Now that he knew, by the smoking jacket and the slippers and the uncovered thatch of jet-black hair, that this man must be Holman Sommers; when he saw Elfigo Apodaca there, seated and talking earnestly with him, as he could tell by the gestures with which they elaborated their speech; when he saw Helen May riding in to the ranch, he had before him all the outward, visible evidence of a conference.  The only false note, to Starr’s way of thinking, was the brazenness of it.  They must, he told himself, be so sure of themselves that they could snap their fingers at risk, or else they were so desperately in need of conferring together that they overlooked the risk.  And that second explanation might easily be the true one, in view of Estan Medina’s death and the possible consequence to the Alliance.

Starr was hampered by not hearing anything that was being said down there at that homey-looking ranch house, where everything was clearly visible to him through his field glasses.  But even so it did not require speech to tell him that Elfigo Apodaca had never before met Helen May Stevenson, and that Holman Sommers was not overeager to introduce him to her.  Starr, watching every movement of the three when they came together, frowned with puzzlement.  Why had they been strangers until just now?

He saw the three stand and talk for perhaps two minutes; commonplace, early-acquaintance nothings, he judged from their faces and actions.  He saw Helen May offer Holman Sommers the package she carried; saw Holman take it negligently and tuck it under his arm while he went on talking.  He saw Helen May turn then and go around to the door, which was opened effusively by the plump sister whom he knew.  He saw the two men go to the well, and watched Elfigo fill the water bag and go away down the uneven trail to where his automobile stood, perhaps a quarter of a mile nearer the main road.  When he turned his glasses from Elfigo to the house, Holman had gone inside, and the two women were out beyond the house admiring a flock of chickens which Maggie called to her with a few handfuls of grain.

There seemed no further profit in watching the Sommers house, and Starr was about to leave his post when he saw the dingy, high-powered roadster of the sheriff come careening up the trail.  He came near upsetting his machine in getting around Apodaca’s big car, but he negotiated the passing with some skill and came on to where he met Elfigo himself sweating down the trail with his full five-gallon water bag.

Here again Starr wished that he could hear as well as he could see.  That the sheriff had seized the opportunity to place Elfigo under arrest, he knew well enough, by faces and gestures, just as he had known of Elfigo’s introduction to Helen May.  But here were no polite nothings being mouthed.  Elfigo was talking angrily, and Starr would have given a great deal to hear what he was saying; calling it an outrage, he supposed, and heaping maledictions on the stupidity of the law.