In the holster that hung from the pommel of the saddle of each girl there was a double-barreled pistol, loaded and ready for instant use; and it was not there for ornament. Both girls had been trained to use the rifle and the pistol; and never, since Iola's frightful experience with the Mexican desperado, Padilla, some three years before,[1] had either girl been permitted to ride, even a short distance from the house, without having one or both of these weapons with her. Consequently, trained and armed as they were, they saw nothing to fear in meeting the two strange horsemen, although they were alone in a little valley and out of sight and hearing of every other human being, so far as they knew.
The two horsemen came up on a slow gallop; and pulled up their horses a dozen feet from the girls.
"We asks your pardon, ladies," said the larger of the two men—a big red-headed man with a broken nose—as he awkwardly doffed his hat. "But, seein' you ridin' by, an' thinkin' you might be able tew give us sum information, we bein' strangers in this part of Californy, we made bold tew hallo tew you," and he paused, his bold eyes staring admiringly into the dark face of Iola.
"We will be very glad to help you, if we can," answered Iola, a bit shortly, for she did not like the looks of the big man with the broken nose. "What is it you would like to know?"
"Wal," answered the man, glancing toward his companion, "me an' my pardner was tew meet a man over yonder by that big rock that sticks itself out of th' ground, like a nose on a man's face," and he pointed to a huge rock a mile or more away that shot up out of the level of the valley, not unlike the nose on a man's face. "He was tew git thar 'bout noon yisterday; an' we haven't seen hide nor ha'r of him yit; an', gittin' powerful tired of waitin' an' thinkin' you ladies might have seen him, we stops you tew ask."
"An' bein' a leetle afeared he might have come tew harm," the other horseman, a small man with a pock-marked face, here broke in, "seein' that he was a comin' from th' diggin's an' was supposed tew have considerable gold-dust with him, we makes bold tew stop you ladies tew ask about him, jest as my pardner says, thinkin' you might have seen him."
"What—what did he look like?" Iola asked anxiously, the moment the man paused; for her thoughts had gone instantly to the dead man they had buried last night, when he had spoken of the man they were looking for as being on his way back from the diggings.
"Wal, he won't exactly what you ladies would call a beauty," answered the big man, grinning, "seein' that he'd let his whiskers an' ha'r grow long an' scraggly all over his face an' head; but you'd a-knowed him, if you'd a-seen him, by a peecoolyer scar over his left eye, shaped sumthin' like a hoss-shoe, with th' ends of th' shoe pointin' t'ord th' corners of th' eye."
"Why," and Iola's face whitened, "he must have been the man our brothers, Thure and Bud, brought home with them yesterday afternoon! He had a scar on his forehead like that. Didn't you notice it?" and she turned to Ruth.
"Yes," Ruth answered, "and he was from the mines."