“I am ready to hear what you have to tell me about my parents. You say they are both alive?”
“Both of ’em,” replied Sanders.
“How does my father look?”
“Jest as nateral as life—enough like you to be your brother, if it wasn’t for his gray har an’ mustache. He’s a tall, broad-shouldered man, has an eye like an eagle’s, an’ is the best hossman an’ rifle-shot in the West. He’s awful rich, too; I don’t b’lieve he knows how much he’s wuth. You see, your mother—an’ she’s a lady, you bet—is a Spanish woman. Her father, long years ago,” Sanders went on hurriedly, as if he did not intend to allow his listener any time to ask questions, “took it into his ole head that he wanted to be away from everybody, an’ so he located out thar in the mountains. He allers was rich, but when he got out thar he found himself richer’n ever. Thar was gold all around him. He couldn’t walk without steppin’ onto it, an’ he picked it up by cart-loads. Your father, who was out thar sojerin’, resigned his commission in the army an’ married his darter; an’ in course when the ole man died he came into possession of all his gold dust. But thar were some people about who didn’t want him to keep it. The only kin folks your mother had after her father died were a brother an’ cousin, an’ you see if everybody else had been out of the way, all the money would have fell to her brother. They ain’t the honestest fellers in the world, her kin folks ain’t, I must say. They’re the wust sort of gamblers, bein’ monstrous fond of three-card monte, an’ they are even suspicioned of doin’ things a heap sight wuss than that; an’ since your father an’ his family wouldn’t die an’ leave them to take charge of the money, they laid a plan to hurry up matters an’ divide the plunder between them. But all the harm they done was to steal you away from home, an’ that didn’t do ’em no good ’cause I’ve found you agin.”
“You say that Dick Mortimer is the man who kidnapped me?” asked Julian, when Sanders paused.
“Sartin, I do.”
“And that he is a relative of my mother’s?”
“Them’s my very words.”
“Well, now, is he her brother or her cousin?”
“He’s her brother.”