“To you an’ Saint Jimmy, ma’am. What difference will it make to you folks?”

Thad drew a deep breath of relief and rubbed his bald head with satisfaction.

Mother Burton met them bravely with:

“Nothing that you have to tell can change our feeling for Marta. I could not love her more if she were my own daughter.”

The two old men looked at Saint Jimmy eagerly.

“You dead sure that nothin’ would make you change toward our gal?” demanded Bob.

“You plumb certain, be you, sir?” said old Thad.

Saint Jimmy smiled reassuringly.

“As certain as I am of death,” he answered.

With an air of excited relief Thad faced his pardner.

“That bein’ the case I move, Pardner, that we tell Doctor Burton here what we know, an’ he can tell our gal or not as he sees fit, and when he sees fit.”

“Jest what I was about to offer myself,” returned Bob. “You go ahead.{34}”

{34}

CHAPTER V THE PROSPECTOR’S STORY

“No, sir, take it anyway you like, it jest naterally looks bad; an’ that’s all me an’ my pardner knows about it.”

“IT was about sixteen year ago,” Thad began at last.

“I

“Seventeen, the middle of next month,” said Bob.

Thad continued:

“Me an’ my pardner here was comin’ in to Tucson from the Santa Rosa Mountains, which is down close to the Mexican line. We’d been out for about three months an’ was needin’ supplies. ’Long late in the afternoon of the second day from where we’d been workin’, we stopped at a little ranch house about three mile this side of the line for water. We knowed the old Mexican man an’ woman 

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