Off he started calling the Chinks to man the boat, whilst George and Tommie set to and began to build the fire.
Tommie, every now and then, took a glance towards the cliffs as though the absence of Candon were worrying her. When Hank came back he found them seated by the fire with the supper things spread, but no Candon.
“Hasn’t B. C. come back?” asked Hank, sitting down.
The thought that he was still hunting for Tommie and that they had returned and were seated comfortably beginning their supper, came not only to the pair of them, but evidently, by her manner, to Miss Coulthurst. They tried to explain that they had come back not to give up the hunt, but to get the Chinks to help to comb the place, but the explanation seemed to fall rather flat.
“I hope to goodness nothing has happened to him,” said George, weakly.
“Maybe you’d better go and see,” suggested Tommie.
“Come on,” he cried. George was scrambling up also when a hail came from towards the cliffs and they saw the figure of B. C. in the first of the starlight, coming towards them across the sands.
He spotted the figure of Tommie long before he reached them, and concluded that the others had found her and brought her back.
Walking like a man dead beat, he came up to them and cast himself down to rest on the sand.
“Been! Half over Mexico, kicking greasers, hunting—giv’s a drink. Say—” to Tommie, “where did they find you?”
Tommie’s only answer was a little squirt of laughter.
“She’d never gone,” said Hank. Then he told the whole story.
Candon said nothing. Not one of them guessed the revolution that had suddenly taken place in his dead tired mind. Beyond the bald fact that he had made a fool of himself hunting for hours for something that was not there, stood the truth that fate had worked things so that whenever he moved towards a decent act he got a snub on the nose from somewhere. His attempt to return those jewels to their proper owners had brought the whole McGinnis crowd on top of him and had made him start on this mad expedition; his attempts to rescue Tommie from the white slavers had made him ridiculous, anyhow to himself; this wild search of the last few hours had made him ridiculous in the eyes of his companions.