he laid his plans carefully now, sure of doing what he was set to do.
And the wholesome sense of really serving the man who had measured his
worth at a glance gave him a pleasure he had not known before. Of
course, he moved slowly and indifferently. One could never imagine Rex
Krane hurrying about anything.

"We'll just 'prospect,' as Daniel Boone says," he declared, as he
marshaled us for the day. "We are strangers, sight-seein', got no other
business on earth, least of all any to take us up to this old San Miguel
Church for unholy purposes. 'Course if we see a pretty little dark-eyed,
golden-haired lassie anywhere, we'll just make a diagram of the spot
she's stand'n' on, for future reference. We're in this game to win, but
we don't do no foolish hurryin' about it."

So we wandered away, a happy quartet, and the city offered us strange
sights on every hand. It was all so old, so different, so silent, so
baffling--the narrow, crooked street; the solid house-walls that hemmed
them in; the strange tongue, strange dress, strange customs; the absence
of smiling faces or friendly greetings; the sudden mystery of seeking
for one whom we must not seem to seek, and the consciousness of an
enemy, Ferdinand Ramero, whom we must avoid--that it is small wonder
that we lived in fairyland.

We saw the boy, Marcos, here and there, sometimes staring defiantly at
us from some projected angle; sometimes slipping out of sight as we
approached; sometimes quarreling with other children at their play. But
nowhere, since the moment when I had seen the door close on her up that
crooked street beside the old church, could we find any trace of the
little girl.