At this corner Dorothy saw the Mexican girl dodging around the next corner, but quickly Flores led her to an empty shed and there turned, waiting for her. All the sheds appeared to be empty, for the horse wrangler had driven all the ponies out to pasture, and there was no cattle here save a few calves bawling their heads off in a pen.
“You wish to talk to me?” asked Dorothy, puzzled, but smiling at the younger girl.
“I no sp’ak mooch Inglese,” said Flores, softly. “You come?”
She seized Dorothy’s hand and drew her gently away. “Come where?” asked the Eastern girl.
“Wiz me,” and Flores pointed to herself. “I no sp’ak, but I leeston. You leeston, too.”
“Listen?”
Flores nodded her head vigorously. “They talk—you leeston.”
She still dragged at Dorothy’s hand. The fact that the Mexican girl wished her to play eavesdropper did not at first enter Dorothy’s mind. She went with Flores wonderingly.
Her guide led the way surely between the rows of sheds. Keeping well away from the bunkhouse and paddock, where there were likely to be loiterers, Flores skillfully chose a way in which Mrs. Ledger could not possibly see them from her doorway.
When Colonel Hardin had really made cattle raising a business, there were often ten thousand steers at the home corral, besides hundreds of ponies. Corrals and sheds occupied several hundred acres.