“He says that’s your cook—what’s-his-name—Ramon, Mr. Hampton. And he has an idea, Captain, that the man with him is Ramirez.”
“Where? I don’t see,” cried Captain Cornell, staring.
But Mr. Hampton’s eye had picked out Ramon, and in a word or two he directed the flyer so that the latter likewise saw.
Ramon was a true Mexican. Like his neighbors he had cast restraint aside under the fever engendered by the recent exhibition in the arena below, and he was standing up, cheering himself hoarse.
Having once located the old cook, the flyer’s glance passed on to the man on Ramon’s left. His gaze narrowed. Then he gave a sharp exclamation.
“D’you mean that’s Ramirez?” demanded Mr. Hampton, who had been watching his companion.
“I don’t know,” confessed the flyer. “I never saw Ramirez. But I’d say that that man certainly answers the description of the so-called ‘Master Mind’ which Jack Hannaford, the old Ranger, gave me. Blue marks on his cheek as if from powder burns and a nose beaked like a parrot’s. If I could only see him walk now, and see whether he has a limp of the right leg!”
All five stared intently at the unconscious pair who continued to whoop it up along with the rest of their compatriots, as if they had no thought in the world except to do honor to the Spanish matador. But there is something compelling in the concentrated gaze upon the back of one’s head of even one individual, something which frequently compels the object of such attentions to face the quarter whence the stare emanates. How much more compelling, then, if five persons fix their minds and thoughts upon one poor human target! It was so with Ramon.
Suddenly he faced about a puzzled frown on his features. His eyes roamed this way and that, as if searching. They passed unrecognizingly over the faces of the flyer and of Bob and Frank. But then they lighted up with recognition as they fell first upon Jack and then upon his father. With recognition and with something more. What was it? Fear?
At any rate, Ramon suddenly turned back, gripped his companion by an arm and began to address him. His words, of course, could not be heard by the watchers above him, but that he was talking about them there could be no manner of doubt.