“Queer how stories get mixed, even in this lonesome place. There; you needn’t hold that. Your little hands aren’t so very strong, helpful as they may be. This isn’t any great of a job; it ’twould only stay, once ’twas finished!”

“Then I’ll go. Maybe I’d better send up one of the boys to help you. Shall I? Who do you want?”

Upon the point of declining, the carpenter changed his mind.

“Yes, you may. I wish you would. Send Antonio.”

“Send–Antonio! Why, I should as soon think of ‘sending’ that stranger I told you about. You’re teasing me, for you know well that Antonio is the only one who ever ‘sends’ Antonio. Even my mother, who has a right to ‘send’ everybody on the ranch whither she will, never orders the manager. Well, good-by. You shall have a nice dinner out of the house-kitchen to pay for your hard climb.”

“Take care where you step in your hurry, and just try that word on the ‘senor.’ Tell him there’s a bit of a break in the flume I’d like his advice about.”

The workman’s laugh followed the girl down the rough and perilous way, and just as she passed out of hearing came the parting shot:

“Send Antonio.”

“H-m-m! I don’t see what it all means. First is old Pedro, with his grim ‘'Ware Antonio!’ And now John Benton speaks in that queer way, as if there were 25 two meanings to his words. Heigho! I hear somebody coming up. I wonder who!”

25

Hurrying downward as fast as the uneven path allowed, her own softly-shod feet making no noise, she reached a turn of the road and suddenly slackened her pace. The man approaching was one of the few whom she feared and disliked.

“Ferd, the dwarf!”

Instinctively, she hid behind a clump of shrubbery and waited for him to pass, hoping he would not see her. He did not. He was too engrossed in handling, apparently counting, something within a deep basket that hung on his arm, and his bare feet loped around over the rocks as easily as they would have carried him across the level mesa.

As soon as he had gone by Lady Jess started onward, but she had grown even more thoughtful.

“That’s queer. Antonio must need Ferd to-day if ever he does. Indeed, nobody seems able to serve him as well as that poor half-wit. What could he have had in his basket? 

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