Read "The Silver Bar Mystery" by W. C. Tuttle online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
Porfiro Mendez came back to Indian Wells, bringing with him Ricardo and Miguel, his two henchmen-cousins. It was Mendez's intention to go to Keno City and have a talk with Frank Austin, but as they rode into Indian Wells, he saw Hal Austin ride in from Keno City. Mendez dismissed Ricardo and Miguel for the present, and decided to hang around a while in the hope of learning what was being said. Apparently nothing was going on at the Casa del Diaz. Mendez had a bottle of wine in the patio, then went through a rear gate and into the tiny garden at the rear, where he leaned against the wall and consumed a cigarette. A climbing rose, twining up the wall and over an old framework, half pergola, half fence, obscured him from the sight of a window. He could hear some one singing, and decided it was Juana.
The sound of footsteps caused him to flatten himself as much as possible against the old adobe wall.