“Yes,” replied Jack, “and I know that that poor Spanish woman died a victim of treachery.” And Jack gave an account of the letters left with Elsie Kurtz, also of what the Spanish woman told her of how a man by the name of Bruce poisoned her mind against her husband, and under the guise of a friend enticed her from home one night; that her husband overtook them, would not listen to her protestations of innocence, shot them both, as he supposed, mortally and left. When she came to herself she was alone and covered with blood. She dragged herself back to Virginia City feeling sure that her boy Hernando would believe in his mother’s innocence; but no trace of either him or his father could be found. Unable to bear the slights and jeers of former companions, she wandered about until she fell in with a family of Mexicans bound for southern Texas. They pitied and cared for her and she made her home with them until about three years ago when she drifted among the Greasers in this part of the country.
Watson’s expression during this recital was first one of surprise; this changed into astonishment, and then a look of such vindictive hatred that Jack proceeded with difficulty; but when he had concluded, his listener remarked coolly, “I’ll be doggoned if I aint hungry!”
“Were you ever North, Mr. Watson?”
“Never, but I reckon I’ll go some time, perhaps along o’ you when you take a turn home.”
“Oh, how delightful! I may go next year.”
For dinner, they were served with blue cat-fish of which Jack never seemed to tire, a long, slender fish averaging about one and a half pounds, and equalling in flavor the northern brook trout. It is very unlike the mud cat-fish which is coarser in grain and flavor and sometimes attains a tremendous size; but even from a fifty-pound fish, the steaks are very good.
“I do not believe there is a fish in the world equal to our blue cat-fish,” observed Watson, deftly removing the bones from his mouth.
“Unless it is our speckled trout,” Jack suggested.
“There is a peculiar spring on my ranch,” said Watson abruptly; “in dry weather it is full of water, but in time of rain there aint a drop in it.”
“I can beat that,” laughed Jack. “Just back of Sampsonville in the town of Olive, and nearly at the top of High Point, four thousand feet high, is a spring called the ‘Tidal Spring’ because, when the tide is in, the spring overflows, and when it ebbs the water lowers.”