He climbed slowly the last, brown granite ridge, the ridge behind Estan Medina’s house.  He would watch the place and see what was going on there.  Then, he supposed he should go back and watch Las Nuevas, though his chief seemed to think that he had discovered enough there for their purposes.  He had sent on the pamphlets, and he knew that when the time was right, Las Nuevas would be muzzled with a postal law and, he hazarded, a seizure of their mail.

What he had to do now was to find the men who were working in conjunction with Las Nuevas; who were taking the active part in organizing and in controlling the Mexican Alliance.  So far he had not hit upon the real leaders, and he knew it, and in his weariness was oppressed with a sense of failure.  They might better have left him in Texas, he told himself glumly.  They sure had drawn a blank when they drew him into the Secret Service, because he had accomplished about as much as a pup trying to run down a coyote.

A lizard scuttled out of his way, when he crawled between two boulders that would shield him from sight unless a man walked right up on him where he lay—­and Starr did not fear that, because there were too many loose cobbles to roll and rattle; he knew, because he had been twice as long as he liked in getting to this point quietly.  He took off his hat, telling himself morosely that you couldn’t tell his head from a lump of granite anyway, when he had his hat off, and lifted his glasses to his aching eyes.

The Medina ranch was just showing signs of awakening after a siesta.  Estan himself was pottering about the corral, and Luis, a boy about eighteen years old, was fooling with a colt in a small enclosure that had evidently been intended for a garden and had been permitted to grow up in weeds and grass instead.

After a while a peona came out and fed the chickens, and hunted through the sheds for eggs, which she carried in her apron.  She stopped to watch Luis and the colt, and Luis coaxed her to give him an egg, which he was feeding to the colt when his mother saw and called to him shrilly from the house.  The peona ducked guiltily and ran, stooping, beside a stone wall that hid her from sight until she had slipped into the kitchen.  The senora searched for her, scolding volubly in high-keyed Mexican, so that Estan came lounging up to see what was the matter.

Afterwards they all went to the house, and Starr knew that there would be real, Mexican tortillas crisp and hot from the baking, and chili con carne and beans, and perhaps another savory dish or two which the senora herself had prepared for her sons.

Starr was hungry.  He imagined that he could smell those tortillas from where he lay.  He could have gone down, and the Medinas would have greeted him with lavish welcome and would have urged him to eat his fill.  They would not question him, he knew.  If they suspected his mission, they would cover their suspicion with much amiable talk, and their protestations of welcome would be the greater because of their insincerity.  But he did not go down.  He made himself more comfortable between the boulders and settled himself to wait and see what the night would bring.