It was not honest money that he had been taking.  Why, even the kids out there knew it was not honest!  Look at Rosa, playing shrewdly her part of dumb shyness in the presence of strangers—­and she thinking all the while how best she could lie to them, the little imp!  It was not the first time she had shown her shrewdness.  Why, nearly every time Cliff wanted to make a trip across the line, those kids climbed the hill to where they could look all over the flat and the near-by hills, and if they saw any one they would yell down to Mateo.  If the interloper happened to be close, they had orders to roll small rocks down for a warning, so Cliff one day told Johnny with that insufferably tolerant smile.  Cliff brought them candy and petted them, just for what use he could make of them as watchdogs.  Would all that be necessary for a legitimate enterprise?  Wouldn’t the guards have orders to shut their eyes when an airplane flew high, bearing a man who gathered news vital to the government?

Once before Johnny had been made a fool of by horse thieves who plied their trade across the line.  They had given him this very same airplane to keep him occupied and tempt him away from his duty while they stole Rolling R horses at their leisure.  Wasn’t this very money—­thirty-two hundred dollars of it—­going to pay for that bit of gullibility?  Gulled into earning money to pay for an earlier piece of gross stupidity!

“The prize—­mark!” he branded himself.  “By golly, they’ve got me helping ’em do worse than steal horses from the Rolling R, this time; putting something over on the government is their little stunt—­and by golly, I fell for the bait just like I done the other time! Huhn!” Then he added a hopeful threat.  “But they had me on the hip, that time—­this time it’s going to be different!”

For the rest of that day he brooded, waiting for Cliff.  What he would do he himself did not know, but he was absolutely determined that he would do something.

CHAPTER TWENTY

MARY V TAKES THE TRAIL

On a Saturday afternoon Spring Street at Sixth is a busy street, as timid pedestrians and the traffic cop stationed there will testify.  In times not so far distant the general public howled insistently for a subway, or an elevated railway—­anything that would relieve the congestion and make the downtown district of Los Angeles a decently safe place to walk in.  But subways and elevated railways cost money, and the money must come from the public which howls for these things.  Gradually the public ceased to howl and turned its attention to dodging instead.  For that reason Sixth and Spring remains a busy corner, especially at certain hours of the day.