did not know that it was called a breakfast-cap and that it was very stylish, for Starr, you must remember, lived apart from any intimate home life that would familiarize him with such fripperies.  The cap surprised him, but he liked the look of it even though he kept that liking to himself.

The second thing he noticed was that Helen May was hiding something in her right hand which was dropped to her side.  When she had let him in and turned away to offer him a chair, he saw that she had the pearl-handled six-shooter.

She disappeared behind a screen, and came out with her right hand empty, evidently believing he had not seen how she had prepared herself for an emergency.  She had only yesterday told him emphatically how harmless she considered the country; and he had been careful to warn her only about rabid coyotes, so that without being alarmed, she would not go unarmed away from home.  It seemed queer to Starr that she should act as though she expected rabid coyotes to come a-knocking at her door in broad daylight.  Had she, he thought swiftly, been only pretending that she considered the country perfectly safe?