Monty had made up his mind to go on to Los Angeles and see for himself why Patricia would not answer his telegram, when he received the word that she was coming from Kansas City. He swore a good deal over the delay that would hold him inactive in town. To fill in the time he wrote a long letter to the sheriff in Tonopah, stating all the facts in the case so far as he knew them. He hoped that the sheriff was already on his way to Johnnywater, though Monty could not have told just what he expected the sheriff to accomplish when he arrived there.
He tried to trace James Blaine Hawkins, but only succeeded in learning from a garage man that Hawkins had come in off the desert at least three weeks before, cursed the roads and the country in general and had left for Los Angeles. Or at least that
