His eyes met hers instantly.  “Was I?  How do you know?”

“I left the building just after you did.  Two Mexicans followed you.  I don’t know when I first suspected it, but I trailed along to make sure.  There can be no doubt about it.”

“Not a bit of doubt.  Found it out the first day when I left the hotel,” he told her cheerfully.

“You knew it all the time,” she cried, amazed.

“That doesn’t prevent me from being properly grateful to you for your kindness,” he hastened to say.

“What are they following you for?” she wanted to know.

Dick told her something of his experiences in the Rio Chama Valley without mentioning that part of them which had to do with Miss Valdes.  At the sound of Manuel Pesquiera’s name the eyes of the girl flashed.  Dick had already noticed that his name was always to her a signal for repression of some emotion.  The eyes contracted and hardened the least in the world.  Some men would not have noticed this, but more than once Gordon’s life had hung upon the right reading of such signs.

“You think that Mr. Pesquiera has hired them to watch you?” she suggested.

“Maybe he has and maybe he hasn’t.  Some of those willing lads of Miss Valdes don’t need any hiring.  They want to see what I’m up to.  They’re not overlooking any bets.”

“But they may shoot you.”

He looked at her drolly.  “They may, but I’ll be there at the time.  I’m not sleeping on the job, Miss Kate.”

“You didn’t turn around once yesterday.”

“Hmp!  I saw them out of the edge of my eyes.  And when I turned a corner I always saw them mighty plain.  They couldn’t have come very close without my knowing it.”

“Don Manuel is very anxious to have Miss Valdes win, isn’t he?”

Dick observed that just below the eyes two spots were burning in the usually pale cheeks.

“Yes,” he answered simply.

“Why?”

“He’s her friend and a relative.”

It seemed to Gordon that there was a touch of defiance in the eyes that held to his so steadily.  She was going to find out the truth, no matter what he thought.

“Is that all—­nothing more than a friend or a relative?”

The miner’s boyish laugh rippled out.  “You’d ought to have been a lawyer, Miss Kate.  No, that ain’t all Don Manuel doesn’t make any secret of it.  I don’t know why I should.  He wants to be prince consort of the Valdes kingdom.”

“Because of ... the estate?”

“Lord, no!  He’s one man from the ground up, M. Pesquiera is.  In spite of the estates.”

“You mean that he ... loves Valencia Valdes?”

“Sure he does.  Manuel doesn’t care much who gets the kingdom if he gets the princess.”

“Is she so ... pretty?”

Dick stopped to consider this.  “Why, yes, I reckon she is pretty, though I hadn’t thought of it before.  You see, pretty ain’t just the word.  She’s a queen.  That is, she looks like a queen ought to but don’t.  Take her walk for instance:  she steps out like as if in another moment she might fly.”