Now, as I have said before, San Bonito was full of young Mexicans who wore Stetson hats and favored horsehair bands around them.  Starr glanced at the fellow sharply, got the uninterested, impersonal look of the perfect stranger who neither knows nor cares who you are, and who has troubles of his own to occupy his mind; the look which nineteen persons out of twenty give to a stranger on the street.  Starr went on unconcernedly whistling under his breath, but at the corner he turned sharply to the left, and in turning he flicked a glance back at the fellow.  The Mexican was not giving him any attention whatever, as far as he could see; on the contrary, he was staring down at the ground as though he, too, were looking for something.  Starr gave him another stealthy look, gained nothing from it, and shrugged his shoulders and went on.

He ate his breakfast while he turned the matter over in his mind.  What had he done to rouse suspicion against himself?  He could not remember anything, for he had not yet found anything much to work on; nothing, in fact, except that slight clue of the automobile, and he did not even know who had been in it.  He suspected that they had gone to meet Estan Medina, but as long as that suspicion was tucked away in the back of his mind, how was any one going to know that he suspected Estan?  He had not been near the chief of police or the sheriff or any other officer.  He had not talked with any man about the Mexican Alliance, nor had he asked any man about it.  Instead, he had bought sheep and cattle and goats and hogs from the ranchers, and he had paid a fair price for them and had shipped them openly, under the eye of the stock inspector, to the El Paso Meat Company.  So far he had kept his eyes open and his mouth shut, and had waited until some ripple on the surface betrayed the disturbance underneath.

He was not sure that the young man he met on the street was the one who had been spying over the fence, but he did not mean to take it for granted that he was not the same, and perhaps be sorry afterwards for his carelessness.  He strolled around town, bought an automatic gun and a lot of cartridges for Vic, went into a barber shop on a corner and had a shave and a haircut, and kept his eyes open for a tall young Mexican who might be unduly interested in his movements.

He met various acquaintances who expressed surprise at not having seen him around the hotel.  To these he explained that he had rented a corral for his horse, where he could be sure of the feed Rabbit was getting, and to save the expense of a livery stable.  Rabbit had been kinda off his feed, he said, and he wanted to look after him himself.  So he had been sleeping in the cabin that went with the corral.

His friends thought that was a sensible move, and praised his judgment, and Starr felt better.  He did not, however, tell them just where the corral was located.  He had some notion of moving to another place, so he considered that it would be just as well not to go into details.