“And so you’ve been up to Colina tracking round after a woman.”  Her verbal strokes were swift and hard as a flail.  And again Flick started in surprise.  His cheeks flushed faintly, his jaw set.

“What you mean, Pearl?  Has he been having me trailed?  I don’t believe it.”

“No,” she drawled, taking a malicious amusement in this unwonted perturbation on his part, “he hasn’t.  You slipped away so quiet and easy that you didn’t stop to say good-by, even to me.  Were you afraid I’d put him on to it?”

She did not hesitate to plant her banderillos where they would sting most, and Flick winced at this imputation which struck so near home.  “How did you know about the woman, then?” he asked quickly.

Pearl lifted her head and laughed aloud, and, at the unwonted sound breaking the desert silence, three pairs of brilliant eyes gazing through the screening mesquite branches vanished and the gray, shadowy figures of three coyotes disappeared as noiselessly as they had come.

“How did I know about the woman?” She repeated the question and considered it, still with amused scorn, as if debating whether she would enlighten him or not.  “Well—­” drawling aggravatingly, “I knew you and Pop had the knife ready for Ru—­Mr. Hanson.”  Flick’s mouth twisted again.  “That wasn’t very hard to see.  So when you hit the trail, Bob, I gave him the chance to clear out.  I did so, tipped him off, you know.  Now I guess if he’d been wanted bad for anything that would—­well, put him behind the bars, say, he’d have gotten out pretty quick.  And, anyway, if he’d been wanted like that he wouldn’t have stayed here so long, for they wouldn’t have had any trouble in nailing a man as well known as him before, so, you see, I knew it wasn’t any of the usual things.  But,” and here she stopped and, looking up into his face, spoke more emphatically, “I gave him the chance, too, to tell me all about himself and he didn’t take it.  Now, there isn’t a man living that wouldn’t have taken it—­under the circumstances—­” she spoke with a deliberately cruel emphasis, and Flick’s shoulders contracted a little as the dart pricked him—­“unless it was some mix-up about a woman.”

“It’s about a woman, all right,” grimly.

“What about her?” Pearl’s voice cut the air like the swift, downward stroke of a whip.

“She’s his wife,” returned Flick.  “She’s been living up near Colina.  She owns a part of a mine there and has been managing it.”

Pearl took this in silence; and they had walked a dozen yards or so before they spoke again.

“Well, what of it?” she said at last, carelessly, almost gaily.  “Divorces are easy.”