In dejection he rode up the valley, following the same hilly trail he had taken two days before with Miss Rutherford.  It took him past the aspen grove at the mouth of the gulch which led to the Meldrum place.  Beyond this a few hundred yards he left the main road and went through the chaparral toward a small ranch that nestled close to the timber.  Beulah had told him that it belonged to an old German named Rothgerber who had lived there with his wife ever since she could remember.

Rothgerber was a little wrinkled old man with a strong South-German accent.  After Beaudry had explained that he wanted board, the rancher called his wife out and the two jabbered away excitedly in their native tongue.  The upshot of it was that they agreed to take the windmill agent if he would room in an old bunkhouse about two hundred yards from the main ranch building.  This happened to suit Roy exactly and he closed the matter by paying for a week in advance.

The Rothgerbers were simple, unsuspecting people of a garrulous nature.  It was easy for Beaudry to pump information from them while he ate supper.  They had seen nothing of any stranger in the valley except himself, but they dropped casually the news that the Rutherfords had been going in and out of Chicito Canon a good deal during the past few days.

“Chicito Canon.  That’s a Mexican name, isn’t it?  Let’s see.  Just where is this gulch?” asked Beaudry.

The old German pointed out of the window.  “There it iss, mein friend.  You pass by on the road and there iss no way in—­no arroyo, no gulch, no noddings but aspens.  But there iss, shust the same, a trail.  Through my pasture it leads.”

“Anybody live up Chicito?  I want everybody in the park to get a chance to buy a Dynamo Aermotor before I leave.”

“A man named Meldrum.  My advice iss—­let him alone.”

“Why?”

Rothgerber shook a pudgy forefinger in the air.  “Mein friend—­listen.  You are a stranger in Huerfano Park.  Gut.  But do not ask questions about those who lif here.  Me, I am an honest man.  I keep the law.  Also I mind my own pusiness.  So it iss with many.  But there are others—­mind, I gif them no names, but—­” He shrugged his shoulders and threw out his hands, palm up.  “Well, the less said the petter.  If I keep my tongue still, I do not talk myself into trouble.  Not so, Berta?”

The pippin-cheeked little woman nodded her head sagely.

In the course of the next few days Roy rode to and fro over the park trying to sell his windmill to the ranchers.  He secured two orders and the tentative promise of others.  But he gained no clue as to the place where Dingwell was hidden.  His intuition told him that the trail up Chicito Canon would lead him to the captive cattleman.  Twice he skirted the dark gash of the ravine at the back of the pasture, but each time his heart failed at the plunge into its unknown dangers.  The first time he persuaded himself that he had better make the attempt at night, but when he stood on the brink in the darkness the gulf at his feet looked like a veritable descent into Avernus.  If he should be caught down here, his fate would be sealed.  What Meldrum and Tighe would do to a spy was not a matter of conjecture.  The thought of it brought goose-quills to his flesh and tiny beads of perspiration to his forehead.