"No, he ain't no common man," said O'Neill. "I reckon he's got a history, like a good many out this way. I never had much speech with him myself, but they say he'll talk about most anything but his own affairs, when he takes a fancy to any one. I reckon missy here got more outen him than most. Now then if you're all filled up we'll move on. I want to make the Three Brothers before night."
"What is Three Brothers? a town?" asked Nan.
"A little sort of hotel, kep' first by three men name o' Stallings. There ain't but one now, but he keeps the name just the same. It's a decent sort of place for ladies, right quiet and middlin' clean."
"Middling clean will have to suffice, I suppose," said Miss Helen in an aside to Nan. "We shall be tired enough not to care much, I fancy, by the time we get there."
"We shall sleep like tops," replied Nan, "after this mountain ride. I'll not quarrel with the place so long as it gives us beds we can sleep in, and I'll not ask for electric lights nor a private bath either."
The shadows fell around them before they reached their destination a weary, but cheerful party who made no complaints of the lodgings assigned them.
It was that night at the modest hotel which was their stopping place that Mary Lee unfolded to her sister the thoughts which had been hers on the way back. "Do you know, Nan," she said, "I have been thinking that Jo Poker might possibly be Miss Dolores' father."
Nan stared. "You are crazy," she replied. "Her father is dead."
"She doesn't know for certain. They made her think so, I know, but maybe that was because they didn't want him to get hold of her. Don't you see how it might be? He told me that he married a Mexican whose family didn't like him and that he had never seen his little baby. It was a girl, too."
Nan became more interested. "That's so. It might really be, Mary Lee, but who would want her to have such a father?"