"It will be all right!" he called out to the crowd in his yard; for the others who had met him at the station were waiting for him there. "Bob, those umbrella-trees could shade a thin, short man now, even if he didn't hug the trunk! Firio has done well, hasn't he?" he concluded, after he had walked through the garden and surveyed the fields and orchards in fond comparison as to progress.
"The best I ever knew an Indian to do!" said Jim Galway.
"And everything kept right on growing while I was away! That's the joy of planting things. They are growing for somebody, if not for you!"
Inside the house he found Firio, with the help of some of the ranchers, taking the pictures out of their cases. Firio surveyed the buccaneer for some time, squinting his eyes and finally opening them saucer-wide in approval.
"You!" he said to Jack. And of the Sargent, after equally deliberate observation, he said: "A lady!"
That seemed about all there was to say and expressed the thought of the onlookers.
"And, Firio, now it's the trail!" said Jack.
"Sí, sí!" said Firio, ever so softly. "We take rifles?"
"Yes. Food for a week and two-days' water."
It pleased Jack to hang the portraits while Firio was putting on Jag Ear's pack; and he made it a ceremony in which his silence was uninterrupted by the comments of the ranchers. They stood in wondering awe before John Wingfield, Knight, hung where he could watch the Eternal Painter at his sunset displays and looking at the "Portrait of a Lady" across the breadth of the living-room, whose neutral tones made a perfect setting for their dominant genius.