“You are so old and wise, good Pedro, you must bear with my ignorance and teach me. This is copper, you say. It is very pretty, but how can it make me rich? I do not understand.”
Wolfgang answered for the other, and his phlegmatic face had lost its ordinary expression for one of keen delight.
“It is true, what the old man tells you, mistress. He means––he must mean––somewhere on your property lies a vein of this metal. The dead master thought the coal was fine already. Ay, so, so. But copper! Mistress Trent, when this vein is mined, what Pedro says––yes, yes. In all this big country is not one so rich as he who owns a copper mine. Ach, himmel! It is a queen he has made you, and you say, ‘Thank you!’”
He had fully caught the shepherd’s enthusiasm and feeling, and for the first time in his life looked upon the lady of Sobrante as a dull-witted person.
But she was no longer dull. Even if it seemed an impossibility that even this “vein” could be mined, since she had no money to waste in an experiment so costly, still she realized, at last, what Pedro’s will had been. Catching his hand between her own soft palms, she pressed it gratefully, and beamed upon him till he smiled again.
“Whatever comes of it. Pedro, you have given us a royal aguinaldo[B], and I do appreciate it. Come now, and share our rejoicing over that greater good that you have brought to Sobrante––the salvation of its little captain. For that––for that––I have not even the ‘thank you’; my feeling is too deep.”
Though he showed it little, the old man was almost as moved as she, and he followed her as proudly as if he were the “king” his fellow ranchmen called him. Yet even pride did not prevent his being cautious still, and he carried the basket and staff away with him, though Wolfgang protested, and asked, angrily now:
“The money? Is it not my Elsa’s, yes? Would you break her heart already, and the little one so needing it?”
Mrs. Trent laughed. She, too, wondered that the Indian had not at once surrendered the other’s property, but understood that he could not be hurried. So she merely suggested that Wolfgang bring his family around to the living room immediately after sunset, when, doubtless, he would receive his own again.