“With a gang like that at his back, a man of Galloway’s type has grown pretty strong.  Strong enough to plan . . . yes, and by the Lord, carry out! . . . the kind of game he’s playing right now.

“A half-breed took sick and died a short time ago, a man whom I’d never set my eyes on particularly.  It happened that he was a superstitious devil and that he was a second or third cousin of Ignacio Chavez.  He was quite positive that unless the bells rang properly for him he would go to hell the shortest way.  So he sent for Ignacio and wound up by talking a good deal.  Ignacio passed the word on to me.  And that was the first inkling I had of Galloway’s real game.  In a word, this is what it is: 

“He plans on one big stroke and then a long rest and quiet enjoyment of the proceeds.  You have seen the rifles; he’ll arm a crowd of his best men . . . or his worst, as you please . . . swoop down on San Juan, rob the bank, shooting down just as many men as happen to be in the way, rush in automobiles to Pozo and Kepple’s Town, stick up the banks there, levy on the Las Palmas mines, and then steer straight to the border.  And, if all worked according to schedule, the papers across the country would record the most daring raid across the border yet, blaming the whole affair on a detachment of Gringo-hating Mexican bandits and revolutionists.”

Virginia stared at him, half incredulously.  But the look in Norton’s eyes, the same look in Brocky Lane’s, assured her.

“Why do you wait then?” she asked sharply.  “If you know all this, why don’t you arrest the man and his accomplices now?  Before it is too late?”

“And have the whole country laugh at me?  Where’s my evidence?  Just the word of a dead Indian, repeated by another Indian, and a few rifles hid in the mountains?  Even if we proved the rifles were Galloway’s, and I don’t believe we could, how would we set about proving his intention?  No; I’ve talked it all over with the district attorney and we can’t move yet.  We’ve got our chance at last; the chance to watch and get Jim Galloway with the goods on.  But we’ve got to wait until he is just ready to strike.  And then we are going to put a stop to lawlessness in San Juan once and for all.”

“But,” she objected breathlessly, “if he should strike before you are ready?”

“It is our one business in life that he doesn’t do it.  We know what he is up to; we have found this hiding-place; we shall keep an eye on it night and day.  He doesn’t know that we have been here; no one knows but ourselves.  You see now, Miss Page, why I couldn’t bring Patten here?  Patten talks too much and Galloway knows every thought in Patten’s mind.  And you understand how important it is for you to forget that you have been here?”

She sat silent, staring into the embers of the dying fire.

“The thing which I can’t understand,” she said presently, “is that if Jim Galloway is the ‘big man’ that you say he is he should do as much talking as he must have done; that he should have told his plans to such a man as the Indian who told them to Ignacio Chavez.”