After all,Jean did not have to fight her way clear through "Warring Mexico"and back again,in order to reach Nogales.She let Lite take her to the snug little apartment which she was to share with Muriel and her mother,and she fancied that she had been very crafty and very natural in her manner all the while he was with her,and that Lite did not dream of what she had in her mind to do.At any rate,she watched him stalk away on his high-heeled riding-boots,and she thought that his mind was perfectly at ease.(Jean,Ifear,never will understand Lite half as well as Lite has always understood Jean.)She caught the next down-town car and went straight to the information bureau of the Southern Pacific,established for the convenience of the public and the sanity of employees who have something to do besides answer foolish questions.
She found a young man there who was not averse to talking at length with a young woman who was dressed trimly in a street suit of the latest fashion,and who had almost entrancing,soft drawl to her voice and a most fascinating way of looking at one.This young man appeared to know a great deal,and to be almost eager to pass along his wisdom.He knew all about Nogales,Mexico,for instance,and just what train would next depart in that general direction,and how much it would cost,and how long she would have to wait in Tucson for the once-a-day train to Nogales,and when she might logically expect to arrive in that squatty little town that might be said to be really and truly divided against itself.Here the nice young man became facetious.
"Bible tells us a city divided against itself cannot stand,"he informed Jean quite gratuitously."Well,maybe that's straight goods,too.But Nogales is cut right through at the waist line with the international boundary line.United States customhouse on one corner of the street,Mexican customhouse in talking distance on the other corner.Great place for holdups,that!"This was a joke,and Jean smiled obligingly.
"First the United States holds you up,and then the Mexicans.You get it coming and going.Well,Nogales don't have to stand.It squats.It's adobe mostly."Jean was interested,and she did not discourage the nice young man.She let him say all he could think of on the subject of Nogales and the Federal troops stationed there,and on warring Mexico generally.When she left him,she felt as if she knew a great deal about the end of her journey.So she smiled and thanked the nice young man in that soft drawl that lingered pleasantly in his memory,and went over to another window and bought a ticket to Nogales.She moved farther along to another window and secured a Pullman ticket which gave her lower five in car four for her comfort.
With an impulse of wanting to let her Uncle Carl know that she was not forgetting her mission,she sent him this laconic telegram:
Have located Art.Will bring him back with me.
JEAN.
After that,she went home and packed a suit-case and her six-shooter and belt.She did not,after all,know just what might happen in Nogales,Mexico,but she meant to bring back Art Osgood if he were to be found alive;hence the six-shooter.
That evening she told Muriel that she was going to run away and have her vacation--her "vacation"hunting down and capturing a murderer who had taken refuge in the Mexican army!--and that she would write when she knew just where she would stop.Then she went away alone in a taxi to the depot,and started on her journey with a six-shooter jostling a box of chocolates in her suit-case,and with her heart almost light again,now that she was at last following a clue that promised something at the other end.
It was all just as the nice young man had told her.
Jean arrived in Tucson,and she left on time,on the once-a-day train to Nogales.
Lite also arrived in Tucson on time,though Jean did not see him,since he descended from the chair car with some caution just as she went into the depot.He did not depart on time as it happened;he was thirsty,and he went off to find something wetter than water to drink,and while he was gone the once-a-day train also went off through the desert.Lite saw the last pair of wheels it owned go clipping over the switch,and he stood in the middle of the track and swore.Then he went to the telegraph office and found out that a freight left for Nogales in ten minutes.He hunted up the conductor and did things to his bank roll,and afterwards climbed into the caboose on the sidetrack.Lite has been so careful to keep in the background,through all these chapters,that it seems a shame to tell on him now.But I am going to say that,little as Jean suspected it,he had been quite as interested in finding Art Osgood as had she herself.When he saw her pass through the gate to the train,in Los Angeles,that was his first intimation that she was going to Nogales;so he had stayed in the chair car out of sight.But it just shows how great minds run in the same channel;and how,without suspecting one another,these two started at the same time upon the same quest.
Jean stared out over the barrenness that was not like the barrenness of Montana,and tried not to think that perhaps Art Osgood had by this time drifted on into obscurity.Still,if he had drifted on,surely she could trace him,since he had been serving on the staff of a general and should therefore be pretty well known.
What she really hated most to think of was the possibility that he might have been killed.They did get killed,sometimes,down there where there was so much fighting going on all the time.