She threw her car into gear. “Don’t you worry,” she advised. “Even if there hadn’t been a Wilbur, your freedom wouldn’t have been in the slightest danger. I would have seen to that.”
“Somehow, I don’t care for that remark,” Eden said. “It ought to reassure me, but as a matter of fact, I don’t like it at all. Well, I owe you for another buggy ride. Sorry to see you go—it looks like a dull Sunday out here. Would you mind if I drifted into town this afternoon?”
“I probably wouldn’t even know it,” said the girl. “Good-bye.”
Bob Eden’s prediction about Sunday proved true—it was long and dull. At four in the afternoon he could stand it no longer. The blazing heat was dying, a restless wind had risen, and with the permission of Madden, who was still ill-humored and evidently restless too, he took the little car and sped toward the excitement of Eldorado.
Not much diversion there. In the window of the Desert Edge Hotel the proprietor waded grimly through an interminable Sunday paper. Main Street was hot and deserted. Leaving the car before the hotel, the boy went to Holley’s office.
The editor came to the door to meet him. “Hello,” he said. “I was hoping you’d come along. Kind of lonesome in the great open spaces this afternoon. By the way, there’s a telegram here for you.”
Eden took the yellow envelope and hurriedly tore it open. The message was from his father:
“I don’t understand what it’s all about but I am most disturbed. For the present I will follow your instructions. I am trusting you two utterly but I must remind you that it
