He had come to Peppajee for something tangible, some thing that might be called real evidence of the conspiracy he suspected.

He had got nothing but suspicion to match his own.

As for Miss Georgie Howard-- "What can she do ?" he thought resentfully, feeling as if he had been offered a willow switch with which to fight off a grizzly.

It seemed to him that he might as sensibly go to Evadna herself for assistance, and that, even his infatuation was obliged to admit, would be idiotic.
Peppajee, he told himself when he reached his horse, was particularly foolish sometimes.
With that in his mind, he mounted--and turned Keno's head toward Hartley.

The distance was not great--little more than half a mile--but when he swung from the saddle in the square blotch of shade east by the little, red station house upon the parched sand and cinders, Keno's flanks were heaving like the silent sobbing of a woman with the pace his master's spurred heels had required of him.
Miss Georgie gave her hair a hasty pat or two, pushed a novel out of sight under a Boise newspaper, and turned toward him with a breezily careless smile when he stepped up to the open door and stopped as if he were not quite certain of his own mind, or of his welcome.
He was secretly thinking of Peppajee's information that Miss Georgie thought he was "bueno," and he was wondering if it were true.