“I suppose you don’t know any English town with a name ending in ‘allet,’ do you?” Hi asked.
“Allet?” the man said, suspiciously. “No, I don’t know any bally ‘allet.’ If you’d ask my opinion, I should say you were getting Wigmore on the brain. Are you sure you’ve not got a touch of forest fever? It often begins like that: getting excited about somebody’s bally corpse and that.”
“I’m not excited about him,” Hi said. “Only it is rather rough on his mother and girl, if they are wondering about him, and hoping to hear from him all this time.”
“As I said before,” the man said, “I don’t believe for one moment that he had a mother and girl. In all the months I knew him I never knew him mention them nor have any letter from them. Put him out of your mind. He was a dark horse and a tank. It’s my believe that he was wanted for something: anyway he was under a cloud. Now about yourself: you say you want to get to Anselmo? Is that near Santa Barbara? Well, if it is, it’s seventy miles from here; and here is twenty miles from any road there.”
“Could you let one of your Indios guide me to the road there, early to-morrow?” Hi asked. “My eyes are well enough. The swelling will probably be quite gone by to-morrow.”
“I couldn’t, to-morrow,” the man said.
“Why not? I’d be ever so much obliged if you would.”
“I couldn’t send an Indio to-morrow: he wouldn’t go if I did: it will be one of their moon-feasts.”
“Well, then; why not to-night?”
“You’re not fit to go to-night: besides, these Aracuis won’t move a step at night. I don’t blame them. The snakes are abroad. Then there are tigers. Besides, there are too many ghosts for them.”