Dick’s mind was alert to every chance of escape.  He studied his situation as well as he could without moving from the bed.  From the glimpse of the house he had had as the two men carried him in he knew that it was a large, modern one set in grounds of considerable size.  He had been brought down a flight of steps and was now in the basement.  Was the house an unoccupied one?  Or was it in the possession of some one friendly to the scheme upon which the Mexicans had engaged?

A suspicion had startled him just after the men finished eating, but he had dismissed it as a fantasy of his excited imagination.  Sebastian, carrying out the dishes, had dropped a spoon and left it lying beside the bed.  Dick contrived, after he had wakened, to roll close to the edge and look down.  The spoon was still there.  Two letters were engraved upon the handle.  They were A.V.  If these stood for Alvaro Valdes, then this must be the town house of Valencia, and she was probably a party to his abduction.

He could not without distress of heart accept such a conclusion.  She was his enemy, but she had seemed to him so frank and generous a one that complicity in a plot of this nature had no part in the picture of her his mind had drawn.  He wrestled with the thought of this until he could stand it no longer.

“Did Miss Valdes come to town herself, or is she letting you run this abduction, Menendez?” he asked suddenly.

Pablo repeated stupidly, “Miss Valdes—­the senorita?”

The keen, hard eyes of Gordon did not lift for an instant from those of the other man.  “That’s what I said.”

It occurred to the Mexican that this was a chance to do a stroke of business for his mistress.  He would show the confident Americano what place he held in her regard.

His shoulders lifted in a shrug.  “You are clevair, Senor.  How do you know the senorita knows?”

“This is her house.  She told you to bring me here.”

Pablo was surprised.  “So?  You know it is her house?”

“Surest thing you know.”

“The senorita trusts me.  She is at the ranch.”

“But you are acting under her orders?”

“If the senor pleases.”

Dick turned his back to the wall again.  His heart was bitter within him.  He had thought her a sportsman, every inch a thoroughbred.  But she had set her peons to spy on him and to attack him—­ten to one in their favor—­so that she might force him to sign away his rights to her.  Very well.  He would show her whether she could drive him to surrender, whether she could starve him into doing what he did not want to do.

The younger Mexican wakened Sebastian late in the afternoon and left him to guard the prisoner while he went into the town to hear what rumors were flying about the affair.  About an hour later he returned, bringing with him some provisions, a newspaper, and a handbill.  The latter he tossed to Gordon.