"Oh, Marty! I must go on," said the girl.
"Sure! All right, we take you," said Marty to Señor Abreguardo.
"You will pay Carlitos Ortez half of the money before you start—pay it into my hands," explained the don. "And the end of your journey—San Cristoval, for he cannot go beyond that point—you will pay him the remainder and give him a paper assuring me that he has performed his part of the contract. You are thus safeguarded, and I shall have done my duty by Don José's friends," concluded Señor Abreguardo, bowing over his coffee cup.
CHAPTER XXII
THE RED VEST AGAIN
Carlitos Ortez was one of those snaky-looking, black-haired peons, with a wisp of jetty mustache, who serve as the type of Mexican villains in lurid melodrama—and he had the heart of a child!
Janice might have been afraid of the quick-motioned, nervous little man had she been of a less observant nature. But she saw his eyes—deep brown, placid like a forest pool. The eyes served to make Carlitos almost handsome.
The automobile came to the archway of Señor Abreguardo's house in an hour. Janice and Marty did not meet any of the man's family. The Indian maiden, Lucita, told Janice that the ladies of the household seldom stirred from their apartments until after siesta.
But the don himself stood bareheaded in the sun to see them start. Carlitos had put Janice and Marty into the back of the car.
"That other hombre—I peek him up later. He sit weeth me," he explained.