He might have been a shade less frank; and yet she liked him none the less for giving her the truth bluntly.  He was but tacitly admitting that he knew nothing of her; and yet in this case he would prefer to call upon her than on Caleb Patten.

“No, I don’t trust Patten,” he continued, the chain of thought being inevitable.  “Not that I’d call him crooked so much as a fool for Jim Galloway to juggle with.  He talks too much.”

“You wish me to say nothing of to-night’s ride?”

“Absolutely nothing.  If you are missed before we get back Struve will explain that you were called to see old Ramorez, a half-breed over yonder toward Las Estrellas.  That is, provided we get back too late for it to appear likely that you are just resting in your room or getting things shipshape in your office.  That’s why I am explaining about Brocky.”

“Since you represent the law in San Juan, Mr. Norton,” she told him, “since, further, Mr. Engle indorses all that you are doing, I believe that I can go blindfolded a little.  I’d rather do that than have you forced against your better judgment to place confidence in a stranger.”

“That’s fair of you,” he said heartily.  “But there are certain matters which you will have to be told.  Brocky Lane has been shot down by one of Jim Galloway’s crowd.  It was a coward’s job done by a man who would run a hundred miles rather than meet Brocky in the open.  And now the thing which we don’t want known is that Lane even so much as set foot on Mt.  Temple.  We don’t want it known that he was anywhere but on Las Cruces Rancho; that he was doing anything but give his time to his duties as foreman there.”

“In particular you don’t want Jim Galloway to know?”

“In particular I don’t want Jim Galloway to so much as suspect that Brocky Lane or Tom Cutter or myself have any interest in Mt.  Temple,” he said emphatically.

“But if the man who shot him is one of Galloway’s crowd, as you say. . . .”

“He’ll do no talking for a while.  After having seen Brocky drop he took one chance and showed half of his cowardly carcass around a boulder.  Whereupon Brocky, weak and sick and dizzy as he was, popped a bullet into him.”

She shuddered.

“Is there nothing but killing of men among you people?” she cried sharply.  “First the sheepman from Las Palmas, then Brocky Lane, then the man who shot him. . . .”

“Brocky didn’t kill Moraga,” Norton explained quietly.  “But he dropped him and then made him throw down his gun and crawl out of the brush.  Then Tom Cutter gathered him in, took him across the county line, gave him into the hands of Ben Roberts who is sheriff over there, and came on to San Juan.  Roberts will simply hold Moraga on some trifling charge, and see that he keeps his mouth shut until we are ready for him to talk.”

“Then Brocky Lane and Tom Cutter were together on Mt.  Temple?”