The gate that let one off the main road and into the winding trail which
led to the house stood out in plain view at the mouth of a shallow draw.
This was not the trail which led out from the home ranch toward San
Bonito, where Starr had been going when he saw the track of the
mysterious automobile, but the trail one would take in going from
Medina's to Malpais. The ranch house itself stood back where the draw
narrowed, but the yellow-brown trail ribboned back from the gate in
plain view.
Here again Starr was fated to get a glimpse and no more. He focussed his
glasses on the main road first; picked up the Medina branch to the gate,
followed the trail on up the draw, and again he picked up a man riding a
bay horse. And just as he was adjusting his lenses for a sharper clarity
of vision, the horse trotted around a bend and disappeared from sight.
Starr swore, but that did not bring the man back down the trail. Starr
was not at all sure that this was the same man he had seen in the draw,
and he was not sure that either was the man who had shot at him. But
roosting on that heat-blistered pinnacle swearing about the things he
didn't know struck him as a profitless performance, so he climbed down,
got into the saddle again, and rode on.
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