“Maybe we’re too early,” Peggy suggested.
“We have to wait for the mail, anyway—it hasn’t come yet, Pedro said,” Jo Ann replied. “If there isn’t a letter from her, we’ll know she’s coming and will wait till she appears. This delay suits me to a T.”
“Don’t I know it! You’re just aching for those old smugglers to appear while we’re here. I hope they don’t.”
Undisturbed, Jo Ann went on, “While we’re waiting, let’s you and me go back to that shack and find out if any of the family knows exactly when the men are coming after the pottery.”
“We-ell, I s’pose there couldn’t be any danger about asking a few questions.”
Peggy climbed back into the car with Jo Ann, leaving José squatting on the sidewalk smoking his corn-shuck cigarette and chatting with a group of his peon friends.
When they stopped in front of the shack, they noticed a little dark-eyed girl, the tallest of the stair-step children she had seen previously, standing close to the piles of pottery. Jo Ann promptly leaped out of the car and walked over and began admiring the pottery.
“The ollas are very beautiful,” she said in her slow Spanish. “Did you help to decorate them?”
“Sí, I fix this one.” She picked up a small, brightly colored jar.
“It is lovely,” admired Jo Ann. “You are very artistic.”