“Si,” he grunted. “I seen them fat fellers up in San Antone. All got de sickness of de kidney or de stomach. Me, I rather be poor man and live on de outside.”
“Well, that ain’t bad for an old heathen, eh, Miss Polly?” chuckled Penhallow. “Come on, we’ve got to load this stuff into the Ford before those greasers get here.”
“How much do you think there is?” asked Polly, eagerly.
“Oh, I don’t know—a few thousands, I guess. I’ve a notion old Gasca had to whack up with the fellows who helped him get it across. It’s no fortune but it’s going to give us lame backs moving it and I reckon the Company will be glad to see it again.”
It was a hard load to move and long before the transfer was made Polly acknowledged that she was glad they hadn’t made a bigger haul. It was growing darker, too, and Wildcat Canyon began to seem less and less the sort of place for a picnic.
“Well, little lady,” observed Penhallow, as they started down the canyon, “you’ve done a good night’s work for your brother. Say, Mendoza, don’t that look like a car to you down yonder?”
Polly sat up suddenly. “I thought you said that you owned the only car in town?”
“I do. That’s why I’ve a notion that that’s mine, though why Ed Merriam should be flourishin’ it around here, I don’t know.”
“Car, yes,” agreed Mendoza. “Make ’em back up. Can’t pass there.”
At the same moment the other car honked excitedly and Mendoza answered.