“Oh!” she cried.
“Don’t you be afeared, ma’am,” said the big man, more gently. “But I’m mighty cast down–I sure am! Some miser’ble coyote has fooled me. That letter said as how my little niece was wrecked on a boat here and that a party named Stone had taken her into their house at Lighthouse Point––”
“It’s Nita!” cried Miss Kate.
“What’s that?” he demanded.
“You’re speaking of Nita, the castaway!”
“I’m talkin’ of my niece, Jane Ann Hicks,” declared the rancher. “That’s who I’m talking of.”
“But she called herself Nita, and would not tell us anything about herself.”
“It might be, ma’am. The little skeezicks!” chuckled the Westerner, his eyes twinkling suddenly. “That’s a mighty fancy name–‘Nita.’ And so she is here with you, after all?”
“No.”
“Not here?” he exclaimed, his big, bony face reddening again.