"He would do more, but he dare not. I happen to be on friendly terms with a chief who is this fellow's superior. If the chief in charge here should harm me and my friend should feel so inclined, he might ride up here, and stand my enemy up against an adobe wall. The fellow knows it—and is aware of my friend's rather uncertain temper. That temper, my dear Janice, known to all who have ever heard of Juan Dicampa, and his abundant health, is the wall between me and a possibly sudden and very unpleasant end."
There was a great deal more to the letter, but at first Janice could not go on with it for surprise. The clerkly writer with the abundance of flowery phrases, Juan Dicampa was, then, a Mexican chieftain—perhaps a half-breed Yaqui murderer! The thought rather startled Janice. Yet she was thankful to remember how warmly the man had written of her father.
Much of what followed in her father's letter she had to transmit to the bank officials and others of his business associates in her old home town. But the important thing, it seemed all the time to Janice, was Juan Dicampa.
She thought about him a great deal during the next few days. Mostly she thought about his health, and the chances of his being shot in some battle down there in Mexico.
She began to read even more than heretofore of the Mexican situation in the daily papers. She began to look for mention of Dicampa, and tried to learn what manner of leader he was among his people.
If Juan Dicampa should be removed what, then, would happen to Broxton Day?
CHAPTER XVI
ONE MATTER COMES TO A HEAD
That was a black week for Janice as well as for the young schoolmaster.
She could barely keep her mind upon her studies at the seminary.
Nelson Haley's salvation was the attention he was forced to give to his
classes in the Polktown school.
One or another of the four committeemen who had constituted themselves his enemies, were hovering about Nelson all the time. He felt himself to be continually watched and suspected.