CANANEA was visible from several miles down the road, a small mining town nestling in a fold of the mountains - a northward extension of the Sierra Madre, I believe, called the Sierra de la Madera.  The Timber Mountains, if my limited Spanish vocabulary can be trusted.  Although they hardly qualified as Alpine peaks, they rose to respectable heights behind the town and the tall, smoking stacks of the mine.  I didn't see anything growing on them but the usual sparse scrub evergreens common to that arid country, good for nothing but firewood; but maybe they produced better lumber farther south.

Gloria started preparing herself for public appearance as we approached civilization, such as it was in these parts.  Actually, she had very little to do since she hadn't let herself yield much to the rigors of the long ride; no sprawling, unbuttoned, shoes-off relaxation here.  She merely checked her golden hairdo, inspected her elaborate eye makeup, powdered her patrician nose, and repaired some minor lipstick wear.  We entered a sprawling town of dirt streets and low mud buildings.  Cheerful, ragged kids played in the dust along with scrawny dogs of indeterminate breeding.  We missed the restaurant on the first pass and wound up in a rather dilapidated and unpromising residential area - not that any part of this mining community resembled Beverly Hills.  I turned the Caddy around and drove back the way we'd come.  I seemed to be doing a lot of backtracking on this safari.

"My lost pathfinder!" said Gloria dryly.  Who did you call from Douglas, just before we crossed the border?"

I glanced at her sharply.  I'd made no great effort toward security, it hadn't been that important; but she wouldn't have seen me using the pay phone up the street if she'd followed instructions and stayed in the car at the filling station where we'd availed ourselves of our last opportunity to top up the tank with U.S. gas.

"Just checking with the time-of-day service, ma'am," I said.  "Incidentally, you're supposed to set your watch back an hour.  Mexico doesn't have daylight saving."

She laughed shortly.  "You're a liar."

"Always.  That's the way they train us, and I was a prize student.  But I'm right about the hour."

She was watching me, frowning.  She said, "I do have an interest in this operation, Matt....  I mean, Horace, dear.  I'd like to know what's going on.  Telephone call from Deming, New Mexico, where we filled up the first time you weren't so sneaky about that one - telephone call from Douglas, Arizona, where you were supposedly laying in a supply of pesos in preparation for entering Mexico.  Very mysterious.  Is there something I should know that you aren't telling me, Horace, dear?"  She laueled again.  "Yes, I was snooping.  Actually, I just meant to walk around a bit after all the driving; but seeing you at that phone made me curious, so I followed you for a couple of blocks and watched around the corner.  What were you doing in that hardware store, making contact with one of your secret agents?  And in J.C. Penney's?  I thought the place to get foreign money was a bank."

The fact that she'd watched me didn't worry me; but the fact that I hadn't been aware of her watching me was disturbing.  Either she was better at surveillance than she ought to be, or I'd been less alert than I should have been.