“You’ve said it, Pardner, by smoke!--if he was to know, the youngster would be hittin’ it out of this Cañada del Oro so fast you wouldn’t see Mount Lemmon for dust. Come to think of it, it’s generally a healthy proposition not to know too much about your neighbors--the ones that you like, I mean. What is it the good book says: ‘Where ignorance is bliss a man’s a darned fool to poke around tryin’ to find out things?’ As for my gal, it’s plain to be seen that she’s plumb tickled at the way it’s all turnin’ out an’----“
“_Your_ gal!” shrilled Thad. “Your gal!--there you go again. Holy Cats! Have you got to be allus tryin’ to gouge me out of my rights? Can’t you never give me a fair break?”
“Excuse me, Pardner, I forgot. As I was about to say, in my opinion you’d better let that gal of yourn work her own way out of this. It’s easy to see that she’s in too deep for us, an’ considerin’ everything--considerin’ everything, I say--it might not turn out so bad after all.”
“However it looks an’ however it turns out, my gal knows a heap more about it than us two old sand rats ever could. We’re bankin’ on the boy, an’ we’re trustin’ the gal, an’ we’re mindin’ our own business, you bet!”
He felt that the Indian was playing some kind of a game--a game which the red man seemed rather to enjoy but which left the white man very much in the dark.
Less than a mile up the cañon creek Hugh Edwards stopped. It was useless, he told himself, to go farther. He would wait there until night, when, under cover of the darkness, he could return to his cabin and secure food and the small store of gold he had accumulated. Seating himself on a rock in the shade of a sycamore, where he could watch and listen for any one attempting to follow his tracks, he gave himself up to troubled thoughts.
True, the sheriff had not come for him this time, but the officers might, while in the neighborhood, learn of his presence in the Cañon of Gold and return to investigate. Suppose, for instance, they should meet and talk with the Lizard. His supply of gold would not take him far, but he must go as far as he could; as for his dream and Marta--what a fool he had been to think that he could ever find gold enough to----