Ned turned upon his other self and pummeled him well, declaring:
“No, you wouldn’t neither, Luis Garcia! ’Twouldn’t be your printing press, and you can’t spell cat backwards! So, there!”
“Cat backwards, dogboycat,” gurgled Luis, in a rapture of mere existence.
Ninian laughed at the comical pair, finding them infinitely diverting; and was only brought back to his immediate duty by the insistence of the small messenger, who demanded:
“Why don’t you read your letter? I should think anybody what makes newspapers could read a little girl’s letter.”
“That’s a fact; I’ll see if I can;” and accordingly spread out the scrap of wrapping paper, which had not been very smooth to start with and had suffered further ill treatment at Ned’s hand. The note required a second reading before he could fully comprehend its meaning, which he then found sufficiently startling to send him stableward in hot haste. The message was from the little captain, and was worded thus:
“dear mister sharp please excuse me i must go to a Dyeing man and i Mustnt Tell Who cause if 186 my mother was Home I Wood and she wood say yes. She always helps dyeing folks and sick ones one the boys will go and he can ride Moses or prince Which he likes. I guess marty so i Cant right any more the paper is so littul and i cant Stay.”
“JESSICA.”
This had been written with a coarse blue pencil, evidently picked up in the stable or workroom; and to the reporter’s inquiries, put to the first ranchman he met, there seemed no satisfactory answer. The man in question had not seen Jessica since service, and the men’s quarters to which Ninian hurried, were almost deserted. Sunday was their own, so the “boys” spent much of it afield, hunting or visiting on neighboring ranches. Yet a further search revealed John Benton, in his own room, reading; and to him the visitor again put the question of Jessica’s probable whereabouts, and showed the letter.
The carpenter was on his feet instantly, a look of apprehension deepening the lines of his earnest face; and running to the door he shouted to a stable boy who was crossing the space before the old adobes: