Melissy saw the two prisoners brought in, though she could not tell at
that distance who they were. Her watch told her that it was four-thirty.
She had slept scarcely at all during the night, but now she lay down on
the bed in her clothes.
The next she knew, Rosario was calling her to get up for breakfast. The
girl dressed and followed Rosario to the adjoining cabin. MacQueen was not
there, and Melissy ate alone. She was given to understand that she might
walk up and down in front of the houses for a few minutes after breakfast.
Naturally she made the most of the little liberty allowed her.
The old squaw Sit-in-the-Sun squatted in front of the last hut, her back
against the log wall. The man called Buck sat yawning on a rock a few
yards away. What struck Melissy as strange was that the squaw was figuring
on the back of an old envelope with the stub of a lead pencil.
The young woman walked leisurely past the cabin for perhaps a dozen
yards.
"That'll be about far enough. You don't want to tire yourself, Miss Lee,"
Buck Lane called, with a grin.
Melissy stopped, stood looking at the mountains for a few minutes, and
turned back. Sit-in-the-Sun looked quickly at her, and at the same moment
she tore the paper in two and her fingers opened to release one piece of
the envelope upon which she had been writing. A puff of wind carried it
almost directly in front of the girl. Lane was still yawning sleepily, his
gaze directed toward the spot where he presently expected Rosario to step
out and call him to breakfast. Melissy dropped her handkerchief, stooped
to pick it up, and gathered at the same time in a crumpled heap into her
hand the fragment of an envelope. Without another glance at the squaw, the
young woman kept on her way, sauntered to the porch, and lingered there as
if in doubt.
"I'm tired," she announced to Rosario, and turned to her rooms.
"Si, señorita," answered her attendant quietly.
Once inside, Melissy lay down on her bed, with her back to the window, and
smoothed out the torn envelope. On one side were some disjointed memoranda
which she did not understand.
K. C. & T. 93
D. & R. B. 87
Float $10,000,000 Cortes for extension.
That was all, but certainly a strange puzzle for a Navajo squaw to set
her.
She turned the paper over, to find the other side close-packed with
writing.
Miss Lee: In the last cabin but one is a prisoner, your friend Sheriff Flatray.
He is to be shot in an hour. I have offered any sum for his life and
been refused. For God's sake save him somehow.