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CHAPTER II

HIGH PLAY

On a warm sweet day in early summer the town of Santa Leandra drowsed beneath its trees, half asleep and utterly at peace.

Hardly a breath of breeze stirred the huge elms and the cottonwoods which shaded its one street and the crooked, pretty lanes and byways that held its ancient houses. Adobe for the most part, these old structures might hold a thousand secrets with their nameless passage-ways, their dusky rooms, their seclusion.

A stream of living water, known for three hundred miles each way, trickled sluggishly beside the straggling street, and to the south and west stretched out the country of the mesas. To the east and north, flanking all the land indeed, there rose and circled the illimitable mystery of the Blind Trail Hills.

Gardens flourished and flowers grew in profusion, and children shouted and played in the shady ways.

Santa Leandra was an ancient dame among towns. Three generations back she had sent out her wagons with their freight of gold, brought them back laden with supplies for the two stores. Today the wagons still creaked over the many miles of

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