The next instant the boss growled and raised his quirt threateningly.
Without another protest she pulled the saddle off and then helped Carlitos remove his.
“Mas pronto,” the boss kept commanding.
As soon as they had removed the saddles, he indicated some bushes near by under which they were to hide them; that done, he had all three tie their horses a little farther down the ravine.
“He’s trying to cover up all trace of us,” Jo Ann thought, shaking. “He must be going to make away with us now. Poor Florence! Poor Carlitos! What can I do? Isn’t there something I can do?”
To her amazement just then the boss gestured to them to climb back up on the trail. What was he going to do with them now? Where was he taking them?
On reaching the trail he urged them on forward as fast as they could walk. Not long afterward they came to a little rise in the trail from which they could see in the valley below a huge white stone house outlined against the dark gray background of the mountains. Involuntarily the girls stopped to stare down at it in surprise.
“Who’d ever think of seeing such a palace as that way out here!” Jo Ann exclaimed.
For once the boss forgot to urge them on. He pointed down proudly to the house. “My casa. It cost me mucho dinero,” he bragged, then gestured to some tiny shacks on the mountain side. “I no live like the peons.”
“No wonder he can have such a fine house,” Jo Ann thought. “He stole the mine from Carlitos’ father in the first place and makes the peons live in little old shacks.”