"Did you count 'em?" he asked his daughter.
"There must have been all of a dozen. I could not make out the number exactly," Rhoda said.
"Well," her father grumbled, shaking his shaggy head, "we've got our hands full just now, that's sure. But we don't need to worry about stranglers while there's so many of us down here. And there are plenty of the boys up at the house and with the cows. Reckon it's all right."
"Do you suppose," whispered Nan, "that those Mexicans have come over here for some bad purpose, Rhoda?"
"Maybe they are bandits, like that Lobarto you told us about," said
Grace.
"Maybe they will bury treasure somewhere around here," Bess put in eagerly. "And I say, Rhoda: When are we going to get up that party to hunt for Lobarto's treasure?"
"Not until after this round-up, that's sure," laughed the girl of
Rose Ranch.
The young people went down to the corrals and branding pens and were told, in the course of time, by Hesitation Kane that the corrals would accommodate a thousand horses at once. It was believed that three days would be occupied in handling the great mob of stock that had been driven down from the hills.
Strange cowboys began to drift into the camp; but all seemed well behaved, and they were the easiest men in the world to get along with. They all put themselves out to give the visitors any information in their power.
"We're going to have a bully time here," Bess declared to Nan. "I do not really want to go to bed to-night. I'd rather hang about the campfires and listen to the boys who are off watch tell stories."