"That's the woman you're looking for--Jovita Mendez!"


PART II.


The rest of that interview has not been recorded. Suffice it that a few
minutes later Parks, Brace, and Saunders left the Emporium, and passed
the night in the latter's cabin, leaving the Emporium in possession
of Miss Mendez and her peon servant; that at the earliest dawn the two
women and their baggage were transferred to the old adobe house, where,
however, a Mexican workman had already arrived, and with a basketful of
red tiles was making it habitable. Buckeye, which was popularly supposed
to sleep with one eye on the river, and always first repaired there in
the morning to wash and work, was only awake to the knowledge of the
invasion at noon. The meeting so confidently spoken of the night
before had NOT been called. Messrs. Parks and Brace were suffering from
headaches--undoubtedly a touch of tule chill. Saunders, at work with his
partner in Eagle Bar, was as usual generous with apparently irrelevant
facts on all subjects--but that of the strangers. It would seem as if
the self-constituted Committee of Safety had done nothing.

And nothing whatever seemed to happen! Thompson of Angels, smoking a
meditative pipe at noon on the trail noticed the repairing of the old
adobe house, casually spoke of it on his return to his work, without
apparent concern or exciting any comment. The two Billinger brothers saw
Jovita Mendez at the door of her house an hour later, were themselves
seen conversing with her by Jim Barker, but on returning to their claim,
neither they nor Barker exhibited any insurrectionary excitement. Later