Besides Vidal’s brother there were a half dozen men in the room playing cards or merely idling in the yellow light of the kerosene lamp swung from the ceiling, men of the saloon-keeper’s breed to the last man of them.  Their eyes, the slumbrous, mystery-filled orbs of their kind, had lifted under their long lashes to regard the sheriff with seeming indifference.  Pete shrugged.

“Me, I ain’t seen Vidal for a mont’,” he answered briefly.  “I see Jim Galloway though.  Galloway say,” and Pete ran his towel idly back and forth along the bar, “Vidal come to la Casa Blanca to-night.  I dunno,” and again he shrugged.

Norton allowed himself the luxury of a mystifying smile as Pete Nunez lifted probing eyes to his face.

“Jim Galloway has been known to lie before now, like other men,” was all of the information he gave to the questioning look.  “And,” his face suddenly as expressionless as Pete’s own, “it wouldn’t be a bad bet to look for Vidal in Tres Robles, would it?  Eh, Pete?”

With that he went out.  Quite willing that Pete and his crowd should think what they pleased, Tres Robles lay twenty miles northeast of Tecolote, and if Pete cared to send word to Galloway that the sheriff had ridden on that way, well and good.

Half an hour later, with the deeper dark of the night settling thick and sultry over the surface of the desert lands, he rode out of town following the Tres Robles trail.  He knew that Pete had come to his door and was watching; he had the vague suspicion that it was quite possible that Vidal was watching, too, with eyes smouldering with hatred.  That was only a guess, not even for a man to hazard a bet upon.  But the feeling that the fugitive was somewhere in Tecolote or in the mesquite thickets near abouts had been strong enough to send him travelling this way in the afternoon, would have been strong enough for him to have acted upon, searching through shack after shack, were it not that deep down in his heart he did not believe that Jim Galloway had lied.  Here, while he came in at one door Vidal might slip out at another, safe among friends.  But in the Casa Blanca Norton meant that matters should be different.

For an hour he rode toward the northeast.  Then, turning out of the trail and reining his horse into the utter blackness offered by the narrow mouth or an arroyo, he sat still for a long time, listening, staring back through the night toward Tecolote.  At last, confident that he had not been followed, he cut across the low-lying lomas marking the western horizon and in a swinging gallop rode straight toward San Juan.

He had had ample time for the shaping of his simple plans long before catching the first winking glimpse of the lights of the Casa Blanca.  He left his horse under the cottonwoods, hung his spurs over the horn of the saddle, and went silently to the back of Struve’s hotel.  Certain that no one had seen him, he half-circled the building, came to the window which he had counted upon finding open, slipped in, and passed down the hall to Struve’s room.  At his light tap Struve called, “Come in,” and turned toward him as the door opened.  Norton closed it behind him.