“Might as well,” he said gloomily.  “I don’t reckon you’ll find him.  But you never can tell.  Offer the girl a big reward if she’ll tell where Doble is.  I’ll hustle to town and send out posses.”

They separated.  Dave rode back up the road, swung off at the place Hart had told him of, and turned up a valley which pushed to the roots of the hills.  The tendejon was a long, flat-roofed adobe building close to the trail.

Dave walked through the open door into the bar-room.  Two or three men were lounging at a table.  Behind a counter a brown-eyed Mexican girl was rinsing glasses in a pail of water.

The young man sauntered forward to the counter.  He invited the company to drink with him.

“I’m looking for Juan Otero,” he said presently.  “Mr. Crawford wanted me to see him about riding for him.”

There was a moment’s silence.  All of those present were Mexicans except Dave.  The girl flashed a warning look at her countrymen.  That look, Sanders guessed at once, would seal the lips of all of them.  At once he changed his tactics.  What information he got would have to come directly through the girl.  He signaled her to join him outside.

Presently she did so.  The girl was a dusky young beauty, plump as a partridge, with the soft-eyed charm of her age and race.

“The senor wants to see me?” she asked.

Her glance held a flash of mockery.  She had seen many dirty, poverty-stricken mavericks of humanity, but never a more battered specimen than this gaunt, hollow-eyed tramp, black as a coal-heaver, whose flesh showed grimy with livid wounds through the shreds of his clothing.  But beneath his steady look the derision died.  Tattered his coat and trousers might be.  At least he was a prince in adversity.  The head on the splendid shoulders was still finely poised.  He gave an impression of indomitable strength.

“I want Juan Otero,” he said.

“To ride for Senor Crawford.”  Her white teeth flashed and she lifted her pretty shoulders in a shrug of mock regret.  “Too bad he is not here.  Some other day—­”

“—­will not do.  I want him now.”

“But I have not got him hid.”

“Where is he?  I don’t want to harm him, but I must know.  He took Joyce Crawford into the hills last night to Dug Doble—­pretended her father had been hurt and he had been sent to lead her to him.  I must save her—­from Doble, not from Otero.  Help me.  I will give you money—­a hundred dollars, two hundred.”

She stared at him.  “Did Juan do that?” she murmured.

“Yes.  You know Doble.  He’s a devil.  I must find him ... soon.”

“Juan has not been here for two days.  I do not know where he is.”

The dust of a moving horse was traveling toward them from the hills.  A Mexican pulled up and swung from the saddle.  The girl called a greeting to him quickly before he could speak.  “Buenos dios, Manuel.  My father is within, Manuel.”